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‘Gramin Suvidha Kendra’: MCX’s Corporate Social Opportunity Approach to Inclusive Growth
Abstract
This case study is about the Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd. (MCX), an electronic multi commodity futures exchange based in Mumbai, India, and its corporate social responsibility initiative - Gramin Suvidha Kendra (GSK). Through the GSK initiative, which began in 2006, MCX sought to use its domain strengths to make India's process of economic growth more inclusive by providing small and marginal farmers with a level playing field and new opportunities in the domain of agricultural marketing, risk management, and finance. The company adopted a proactive approach to CSR and viewed these as 'Corporate Social Opportunities' (CSO). GSK was a Public Private Partnership (PPP) project with India Post, the Indian government's postal department. Through this platform, MCX provided various services to the farmers, including giving price/market information, addressing technical queries regarding farming, providing scientific warehousing facilities, issuing warehouse receipts, and providing access to finance, quality agri and non-agri inputs, and bank loans. |
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Issuess
The case is structured to achieve the following teaching objectives:
- Study MCX's 'Gramin Suvidha Kendra' model and discuss and debate whether the model is sustainable and capable of driving inclusive growth.
- Study MCX's 'Corporate Social Opportunities' approach and how it differs from the CSR approaches of other companies.
- Understand the issues and challenges in building a sustainable model aimed at catering to the needs of the rural/Bottom of the Pyramid population while addressing some of their problems.
- Understand the issues and challenges in a public-private partnership, and concepts related to ‘collaboration continuum’.
- Identify the challenges faced by the MCX team with regard to GSK and explore ways in which the model can be evolved so that it attains self-sufficiency.
Keywords
Corporate social responsibility, Corporate social opportunity, Sustainable model, Sustainable development, Inclusive growth, Bottom of the Pyramid, Public-Private partnership, Collaboration continuum, Rural consumers, Price information, Spot trading, Gramin Suvidha Kendra, MCX
