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Business Strategy
The case is about diversified Indian conglomerate ITC Limited’s acquisition of Kolkata, India-based spice business company Sunrise Foods Private Limited (SFPL). In July 2020, ITC acquired 100% of the equity share capital of SFPL for Rs. 21.5 billion, its biggest acquisition till 2020. With the acquisition, the company added a 70-year-old brand and a market leader in eastern India to its spice portfolio. ITC went in for the acquisition of SFPL during the Covid-19 pandemic, when people preferred to use branded and packaged products for safety, trust, and quality reasons. The acquisition was expected to help ITC gain a larger footprint as households switched from unbranded to branded spices. ITC said the acquisition was aligned with its strategy of augmenting its spices portfolio under the Aashirvaad brand and scale up its FMCG business across the country. ITC expected its FMCG business to achieve a turnover of Rs.1,000 billion revenue by 2030 and the acquisition of companies to contribute significantly to this end.

ITC-Sunrise Foods Deal: Creating Business Opportunities for ITC
This case discusses the various initiatives taken by Swiggy to maintain business continuity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in India, Swiggy’s business suffered with restaurants being shut and customers showing reluctance to order from restaurants fearing the spread of the virus through food. In March 2020, food orders on Swiggy dropped by 60%. To cope with the pandemic, Swiggy introduced a slew of measures including reinventing its order journey to maximize food safety at each step of the order-delivery process, supporting delivery and restaurant partners, and diversifying into online groceries and delivery. As part of its surviving strategy, Swiggy laid off 1,100 employees in May 2020 and also scaled down or shut down adjacent businesses. Though Swiggy bounced back to pre-COVID order volumes in October 2020 due to a surge in food orders, the food aggregator faced some challenges including growing competition, change in consumer behavior leading to a drop in the demand for online food delivery, regaining customer trust, bringing more restaurants back on to its platform, and recovering revenues.

Swiggy: Delivering on Business Continuity amidst Covid-19
The case discusses the M&A deal between the Germany-based global pharmaceutical company Merck KGaA and the US-based, multinational FMCG company P&G. In this deal, P&G acquired a 100% stake in the consumer health business of Merck KGaA for US$4.2 billion. The case helps the students understand the various aspects of an M&A deal. It explores the rationale behind the merger deal, from both P&G’s and Merck KGaA’s perspective. It discusses the various developments that took place before and after the merger was announced. The case provides sufficient scope to debate the various possible synergies and various challenges related to this deal. The case ends with a debate on whether the merger would be successful or not.

The P&G-Merck KGAA Consumer Health Business Merger
The case documents the meteoric rise of Zoom, a cloud-based conferencing tool, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic as work from home and social distancing became the new norm. Zoom was the most downloaded app globally with 37.8 billion downloads in Q2 2020. Founded in 2011 by Eric S. Yuan (Yuan), the tool allowed users to interact virtually with each other through audio, video, and chat. The case discusses the business model of Zoom and the reasons behind its success, including its ease of use as well as high-quality audio/video output. With lockdowns in place the world over in early 2020 and the risk of the virus spreading, remote working became a reality. It was during this period that Zoom really took off. Zoom’s total revenue for fiscal year 2020 grew 88% year-over-year to US$623 million. Despite its phenomenal success, Zoom came under scrutiny over its handling of privacy and security, including its failure to prevent uninvited guests from barging in on sessions. Other challenges included intense competition from deep pocketed rivals such as Microsoft, Google, and Cisco with their products Teams, Meet, and Webex, and building a large global channel partner network quickly, to continue growing its reach and market penetration. Going forward, the challenges before Yuan were to sustain Zoom’s success, convert free users into paying customers, fix its security problems, and restore customer trust.

Zoom’s Rise Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic
The case talks about the Tata Group eyeing a stake in online food and grocery store BigBasket. The case gives an overview of the various Tata Group businesses and the revenues by segment. It then gives a brief history of BigBasket. The case also covers the advantages of the potential deal for both the Tata Group and BigBasket. With this deal, the Tata Group was expected to get a foothold in the online grocery market while BigBasket would be able to expand its business in India. The case also touches upon the level of competition in the Indian online grocery market and how the competition is set to intensify with the entry of the Tata Group.

The Tata Group-BigBasket Potential Deal
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