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• Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2019

  Salary Finance

  John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

  In April 2019, Asesh Sarkar, co-founder and chief executive of Salary Finance Limited, a London-based FinTech, faced tough choices. Sarkar had founded Salary Finance with Dan Cobley and Daniel Shakhani in 2015. The company’s value proposition was quite simple: partner with employers to offer employees affordable loans that were repaid through automatic payroll deductions. Taking repayments directly from salary, and collecting those repayments in one transaction from the employer, dramatically reduced costs, saving employees large amounts of interest when compared to market alternatives like credit cards or payday lenders. For improving access to affordable credit, Salary Finance garnered considerable praise in the media, being named one of the UK’s most socially responsible and innovative FinTech companies.
  Since the beginning of 2018, Salary Finance had introduced a savings product and an earned income advance product that were linked to employee salary. In September 2018, they expanded to the United States, in partnership with the United Way, opening an office in Boston, Massachusetts.
  Sarkar was excited by the progress but was still pondering how best to accelerate further growth and improve the business. First there was the question of geographic expansion. Did it make sense to pursue other markets like India? Or, should he focus on building Salary Finance’s position in the UK and US? In these markets, should he prioritize attracting new employers to the platform or adding new products such as mortgages or investments? Should he register as a bank, tapping into low cost deposits and reducing the dependence on commercial borrowing to fund loans? Finally, he was concerned about how to best maintain Salary Finance’s culture – “For People Not Numbers” – during rapid growth. These questions and more weighed heavily on Sarkar’s mind as he considered the company’s future.

  Keywords: Credit; Financing and Loans; Wages; Innovation and Invention; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Services Industry;

  Citation:

  Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "Salary Finance." Harvard Business School Case 720-355, July 2019.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | May 2019

  State of Charge: The Massachusetts Energy Storage Initiative

  John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

  In early 2017, Judith Judson (Harvard Business School MBA, 2000), Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER), was reflecting on the results of the initiative she had led to identify the contribution advanced electricity storage could make to electricity generation and distribution in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The study was the first major output from the $10 million Energy Storage Initiative (ESI) launched by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s administration in May 2015. The advanced simulation techniques employed in the study indicated that over a ten-year period, the optimal deployment of storage capacity would cut the cost of electricity for consumers in the Commonwealth by $230 million per year, deliver $110 million in annual revenues for storage providers, and reduce CO2 emissions by 100,000 tons a year, the equivalent of taking 22,000 cars off the road. Moreover, neighboring states would benefit from $250 million in lowered wholesale prices. To deliver these benefits, 1.77 GWh of advanced storage would be required across the grid, costing between $970 million and $1.35 billion. Incorporating the perspectives of a wide body of stakeholders (from utilities to municipalities to generators), the study wound up recommending a suite of policies that would facilitate the installation of 600 MWh of storage capacity by 2025, representing about six minutes of the state’s daily electricity consumption and delivering $800 million in benefits to ratepayers. It would also make the Commonwealth a leader in advanced storage technology and deliver substantial greenhouse gas reductions. At the end of 2015, according to figures from the Department of Energy, Massachusetts ranked 23rd in the United States in energy storage deployment, well behind the leader, Arizona, with nearly 300 MWh, and Texas, with over 150 MWh. However, with advances in storage technology, California promised to become the leader and had plans for nearly 1 GWh of storage capacity over the next five years. The ESI was seeking input on how to spend the balance of its $10 million budget and whether to authorize an additional $10 million on proof-of-concept deployments of the technology. Commissioner Judson pondered. Was this aggressive enough? And where did advanced storage stand in the priorities for the energy future of the Commonwealth?

  Keywords: energy storage; Energy Generation; Programs; Policy; Strategy; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Massachusetts;

  Citation:

  Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "State of Charge: The Massachusetts Energy Storage Initiative." Harvard Business School Case 719-448, May 2019.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2019 (Revised April 2019)

  Electric Car Wars, 2018

  John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

  Electric cars had long been championed by environmentalists as a superior solution to the internal combustion engine (ICE), but, despite large government incentives and strong pioneering efforts by a few automakers over the years, electric and hybrid cars and light trucks still accounted for less than 1% of total global production in 2016. However, events took a turn in 2017 and 2018, when many governments committed to banning ICE vehicles. In response, leading automakers announced plans to launch hundreds of electric vehicle models within five years. Early pioneer Tesla, which, in 2017, had built a stock market valuation exceeding that of General Motors (GM), despite only delivering 103,000 cars compared to GM’s 9 million, looked as if it were about to be engulfed by this new competition. But not all were convinced that electric cars would soon displace conventional ICE vehicles. It was not clear that the infrastructure was in place to charge all these electric vehicles. There were also questions concerning the electrical generating capacity to meet the new demand. Would battery prices fall enough to make mass-market demand a possibility? In low gasoline cost jurisdictions, such as the United States, the economics of owning an electric vehicle didn’t appear justified, unless subsidies were maintained indefinitely. In Europe, where gasoline taxes were high, the case for electric vehicles was stronger. But European governments depended on those taxes to meet their budget needs. Would a significant uptake of electric vehicles necessitate higher taxes on electricity? In 2018, electric cars were an expensive novelty for the rich subsidized by the poor. Would the sudden rush of new models change the balance?

  Keywords: electric vehicle; electric vehicles; Electricity; electric motors; Electric Power Generation; electricity usage; electricity distribution; Internal Combustion Vehicle; auto manufacturing; Automobile Manufacturing; automotive industry; Tesla; General Motors; history; Nissan; innovation; batteries; Battery; subsidies; Government initiatives; government incentives; political issues; Energy Generation; Production; Infrastructure; Innovation and Invention; Government Legislation; Global Range; Business History; Auto Industry; China;

  Citation:

  Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "Electric Car Wars, 2018." Harvard Business School Case 719-470, February 2019. (Revised April 2019.)  View Details

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