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• Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2017 (Revised September 2018)

  Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A)

  Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Namrata Arora

  Founded in 2012, Jumia Nigeria, a startup effort by Germany-based Rocket Internet, aimed to become an African Amazon. The company entered the nascent market and immediately enjoyed an uptick in consumer spending fueled by the strength of Nigeria’s oil-based economy. By 2016, however, Jumia’s growth had begun to taper, hindered by plummeting oil prices, the subsequent economic downturn, and the pressure of Nigeria’s limited retail ecosystem. In addition, Jumia’s inventory-intensive retail model required significant infusions of capital that, in the face of a deteriorating economy and the company’s inability to show a profit, was becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. Considering all this and looking to the success of the Amazon and Alibaba marketplace models where third-party sellers largely carried inventory costs, the Board had made a drastic decision: Jumia would shift from an online retail model to a marketplace model. They also made it very clear that a failure to properly implement this transition could mean the end of investor support for Jumia. Senior management wondered how they would meet the challenges ahead. While Amazon in the U.S. and Alibaba in China had found success with the marketplace model, they wondered if Jumia would be able to do the same. Was this the right model for the very different Nigerian environment? Would vendors, many of whom already had retail operations in the country, choose to sell through Jumia? How could Jumia continue to provide the same high quality customer service on which the company’s success had been built while switching to a marketplace model in which parts of this critical aspect would now be in the hands of third parties?

  Keywords: retail; marketplace; Inventory; ecommerce; funding; business ecosystem; business ecosystems; Competition; Business Model; Globalization; Emerging Markets; Expansion; Logistics; Competitive Strategy; Retail Industry; India; Nigeria; Africa;

  Citation:

  Casadesus-Masanell, Ramon, and Namrata Arora. "Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A)." Harvard Business School Case 718-401, October 2017. (Revised September 2018.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2016 (Revised July 2018)

  Accenture Human Capital Strategy

  Paula A. Price, V.G. Narayanan and James Weber

  Accenture is a leading global consulting, technology, and outsourcing company. It has clients and its own operations throughout the world. This case describes the human resources and related activities necessary to deliver its services to clients. It allows students to explore how Accenture predicts its staffing needs, identifies the necessary skills, identifies how to recruit staff, when to hire them, in what parts of the world, how to develop compensate, and motivate them, how to form them into project teams, and manage the process in a cost effective manner. The case also provides a fictional example of an Accenture project. A potential client has issued a request for proposals to deliver a technology project. Students are asked to create a project team with the right mix of people at a cost that is competitive enough to win the project.

  Keywords: management consulting; technology consulting; outsourcing; human resources; Human Resources; Activity Based Costing and Management; Management Practices and Processes;

  Citation:

  Price, Paula A., V.G. Narayanan, and James Weber. "Accenture Human Capital Strategy." Harvard Business School Case 117-032, August 2016. (Revised July 2018.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2017 (Revised July 2018)

  Measuring True Value at Ambuja Cement

  V. Kasturi Rangan, Suraj Srinivasan and Namrata Arora

  The case discusses the measurement of social and environmental impact at Ambuja Cements, one of India’s leading cement companies. Ambuja is a leader in CSR activities and is attempting to quantify its impact, both positive and negative, using the “True Value” framework developed by the global accounting firm KPMG. True Value is an innovation in this area and tries to measure the financial cost and benefits of social and environmental impact and provide a standardized comparison across different kinds of social and environmental activities and their impact. The case allows students to discuss the challenges in measuring social and environmental impact and the pros and cons of quantifying the same in financial terms. The case elicits discussion surrounding the following questions: How do we develop a framework to measure the financial cost and benefits of social and environmental externalities? What are the challenges of doing so? What do we need to do to improve our ability to measure social and environmental impact in financial terms? How will such measurement be useful? Who will it be useful to? The case concludes with the CEO of Ambuja deciding whether or not to publicly release the “True Value” of the company.

  Citation:

  Rangan, V. Kasturi, Suraj Srinivasan, and Namrata Arora. "Measuring True Value at Ambuja Cement." Harvard Business School Case 518-063, November 2017. (Revised July 2018.)  View Details

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