Building a High Performance Culture at IDFC

V.G.   Narayanan; Vidhya   Muthuram

Case | HBS Case Collection | May 2014

Building a High Performance Culture at IDFC

by V.G. Narayanan and Vidhya Muthuram

Abstract

IDFC was set up in 1997 to direct private finance to infrastructure projects in India. Over the years, it expanded its capabilities to become a 'complete solutions provider' offering financing solutions including debt and equity, investment banking, brokerage and asset management services to clients in the infrastructure sector. With nearly 50% of its employees joining through acquisitions, there were significant cultural differences within the company. In 2009, the company embarked on a journey to build 'One-Firm' with a unifying culture and governance system across business groups. IDFC aimed to provide seamless access to products and expertise across business groups, increase its competitive position and maximize interactions with its clients. A critical component of the One-Firm initiative was a technology-enabled performance management system that articulated metrics for individual and group performance, and aligned these with the overall performance of IDFC. While the new system had several strengths, it also raised questions on whether a common system allowed IDFC to recognize and retain talent across its diverse businesses. This case examines if a uniform performance management system provided autonomy and flexibility needed to build a culture of high performance across varied business groups.

Language: English

Format: Print

28 pages

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Citation:

Narayanan, V.G., and Vidhya Muthuram. "Building a High Performance Culture at IDFC." Harvard Business School Case 114-077, May 2014.

Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2019 (Revised May 2019)

Fetchr: A New Way of Last Mile Delivery

V.G. Narayanan and Eren Kuzucu

By mid-2016, five years of aggressive growth had transformed Fetchr from a small logistics startup to a 1,000-employee, full-fledged last-mile delivery company operating across four countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Already beneficiaries of the largest Series A round to the Middle East from an American firm, CEO Idriss Al Rifai and the Fetchr team had ambitions of raising another $40 million in Series B and deliberated continuing international expansion. But first, Al Rifai and his team needed to address the operational efficiency and profitability issues that led their investors to threaten the discontinuation of funding and put the company’s future at stake. The case provides background information on the logistics sphere in the Middle East and the challenges companies face in the region. The case then takes the reader through Al Rifai’s journey of founding and growing Fetchr, backed with innovations like their patented GPS-based delivery technology. Finally, the case zooms in on Fetchr’s management team as they race against time to perform evaluations of their operational efficiency, weigh cost-cutting options, and explore strategies to improve profitability.

Keywords: Startup; decision; financial strategy; UAE; KSA; MENA; Cost Accounting; Business Model; Business Startups; Transformation; Cost Management; Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Logistics; Service Delivery; Supply Chain Management; Performance Evaluation; Mathematical Methods; Mobile Technology; Transportation Networks; Middle East; United Arab Emirates; Dubai; Bahrain; Egypt; Saudi Arabia; North Africa;

Citation:

Narayanan, V.G., and Eren Kuzucu. "Fetchr: A New Way of Last Mile Delivery." Harvard Business School Case 119-018, March 2019. (Revised May 2019.) View Details

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Mahindra Finance is a non-banking lender operating mainly in the rural and semi-urban areas of India. Set up in 1991, the company had grown to become a market leader with assets of $8.5 billion and a presence in 3,30,000 villages across India. Since most of Mahindra's customers are occupied in farming or allied activities, they are reliant on India's erratic monsoons for their source of livelihood. In order to manage the credit risks associated with lending to such a group, Mahindra Finance has developed ways of diversifying its risks and dealing with bad debt. The case discusses Mahindra Finance's practices of how to manage credit risk, measure this risk, make appropriate provisions for this risk, and finally communicate the risk and its management to the capital markets.

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.

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Building a High Performance Culture at IDFC

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