The case opens in September 2021 as Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda, co-founders of Bazaar technologies (Bazaar), the Pakistani high growth B2B e-commerce marketplace, are contemplating whether the year-and-a half old startup should also venture into offering financing to its customers, the thousands of mom-and-pop stores around Pakistan. Since its founding in mid 2020, the company has been growing its core business full throttle and also launched a digital ledger app to help with customer acquisition. Meanwhile, the co-founders are growing the team and geographically expanding Bazaar’s operations beyond Karachi. Jawaid and Jangda need to weigh the pros and cons of branching out to financing and decide, with so much going on, whether this is the right time for such a move. The case provides a background on Pakistan, its retail and e-commerce space to then talk about Bazaar’s founding story and its founders’ ambitious mission to create a generational story in and for Pakistan. The case then talks about the company’s pillars: technology, warehousing and logistics, and culture in detail and provides details on its day-to-day operations. Next, the case chronicles the company’s growth both product -wise and geographically. Bazaar is trying to take a stake and solidify its place in the booming $170 billion retail market in the world’s fifth-most populous nation which is yet to see much deployment of technology, and is in hypergrowth mode with a number of competing priorities. The co-founders need to decide if venturing into financing now is a good idea and whether it would take away from the company’s sharp focus on the B2B business and its culture that the co-founders so passionately built. The decision is made more complicated, because the company has the funds to deploy and many think that financing will also fuel the growth of the core business.
The case opens in January 2022 as Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda, co-founders of Bazaar technologies (Bazaar), the Pakistani high growth B2B e-commerce marketplace, are looking over the performance of the newly launched “buy now, play later” feature. The traction looks promising and seems to deliver more share of wallet per customer, so the co-founders are trying to envisage how big this business could get and whether it would overtake Bazaar’s core business. The case provides a background on the launch of the delayed payment feature—it seems low risk and additive to the core business and is financed by the capital previously raised. The competitive environment is bound to heat up and the co-founders need to decide how best to sustainably grow this new business while also expanding the B2B business across 15 cities in the next six months.
Identifying high-growth microentrepreneurs in low-income countries remains a challenge due to a scarcity of verifiable information. With a cash grant experiment in India we demonstrate that community knowledge can help target high-growth microentrepreneurs; while the average marginal return to capital in our sample is 9.5% per month, microentrepreneurs reported in the top third of the community are estimated to have marginal return to capital between 24% and 30% per month. Further we find evidence that community members distort their predictions when they can influence the distribution of resources. Finally, we demonstrate that simple mechanisms can realign incentives for truthful reporting.
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Anjali Raina is the Executive Director of the Harvard Business School India Research Centre. In her leadership role at the IRC, Anjali focuses on building and maintaining relationships with senior business leaders in the region to facilitate the work of the center in research, educational programs, community building and faculty development.
Under her leadership, the IRC has facilitated the writing of over 168 case studies on Indian Business Practice and supported half a dozen research projects. Anjali has co-authored several case studies such as Aadhaar: India’s ‘Unique Identification’ System, TeamLease: Putting India to Work (II) Legally; Pratham – Every Child in School and Learning Well; Naina Lal Kidwai: Investing in Her Country; Tech Mahindra and the Acquisition of Satyam Computers (A); HN Agri Serve : Growing Prosperity as well as an HBR Article on The Ordinary Heroes of the Taj.
Anjali wears several additional hats. She is a Director on the Board of Harvard Business Publishing, India, the Regional President (Western Region) of NHRDN, an Advisor to The Akanksha Foundation, Trustee to LIFE Trust, an Advisory Member on the Board of HBS Club of India, and on the Advisory Board of the Indian Business School.
Prior to joining HBS IRC Anjali spent 15 years with Citigroup India, most recently as Country Director, before which she worked for more than a decade with ANZ Grindlays Bank PLC. Anjali holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, a bachelor's degree (Eng. Hons) from Loreto College and is an alumnus of HBS having completed the Advanced Management Program.