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...

Developing countries increasingly use biometric identification technology to improve the reliability of administrative information and deliver social services more efficiently. This paper exploits the random placement of biometric devices in tuberculosis (TB) treatment...

Which managerial skills, traits, and practices matter most for productivity? How does the observability of these features affect how appropriately they are priced into wages? Combining two years of daily, line-level production data from a large Indian garment firm with...

Why do some entrepreneurs thrive while others fail? We explore whether the advice entrepreneurs receive about managing their employees influences their startup's performance. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India with 100 high-growth technology firms...

As 2018 drew to a close, India prepared to once again carry out the largest democratic exercise in human history, as in less than six months more than 850 million eligible voters would have the chance to choose their representatives to the Lok Sabha—the country’s lower...

We conduct a field experiment at an entrepreneurship bootcamp to investigate whether interaction with proximate peers shapes a nascent startup team's performance. We find that teams whose members lack prior ties to others at the bootcamp experience peer effects that...

Teaching Note for HBS No. 715-414.

In 2015, a surprise presidential election result seemed to imperil Chinese investments in Sri Lanka, which were associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative to build global infrastructure. In the previous decade, China had undertaken two major projects in the...

I like to offer seminars on Case Method Teaching to professors who would like to improve their case-method teaching.

In January 2018, Husk Power had just raised $20 million to scale operations for a second time. From 2007 through 2013, Husk built 80 biomass waste (primarily rice husk from rice mills) plants that provided electricity to 250,000 villagers and shop owners spread across...

This article contributes to the literature on political risk in business and economic history by examining both new perspectives (risk encountered by companies domestically, rather than risk for foreign investors) and new settings (emerging markets economies in Latin...

Background Improving patients’ tuberculosis (TB) knowledge is a salient component of TB control strategies. Patient knowledge of TB may encourage infection prevention behaviors and improve treatment adherence. The purpose of this study is to examine how TB knowledge...

From humble beginnings in Kerala, India, Mr. PNC Menon built a reputation for quality, detail, and trustworthiness, earning him major construction commissions in the Gulf region. This paved the way for venturing into real estate development in Dubai, UAE. Striving to...

Twenty-four-year old Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of India-based online hotel branding network OYO Rooms, has tackled the issue of unreliability in India's highly fragmented budget hotel industry. In 2018, OYO branded 8,500 properties across 200 cities and managed...

Recent research has studied innovation in emerging economies. However, microlevel product development processes in these economies are relatively unexplored, and the mechanisms by which the emerging economy context might affect such processes are still unclear. In this...

Companies often assign workers to far-flung locations to fill critical roles and to develop human capital. Yet little is known about how workers perform in assignments to locations far from their hometowns, which may subject them to increased cultural distance,...

The case presents the challenges of scaling an asset-heavy company (that relies on its operations). It highlights how decisions on the early team impact a company’s ability to scale, linkage between growth and cash flows, as well the organizational impact of high...

In February 2018, the Government of India announced a massive public health insurance scheme extending coverage to 500 million citizens, in effect making it the world’s largest insurance program. To meet this target, the government will rely on technology to...

A debt trap occurs when someone takes on a high-interest rate loan and is barely able to pay back the interest, and thus perpetually finds themselves in debt (often by refinancing). Studying such practices is important for understanding financial decision-making of...

Teaching Note for HBS No. 118-071.