SRCC

CASSER LE CAS
SLOT 3: 12 PM TO 3 PM
 RULES & GUIDELINES
1. All teams have ​3 hours to solve the case study. The solution has to be mailed to
casserlecas2019@gmail.com latest by ​3 PM​. Late entries shall be penalised or might be
disqualified at the discretion of FIC, SRCC.

2. All files must contain the Team Name, Participant Names, Phone Numbers, Email IDs and
College Names at the ​end of the solution.

3. The solution has to be submitted in ​PDF form ​named ​“Team Name_SLOT3”. Solutions
should be in Times New Roman, Size 12, and the case should ​not exceed 5 pages​. Failure
to adhere to the instructions shall be penalised.

4. Any assumptions made must be stated and clearly justified. Any calculations (if used)
should be shown.

5. Use of internet is permitted.

6. Any plagiarism shall be strictly penalized.

7. There is no pre-defined format of presentation for the case study. It depends on the
discretion of the participants. Use of frameworks like SWOT, PESTLE, etc is allowed.

8. The judgements shall be made on the basis of the logical flow of the solution, analytical
skills, the viability of suggested solutions and innovative ideas.

9. The case is imaginary and is set on the 15th of September 2019​.

For any queries, feel free to write to ​casserlecas2019@gmail.com​ or contact:

Riya Kaul: +91 93544 27765

Pratik Saraf: +91 82966 87311

All the best!

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Introduction
Reni Zhengfein, born in 1956 to a Chemistry professor and a local businessman as their second son in
the Cylac district of Jengwan, was an inquisitive individual by birth. After his 6​th birthday, the
Zhengfeins moved to Shaziem City, owing to Mr. Zhengfein’s losses in business. Growing up watching
Star Trek and Doctor Who, Reni had always envisioned delving deep within the world of technology
around us. He completed high school as the College Valedictorian and moved to the West to give his
dreams the flight they deserved.
Reni acquired his Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering in 1974 at the University of Clint, where he
met Huang Helou, Reni’s sophomore year roommate and Reni’s City neighbour; Reni and Huang shared
interests from subjects varying from philosophy and science to sports and film. Their academic intrigue
and passion for what they preached led them to be nominated for the Dean’s scholarship for the
university’s Graduate program. They acquired their Master’s a year later and subsequently joined
Netvison, the market leader in Network Security and information technology. In 1980, Reni was
promoted to the office of the Chief Technology Officer and Huang as the Chief Financial Officer at the
organization.
Seeing the booming trends in technological advancements, Zhengfein and Helou decided to enter the
market with a vision to take the industry by storm, leading them to the inception of GenTech. Founded
by Reni Zhengfein and Huang Helou, in 1982, GenTech is a leading global provider of information and
communications technology infrastructure and smart devices based in Shaziem City of Jengwan.
Initially set up as a manufacturer of Screened Cables and RF Coax Feeders, GenTech moved on to
developing Electronic devices in 1993, after gauging the consumer shift towards smart-devices in the
midst of the Internet revolution.
Understanding the Market
GenTech’s first major breakthrough was under CEO Huang Helou in 1998 when he pioneered the
launch of “Genova”, a clamshell cellular phone with the trendy flip-phone design. By initially targeting
Jengwanese cities and placing emphasis on service and customizability, the company eventually gained
global market share and soon diversified into a whole range of products like Laptops, computers, smart
phones, and data servers. With the latter two being its most profitable innovations, the company
provides its products and services in over 60 nations with a reach of nearly 1 billion people. Jengwan’s
neighbor Cortuguay, the fastest growing Eurasian nation with abundant resources, has been the largest
source of GenTech’s revenues.

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The Management in Action
GenTech is committed to continuous innovation as it lays an unwavering focus on efficiency and quality
and relentlessly building amazing products with fair prices to let its customers raise their standard of
living through innovative technology. Currently employing about 200,000 people worldwide, GenTech
has 9 Research & Development offices and 28 Joint Innovation Centers. New product releases, and
updates to its operating systems, inspire excitement among customers, developers, and the industry.
Market analysis that ascertains the pulse of the competitors, revealed how GenTech has always been
quite ahead of its competitors. In order to keep their customers satisfied, it has opened over 350 retail
stores customized to regional requirements. GenTech’s annual Smartphone shipments exceeded 160
million units, cementing the company’s market share at 16% in the Cell Phone market, and around 9%
in the data servers market. It was listed among the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies by Forbes in the
year 2014.
GenTech, ever since its inception in 1982, has been a frontrunner in employee satisfaction index.
Zhengfein believed that the efficiency of an organisation is directly proportional to its employees’
contentment. GenTech stresses on efficiency incentivisation by providing their employees with
recreational weekends, sleeping pods in workplaces, monthly recreational retreats, paid family movie
subscription and much more. The company has also recently started providing for employees a “20%
Time Policy, following which the employees are encouraged to devote 20% of their time to side
projects, exclusive to the employees. They started this as an initiative to encourage the personal
development of the individuals with a target to kick-start innovation and an entrepreneurial drive among
the employees.
In 2007, the company met the fundamentals required to list itself on the Shaziem stock exchange, and
launched a highly successful IPO. Since the company managed to sail through the peculiar macro

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fundamentals of Jengwan by maintaining steady global demand, most of its shares are now concentrated
in the hands of the top investors of Wadiya and Panem, who have started posing threats of a Proxy Fight
and may give in to a hostile takeover by a Wadiyan tech-giant, Al’Ahsa Tech. Co. which hasn’t been
faring well lately.
Al’Ahsa, since diversifying to the tech industry in the late 60’s, has managed to rule the global markets
by creating a base of highly loyal customers, who wholeheartedly follow the tech-giant’s moves and stay
overnight in lines outside the stores whenever a new product is being launched. The initial phase of this
popularity was primarily due to the pre-existing market reputation of the owners who ran a major
Automobile brand of the same name until the 1950s, whose primary stock-holders belonged to the Royal
family of Wadiya. However, eventually it was the level of innovation and the quality and features of
their products that brought them to global limelight. Their current annual investment in R&D exceeds
45% of their revenues. Despite this hefty investment, the company hasn’t been doing well off lately in
terms of innovation. The Wadiyan aristocracy, which had a primary role to play in maximizing
Al’Ahsa’s success by providing massive tax cuts, had taken a polarized and conservative approach to
their rule back in the 1980s, which naturally contributed to the deterioration of the education system, an
aspect which is showing results now, after decades of gestational lag. The current R&D team’s lack of
ability to keep up with trends, let alone lead and create them, is affecting the reputation of the company
and this affect is expected to take a toll on the profitability soon, if nothing is done to ameliorate the
situation. The Al’Ahsa management believes that the plausible takeover will serve multipurpose needs
ranging from eliminating the next major competitor, to providing a subtle mechanism to circumvent the
strict Wadiyan laws that restrict R&D employment to the underqualified citizens.

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Laptop Division
Meanwhile, GenTech’s products have managed to fair decently in their initial years but the company is
now facing a rough patch. After the wave of Genova took off, the company made huge investments in its
R&D, increasing the expenses up to nearly 40% of the entire manufacturing costs, which lead them to
outsource the manufacturing process in 2010 to Brittleburst Ltd. – a leading manufacturing giant – that
minimized costs by nearly 6% owing to their freelance efficiency wage model. Such specialized services
were only tapped through long term deals, and GenTech had entered into one that expires in 2024.

Brittleburst is a global process outsourcing firm that has its manufacturing centers based in over 20
nations around the globe. Initially a Panem based start-up, Brittleburst managed to make its mark in the
global markets due to its unique freelance work mechanism that not only reduced the expenses and
labour costs but also allowed greater flexibility in periods of downturn when ordinary companies found
it harder to halt production and lay people off due to the existence of prolonged contracts. However as it
opened more and more production centers around the world and started catering to A-list companies as
its clients, many governments realized that it wouldn’t be sustainable for the major players to indulge in
taking advantage of a flexible job market, as it would create greater instability. As a result many
restrictions have been imposed on the functioning mechanism and labour laws of the firm, rendering it
almost entirely disjoint from its original business model. However certain generic advantages of
outsourcing the manufacturing process still persist, causing its clients to hold on to its services.

Post sealing their deal with Brittleburst, GenTech made its debut in the Laptop market in 2011, by
bringing the same proposition of providing the trendy features for reasonably low marginal revenue, but
somehow, they failed to capture the Laptop market. The Brittleburst deal restricts them to withdraw
from the Laptop markets, since a minimum threshold of production must be maintained, which is
building up unnecessary costs for the company.

Smartphone Division
In 2016, a smart phone model called G-Gold was launched by the company and was expected to take the
market by storm with its bezel-less screen and liquid-crystal-display, but the first batch itself failed
market expectations due to a manufacturing defect. The batteries, owing to the introduction of cheap
Li-ion, were bloated in the warm climate of Jengwan and this defect was identified pre-release by a
major tech review YouTube channel that bashed the product and lead to its downfall. The sales of its
other major models such as G-Slim, G-Slim Pro, have also tapered down since 2016, owing to them
being rendered obsolete with the arrival of similar products from other brands.

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After clearing up the clutter of the G-Gold fiasco, the R&D decided to step up and by late 2017;
GenTech came up with a unique feature by successfully managing to incorporate Graphene batteries in a
new brand of cell phone, designed as a tribute to the iconic Genova flip design. Graphene, a sheet of
carbon atoms bound together in a honeycomb lattice pattern, is hugely recognized as a “wonder
material” due to the myriad of astonishing attributes it holds. It is a potent conductor of electrical and
thermal energy, extremely lightweight, chemically inert and flexible with a large surface area. It is also
considered eco-friendly and sustainable, with unlimited possibilities for numerous applications.

The new product, named Genova 2.0, is designed like an 8-inch tablet that can be folded into a 4 inch
double-sided cell phone. The graphene batteries have contributed to the USP: a mere 15 minutes of
charging time that can give battery life lasting up to a week. The product – set to be launched in
December 2019 – has been marketed well globally, and has managed to create a wave of excitement
among the global tech community.

However, the primary producer of Graphene is Cortuguay, the nation that is also expected to be the
primary source of the product’s demand. With the recent developments in the geopolitical sphere, and
election of conservative leaders with a polarized approach, a trade war has been initiated by the
Cortuguan administration, on grounds of both historical contention and extradition, and border-control
issues. Precious resources like graphene, that were already under the 20% tax barrier, will now be
charged at nearly 46%, which is a major hike in the costs for BrittleBurst Ltd, that is set to be passed on
to GenTech.

On the other hand, Genova 2.0 has been marketed as a lasting and affordable product ​‘For the Gen-Z’
and the price hike will likely affect the sales, since the average income of the Millennials and Gen-Z has

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been on a decline, attributing to their risk averse and delicate nature of the job market post the 2008
Global recession. Additionally, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) had also sent a notice to GenTech in
2017 regarding the introduction of its new products and technology in the market. According to the
AntiTrust Laws imposed by the government of Jengwan, GenTech must adhere to price restrictions set
by the Commission or face sanctions. GenTech had decided to challenge this action in Court as it
believed that their innovation did not monopolize their situation in the Jengwanese market. This trial has
been going on for a year now and doesn’t seem to have a foreseeable end to it. The fate of the product,
hence, remains uncertain, and competitors like Al’Ahsa Tech. and Erudite Co. are taking advantage of
their global status by beginning to work on the same technology, without facing the any of the import
restrictions on Graphine as GenTech. Although the company believes that it will take its competitors
much longer to come up with the technology on which they spent years, there is growing concern of a
potential leak from the R&D due to the lack of satisfaction that the job has been offering to the
researchers.

Data Server Market

GenCast, the company’s premium Data Server, which has not been released globally yet, but holds 45%
of the Jengwanese market share, has also recently come under the net neutrality debate for partnering
with various Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and engaging in price gouging for smaller websites.
GenTech has specifically come under the spotlight due to its huge market share. The Federal
Communications Commission is expected to bring in strict laws that minimize this practice and
GenTech must devise a mechanism to cover up for the revenue loss, taking into account the insufficient
funds that the company has been processing on, owing to the skewed macro-fundamentals of Jengwan.

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Jengwan enjoys a decent growth rate of 4%, but the inflation levels are at an all time low of nearly 0.3%,
and are being viewed by the market as ‘recessionary’. Even though demand has been fairing well, the
level of technology has minimized the bargaining power of the economy’s workforce and, thus has
pushed down the inflation levels. This has resulted in the Central Bank of Jengwan going on a regular
bi-monthly schedule of Open Market Operations, inflating the G-secs market and pushing the bank rates
below the 1% threshold. Jengwan, already being a savings constraint economy, has now further
disincentivised the people to save. This has reduced Gentech’s access to the formal sources of fixed
income investment options due to the low prevailing rates. Additionally, since the company’s equity is
dominated by foreign investors, it leaves them little option but to give in to their demands.

Marketing the Brand

Reni, as a creator, always cared about the mass response to its creations. As one of the foundation
principles of GenTech, marketing and PR were given fair share of resources in order to develop an ideal
brand image. Therefore, in order to bring this in action during its inception, the company started with
tech-awareness campaigns on radio stations, making use of group discussions and trivia from the PR and
Marketing department of the organisation. With the recent advent of television in 1982, GenTech
diversified their campaign to television with a half-hour slot every weekend devoted to ​“tech-talk”, a
segment devoted to technological advancements in the global sphere and ​“what’s cooking”, ​a 10-minute
segment devoted to the updates in the company’s innovation department.
With the objective to penetrate the world markets, in 1994, when the company was still operating at a
small scale, he came up with the marketing campaign 'GENie', which highlighted the advantages of the
company's products over its established rivals. The major reason for their campaign's success was
Martin Dutch, the famous actor, who was at the peak of his career at that time. He was good friends with
the founder, and therefore appeared in their advertisements, which helped expand their reach to several
countries. This campaign was groundbreaking, and helped them gain an unparalleled reputation in terms
of marketing.

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Currently, the company, in the midst of all this chaos, needs to focus on fixing its image in the data
server market as well. Until 2017, they were ranked as the 'Most Effective Marketing Company' on the
Global Index. But since the well-broadcasted failure of their product - G-Gold, their public image has
taken a bad hit. Additionally, a lot of people from their marketing department have been lured away by
more lucrative job offers by their competitors. At this stage, their marketing campaign has solely
focused on their innovative graphene technology, in order to recover the public confidence in their
company. But a reported 'leak' from the company's sources by Al-Jazia, a website with bi-lateral ties
with their competitor, says “The new graphene technology is nothing but a sham, a desperate attempt to
stay relevant in the market.” Now, the company is in doldrums to tackle this problem. The market has
become very skeptical of their campaigns, which don’t have the same pulling effect as before.
Additionally, in the midst of the recessionary air, Brittleburst has been struggling to keep up with its
reputation of a cost minimizing and efficient outsourcing firm because of the decline in employees’
compensation significantly creating an undesirable work environment. Its HR department is planning to
cut down staff, resulting in a more rigorous work schedule for the existing employees. Productivity per
employee must be increased, but their morale is suffering as hours become longer, work becomes harder
without wage hikes, and all this while fear of further layoffs is persisting.

As the problems are increasing in severity and length, the BrittleBurst management and labor are finding
it harder to align with each other’s efforts and produce complementing outcomes. The company needs to
have a very efficient and hardworking workforce at such a crucial time of introducing a new product in
the market. The workers are not getting any extra instantaneous benefits, but were promised
compensation through bonuses and increments.

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GenTech has hired you as a consultant to advise them on their strategy and the best way forward.

1. You need to advise the company whether or not to go ahead with the product launch of Genova 2.0
with consideration to the current position of the company.

If yes, you need to present a strategy to circumvent the cost and demand issues, for the implementation
of a viable cost-revenue model, clearly stating the facts and scenarios discussed above.

If no, propose an alternate strategy for the company to adopt to survive through the current situation.

2. Should the company keep up its current partnership with BrittleBurst? If yes, validate your stance
with rational analysis, keeping in mind the facts and scenarios stated above. If no, propose an alternate
production channel that GenTech can tap.

3. Propose a reasonable marketing strategy and PR statement that GenTech must adapt in order to
ameliorate its current reputation.

Answering the above questions using SWOT, PESTLE, solution tree, issue tree etc. is allowed. State
your assumptions clearly. Participants are encouraged to be as creative with their answers as possible.

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Career Development Partner

Media Partners

Gifting Partner

Beverage Partner Learning Partner

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