Aryan cabs: leveraging it for

rural connectivity
Rajeev Verma, Anuj Sharma and Jyoti Verma

Introduction Rajeev Verma is based at

the Faculty of Marketing,
Our biggest strength is our unique model of customer acquisition that provides convenience and
Chandragupt Institute of
flexibility to rural consumers for cab booking. Our own IT enabled booking kiosks are more Management, Patna, India
efficient and user friendly than any other cab operators in the Industry. Anuj Sharma is based at
– D Kumar, Founder- Arya Go the Faculty of Information
Technology, Chandragupt
“My name is Sammera Shekh and my customer number is 1001819”, the 77-year-old Institute of Management,
lady from Saharsa, Bihar, India, speaks into the automated-IVR (Interactive Voice Patna, India. Jyoti Verma is
Response) menu of her travel saathi, Raju’s phone. She had to go to AIIMS, New Delhi based at the Faculty of
for medical treatment and hence she required a cab to reach Patna Airport, a place Human Resources,
160-km far from her house that generally takes 8 h because of non-availability of Chandragupt Institute of
transport and poor road connectivity. Using this business correspondent facilitated IVR Management, Patna, India.
facility she was able to book app-based taxi in spite of being illiterate and having no
knowledge about smart phones. She is one of the many happy customers, who availed
services of regulated online cab booking platform “AryaGo”, an innovative platform
completely dedicated for rural road transport connectivity. AryaGo, a service line of
Aryan Cabs and Rural Trans-solution Pvt. Ltd. is a startup founded in the year 2016 by
Dilkhush Kumar (called as DK in his professional circle) from village Bangaon of district
Saharsa[1], Bihar, India.
Kumar reflected on the two-year journey when he had made a modest foray into the taxi
business. “My very idea was to provide comfort, convenience, safety and affordability to
all the commuters travelling from or within far-off villages and its implementation was a
challenge”. Kumar adds. “I was well aware about the urban radio-taxi based models of
Uber, Ola, Meru and likewise however the biggest challenge in villages includes not only
affordability but also availability of updated geo-mapped images for app development
and vehicle tracking”. Kumar and his team had crossed all the challenges well and
currently they connect 142 villages of Bihar using their own geo-tagged Google
imaginary. Company currently own a fleet of 97 taxis. In the year 2017, company got
notified by Government of Bihar under Startup Bihar, a seed capital support scheme of
State Government.
In the past two years, company had grown up and invested heavily to redefine the service
excellence by using IoT technologies in its business operations. It also focused on Disclaimer. This case is written
improving the customer touch points by providing facilities such as IVR, Business solely for educational purposes
and is not intended to represent
Correspondents “travel sathi”, mobile app and booking kiosk, as many of the rural successful or unsuccessful
customers are not having access to internet enabled devices. managerial decision-making.
The authors may have
disguised names; financial and
Kumar called second annual board meeting of the company on April 22, 2018 and other recognizable information
discussions put Kumar under stress. With the rapid growth, company’s net worth increased to protect confidentiality.

DOI 10.1108/EEMCS-04-2019-0085 VOL. 9 NO. 2 2019, pp. 1-21, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2045-0621 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 1
 however margin reduced (Exhibit 1). The direct competition from off-line taxi aggregators
and auto fleet operators dynamically changed the rule of the game, including the incentive
shared to drivers. The continuous threat of losing prospective customers, revenue and
market share was disturbing to him.
He wondered whether he should move on to different markets to retain its original business
plan of rapid market expansion or concentrate on the existing districts to further penetrate
the market and retain the existing customer base. Kumar knows that the long-term
sustainability of this business depends upon the win–win situation for all the stakeholders
including customers, drivers and the management. He was also in talks with the various
government bodies to provide subsidy under the Startup venture fund scheme for business
expansion.
Kumar decision requires understanding of the upcoming revenue and growth opportunities
in rural passenger transport business. Should he re-design his business model so as it may
really make a difference in terms of service delivery. For this, he requires insight into people
expectations and their unmet needs.

Company background
Kumar founded Aryan Cabs and Rural Trans-solution Pvt. Ltd. and registered its service
platform AryaGo in the month of June, 2016 with an aim to provide convenient, safe and
affordable service to the rural customers living in far-off villages. He started his
operations from the village Bangaon of district Saharsa, Bihar with just one vehicle and a
team of two. Sharing the details, Kumar recalled the days when even a severe patient
had to take an auto-rickshaw or bullock cart to reach a nearby hospital due to absence of
alternatives. “It was a common state of affair wherein unorganized taxi operators or auto
owner charges around ` 500 for a distance of just 5-6 kms because of absence of
organized transport services” Kumar recalled. Further, as there is no taxi operator in the
Bangaon village, these taxis come from nearby block headquarters and takes roughly
45 min to arrive.
With the idea of curbing this monopoly and to provide standardized services, Kumar started
his company with just one Hyundai Santro[2], a private car converted into a commercial
vehicle and a one-page website. Initial days were extremely challenging as there was no
awareness about the company and people were reluctant to call a cab assuming high
prices for its service. Kumar took the charge and met nearly all the households in his village
promoting new cab service that charged only ` 8/km (Exhibit 2). Within no time he got
flooded with queries. However, 99 per-cent of the queries are telephonic and only 1 per
cent comes through website (Exhibit 3).
In less than 6 months, the fleet of the vehicle increased to fourteen as many of the private
car owners showed interest to attach their vehicle with him. Those were the initial days
wherein his original business model of taxi aggregator took off. Daily bookings increased to
8-9 per cab across 3 villages.
However, Kumar had a larger vision. He does not want to a taxi aggregator that just
operates intra- village and hence moved on adding more cabs to provide inter-village
connectivity. This required deployment of the latest Information Technologies (IT)
based platform as even the best of the drivers was unaware about the rural kuchha
roads[3]. During November 2016, he introduced GPS enabled vehicles and stated geo-
mapping and tagging of village houses on the Google maps. Within its first year of
operation Kumar launched its dedicated call centre and android based app AryaGo
followed by launch in three more districts, namely, Madhepura, Supaul and Darbhanga
(Exhibit 4).

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As long as the rural markets are untouched by cab aggregators like Ola and Uber offering
economical rides to users at nearly `8-10 per kilometer (km), there is no threat to the market
share and revenues for small taxi aggregators like Aryan Cab. Also, the other players in the
tour and travel sector of rural Bihar are still very naı̈ve in term of computer literacy and such
novice users of IT are not near-future potential competitors of Kumar’s Aryan Cab. However,
real competition comes from unorganized cab operators, rural auto unions and jugaad run
fleet opertors[4].
Still, Kumar was in a precarious state of affairs. After changing the business model
systematically from running wholly owned taxis to aggregator model, Kumar needs to
learn the dynamics of managing different stakeholders in this two-sided market. His
major challenges includes sustaining the market share while retaining the first mover
advantage, fund raising, retaining existing customers and maintaining CRM with efficient
IT usage.
Post 2017, the company has continued to increase the fleet size to match the unmet
demand (Exhibit 5). It has also focused on improving the customer touch points as many of
the rural customers are not having access to internet enabled devices. Even the IVR does
not solve the purpose as many of the rural customers had hesitation to respond. In the year
2018, company came up with their first ever booking kiosk for cab booking. Kumar claimed
this to be first in the industry.

Indian cab industry – an overview and case context

Given the India’s massive population and inadequate transport infrastructure, intercity
driving was a problem to commuters. In India, there were total 3.63 million registered taxis
covering 712 districts[5]. All these operators provide services in an across cities and hence
cater to 22 per cent of the population (share of urban population). Rural transport demands
were heavily unmet and people were forced to travel in tractor trollies, rural buses, shared
autos, juggad, that remain with very poor maintenance. The situation was no different in all
the 640,867 villages across 712 districts in India.
As per the latest census of 2011, the total population in the state of Bihar was 104,099,452
of which 89 per cent lived in provincial regions. State consists of total 38 districts
comprising 45,103 villages covering 92 per cent of the population[6]. State struggles to
provide basic infrastructure and ranked 13th in the country[7]. However, in terms of
remittances sate holds second rank just after Kerala[8].
There were total 43,623 registered cabs5 in the state. Organized cab aggregator Ola
introduced its services in Bihar in the June, 2016 and currently serving only in Patna
district[9]. In remain districts, there was no online service aggregator.
The internal road network of the state was not supportive and barely sufficient to meet the
customer demand. In villages, the situation was much worse. With no organized transport
systems, commuters were more dependent upon their own private vehicles or offline taxi
operators running in the nearby districts. These operator charges anything between ` 20
and 100/km looking into the situational emergency and supply situation. Other available
means was auto which was highly un-regulated and unsafe for travelling on highways and
earthen roads.

AryaGo business model

AryaGo followed an asset lean model wherein they do not own cabs in actual. Hence, they
saved significant amount of money in term of fixed cost as well as regular maintenance
cost. Their business model focused on acquiring individual drivers with good condition
cabs. This had larger implications on the cash flows (Exhibit 7).

VOL. 9 NO. 2 2019 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 3

 Operating model
The traditional business model for cab aggregators followed the strategy of fleet
optimization and call centre management. AryaGo, since its inception, was clear about
leveraging the IT capabilities of its fullest and hence focused upon analytics to strike a
balance between demand and supply. In the initial years, even after getting enough
business using the call centre IVR system, company focused on creating a unique ID-
based customer records wherein all the details of customer such as address, past history,
cab preferences were handy for making personalized promotions. This is not possible
unless company had online customer record keeping system (Exhibit 8).
Sourcing of cab was also a very important issue. These cars were parked with a
consideration to provide the cabs within minimum time. Company aimed to provide a taxi
with a maximum waiting time of 10 min which is much better than the offering of offline
aggregators that comes out as 45 min (Exhibit 6).
Based on the ownership pattern of offered cabs, 97 cabs belonged to 83 villages and
hence got parked to the nearest locations. In case of peak hours and non-availability of
cabs in the nearest locations, booking request transferred to next available driver.
Company claimed to have on-time presence in 83.2 per cent of the cases. Company
claimed that most of the delays are because of non-traceability of the houses. “We do not
have proper house numbers and land demarcation in villages and hence sometimes it
become a challenge to track the customer. Even google maps have their own
limitations”, Kumar says. “This issue is much critical in IVR based call centre bookings as
even customer can’t track the cabs”, Kumar adds. It can only be handled with the service
upgradation to online data management system even for offline bookings. Company
introduced Kiosk based input method in January 2018 on pilot basis in 22 villages. Once
customer made a booking request using a Kiosk, the details of customer location
automatically reflected in the driver interface of the app and taxi reached easily at the
requested location.

Cab booking
During early days in 2016, while booking a cab through AryaGo customer could use
company’s website or contact the call centre using IVR based system. It is similar to the
typical format of booking as provided by radio taxis across the country. In the year 2017,
company invested into technological upgradation and started offering cab booking through
AryaGo app hosted on the google play for android. This app works using three interfaces
namely, customer, driver and administrator. It used a typical method of GPS tracking and
location marking using geotagging. In the rural Indian context google maps had limitations
in terms of regular updating and very few geo-tagged locations. The company itself initiated
the tagging process and so far, geo tagged more than 70,000 locations across 77 villages
in Bihar. In the 2018, company moved to a new level in customer service by providing a
kiosk-based interface for rural customers.

Cab delivery
The driver interface of the mobile app in each driver’s smartphone updated the
booking information in the real time (updates in every 15 s). Google maps and GPS
helped the driver to navigate. Once a booking request was received, software traced
idle cabs in the location (based on location proximity) and intimate the nearby drivers.
As interested drivers accepted the request, the booking got confirmed. Upon final
confirmation from driver, administrator send cab details to customer and client details
to the cab.

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Software estimated the location using Google maps. However, getting geo tagged maps was a
real challenge for company as village lanes were not marked and there were no clear house
numbers. It’s the habitation name (tola) in the village that served as landmark. As kuchha roads
were not marked, there was also difficulty in terms of following maps as provided by Google.

Key platform development strategy

The conventional business model of Indian cab market considered prime stakeholders as
customers, and taxi drivers. Unlike the traditional approach of acquiring customers on
transactional basis, AryaGo model suggest a multipronged model of aggregating drivers,
customers and service provider. This can only be sustained using a business philosophy of
engaging customer on longitudinal basis and working on the customer life time value. To
communicate this philosophy, each cab carried a flyer with “customer first” written on it
along with their offerings. At the same time, it promised its cab owners to earn minimum
`30,000/per month with guaranteed returns.

Payment
In the online aggregator model, company offered total transparency to the drivers.
Customer made their payments as computed by the software and reflected on the app.
However, because of no geotagging of kuchha roads by Google, drivers often
complained that the running kilometres of the car do not match with the actual distance
covered. Second, it was also because of the algorithmic limitations of the software that
direct triangulation methods for travel path identification. Company identified an
interesting alternative to it. At the time when customer occupied the cab, he/she shared
the OTP with the driver and in return received a message about the current actual
odometer reading of the car. This could be verified by the customer in the car itself. At
the time of ride completion, software signals the final reading to the system administrator
and it computed the total amount payable. Charges could be paid through cash, card or
paytm[10].

Pricing
As the company was dedicated for the rural networks, it followed a policy of “no surge
Pricing”. It means that company does not charge higher prices during peak hours. AryaGo
charged ` 8/km as flat rate for any destination. This is much less than what offline
competitors were charging (` 11-18/km). Even for outstation travel company charged the
same rate, plus toll tax as applicable (Exhibit 9).

Value networks – partnership

Kumar realized the importance of value network and capital in scaling the business venture.
It leveraged the technological capabilities of Google maps and geo tagging services and
handled all the operational complexity efficiently. The firm was early adopter of Google geo
tagging services especially used in rural road transport. This helped the company to
provide seamless experience to the customers willing to book cab through app and track
their ride in the remote village roads. On the capital front, company gained trust and
support of Department of Industries that incubated the company with the help of its
government notified partner institutions.

Labelling and appearance of the vehicles

One concern of the regulatory authority was about proper registration and licensing from
the concerned RTO. Each vehicle working with the aggregator must have a distinctive
appearance and standardized signage on the taxi across the fleet. There must be an in-taxi

VOL. 9 NO. 2 2019 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 5

 labelling adhering government regulations that clearly mentioned details of the driver,
contact details of nearest police station and aggregator call number.

Branding and promotions

It was a boon for individual taxi owners to provide service under the umbrella of AryaGo
brand. They got benefited by the branding done by the taxi aggregator. It resulted in strong
awareness and recognition in the district. Company was having strong presence in the local
newspapers. AryaGo was never active on television due to budgetary constraints. However,
it was much active on radio so as to target the right customer base. Apart from radio,
company used its website for awareness building. company was having high visibility on
the social media such as twitter, Facebook and Instagram. On the day of its launch,
company received 4,500 followers on twitter. Its Facebook account is having more than
8,000 followers. The media communication campaign was managed by a team of social
media experts who regularly launched new campaigns for company promotions. The free
drive campaign for family members of martyrs was a hit on social media.

Key differentiator
Corporate entrepreneurship
As the company followed asset lean model, company does not own any car currently. With
this, they saved a lot of money in term of actual costing as well as regular maintenance cost.
Hence, their business model focused on acquiring individual drivers who own good
condition cabs. Company worked with 22 drivers who own their personal taxis. These
drivers earlier use to drive taxis for offline aggregators and purchased their own taxis to get
registered with AryaGo. Cab owners could attach a vehicle after proper verification of
documents and a basic training that introduces them to basic etiquette and other
operational details. Company invested ` 22,000 on each of the attached cab in term of
providing a GPS tracking device (installed in the car) and app loaded tablet (comparable to
Ola Play). AryaGo knows that happy drivers are most crucial for the success of their
company.

Kiosks
Company was foremost in providing the kiosk-based booking facility for its customers. It
took the decision based on the profiling of customers and their preferred booking methods.
Out of the total booking, only 24.6 per cent booking were using app and rest were using call
centre-based IVR facility. However, when a customer booked a cab using IVR, they did not
had access to app-based customer panel and hence they could not avail all services esp.,
location tracking, SoS, real time tracking of vehicle.
Company had aimed to shift all remaining 85.4 per cent offline users to online so as to
provide an interactive interface to them. In the year 2018, company launched booking kiosk
that stored all the booking information using a cloud-based server. Each kiosk cost `
57,000/- to the company including the customized interface software in the vernacular
language (Exhibit 10). Company procured 22 of such kiosk on the pilot basis. These kiosks
had been put in the villages wherein more than 95 per cent booking comes using call
centres. The kiosk turned up as disruptive innovation in the existing cab market. Kumar is
sure that these kiosks will help them maintaining online records and in turn better customer
relationship with the customers.

Customer segments
Based on the booking preferences, AryaGo divide its customers into two segments. One,
who book their taxis using offline sources such as call centre and business correspondent

PAGE 6 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j VOL. 9 NO. 2 2019

facilitated IVR facility and other who book using online interface such as website or mobile
app. It is so because the processing time is different for both the channels. Customer, who
books online were having their system generated unique ID that can be used while booking
a taxi. It stored all the personal details such as name, age, address, vehicle preferences
and customer history. The online system was much more preferred for the company so as
to track the customer usage pattern and accordingly sending the personalized promotional
schemes.
In offline system, a call centre took the booking and transferred the details to the cab
available en-route. It does maintain limited customer details if called from their personal
mobile number. However, in villages many a times, mobiles are even borrowed for making
such booking calls and leading to non-generation of unique identity and in-turn no
personalized offers to be made.

Key challenges
Since inception, company tried hard to follow the original operational plan suggesting rapid
expansion. In just two years, company had moved to four districts including, Saharsa,
Supaul, Madherpura and Madhubani[11]. Company was expanding fast to new districts.
However, rapid expansion attracted high investments in terms of fixed cost and operational
expenditure an in-turn impacted profit margins.
On the other hand, the alternative penetration approach had varied challenges. Running a
business in a single district may help in reducing the fixed cost but at the same time
expects volumes. Customer need to be made aware about the organized taxi services and
its benefits. It is extremely challenging in an environment wherein adult literacy rate is 38 per
cent and penetration of smartphone is 53.4 per cent[12].
With a policy of non-incentivising the customers to download the app, how to ensure that
customers will look for the service. Usage of smart phones and availability of high speed internet
at lesser price are important to run the business. Apart from this, consumer cab booking
behaviour needs to be looked into. Customers look for their own convenience and if they are
more comfortable with IVR they will not switch to app at any cost.

In the quarter Q4 of 2017-2018, only 157 cab booking were received through app, rest all
using IVR (Exhibit 11). This made a difficult situation for the company as heavy investment
had been made on the development of app and more of the IVR calls put extra pressure on
the call centre. The current call centre just consists of two staff members, and they were not
sufficient in the peak hours.

AryaGo 2.0
However, Kumar had been instrumental in leveraging IT infrastructure for Rural Road
Connectivity. The vernacular language was most prevalent in the region and hence the
multi-lingual booking kiosk was a solution to it. Whole system worked on the general public
wi-fi hub enabled with touch screen kiosk and voice recognition systems. Further, using
GPS enabled vehicles and doing a regular geo-tagging in villages, he provided rural cab
services. With the current business model, the company was going through the major
growth period and had ambitious targets in terms of revenue.

Kumar’s dilemma
Kumar was faced with a dilemma. Should he go with the original business plan and go for
rapid expansion plan across all districts in Bihar? He had already expanded services to four
districts namely Saharsa, Madhepura, Supaul and Madhubani. Although, it requires lot of
liquid funds for establishing basic office infrastructure in the new districts.

VOL. 9 NO. 2 2019 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 7

 The other alternative in the mind was going for extensive advertisement in only one district
Keywords:
Entrepreneurial skills, and capturing the market as much as possible. To operationalize this penetration strategy,
Capital investment/ he had already started looking into various input machines such as booking kiosk, etc., on
resource allocation deci- pilot basis. The company realized that it reached a position from where it had to decide its
sions, next course of action. However, Kumar was not sure which business model is more
Service management,
sustainable and profit oriented in a long run. Kumar said:
Product development/inno-
vation, Company has performed exceedingly well since 2016. We are growing at a pace that is much
Competitive strategy, higher than the industry average and willing to continue the same momentum. Every firm realises
Services marketing, to transit from a young and small growing company to a mature and established firm. However,
Startup,
how to plan the business strategy in an extremely dynamic business environment. Industry
Rural road connectivity,
barriers are low and business models are very easy to replicate. We can not take a chance and
Resource allocation,
Cab industry, must introduce innovative and industry first technological upgradations to get the significant
Kiosk, market share. At the same time, the R&D cost is much high and takes all your share planned for
Service delivery, business expansion. Should we expand our value chain by offering other services too? There are
Innovation, many more loose ends that needs to be roped in for formulating the service blueprint and market
Entrepreneurship strategy for upcoming years.

Notes
1. Saharsa is one of the districts in India at the eastern Kosi belt, Bihar.
2. Car model currently discontinued in India.
3. Earthen road.
4. Indigenously developed innovative solution.
5. Available at: www.data.gov.in
6. Available at: http://indiawater.gov.in/IMISReports/Reports/BasicInformation/rpt_RWS_RuralPopulation_S.
aspx?Rep=0&RP=Y
7. Available at: www.niti.gov.in/state-statistics
8. Available at: https://rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=27047
9. As on May, 2018.
10. E-wallet.
11. Districts in the state of Bihar.
12. Available at: www.niti.gov.in
13. http://www.india.uitp.org/articles/mobility-in-rural-india
14. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/india-fourth-industrial-revolution-farming/

Exhibit 1. YoY financial performance of the company (in `)

Table EI
Particulars 2016 2017

Revenue 90,00,000 1,14,00,000

Operating margin 6% 4.5%
Capital employed 18,00,000 55,00,000
ROCE % 18 16.33
Source: Company sources

PAGE 8 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j VOL. 9 NO. 2 2019

Exhibit 2. AryaGo Fare chart

Table EII
Type of cab Minimum charge (in `) Rate (in `) % of fleet

Mini 38.45 8 33
Sedan 38.45 8 25
SUV 94 8 42
Source: Company sources

Exhibit 3. Internet penetration in India

Table EIII
Year Internet penetration (%)

2017 37.32
2016 29.55
2015 18.87
Source: International Telecommunication Union, 2018

Exhibit 4. Milestones achieved by the company

Figure E1

VOL. 9 NO. 2 2019 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 9

 Exhibit 5. Current demand analysis for the cab industry

Table EIV
Particulars Minimum Maximum

Number of calls received/day 650 1,180

Average call rejection rate 18% 25%
Number of calls entertained/day 480 680
Current fleet size 97
% utilization 75% 100%
% of unique calls 53% 72%
Trip/car/day 5 11
Number of additional cabs required (one-year projection) 20 35
Source: Company sources

Exhibit 6. Operating model of AryaGo

Figure E2

Exhibit 7. Private equity fund flow to the company

Table EV
Year Funding value (in `)

2015-2016 (at conceptual stage) ` 15,00,000

2016-2017 (seed capital from government under start-up scheme) ` 10,00,000
2017-2018 (through accelerator) ` 12,00,000
Total ` 37,00,000
Source: Company sources

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Exhibit 8. Process flow

Figure E3

Exhibit 9. Fare chart for cab hiring

Table EVI
Particular AryaGo Competitors

Base fare ` 30 (` 80 for SUV) ` 60

Rate/km `8 ` 11
Ride time charges ` 1.45 (` 6 for SUV) ` 2.45
Waiting time fare ` 30 (up-to 30 min.) ` 30 (up-to 30 min.)
Source: As shared by company spokesperson, based on comparison with Ola model

VOL. 9 NO. 2 2019 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 11

 Exhibit 10. Kiosk used for data inputs

Figure E4

Exhibit 11. Economics for AryaGo (in `)

Table EVII
Annual cash flow/cab/year 4,48,000
Cost of the car (average) 5,50,000
One-time down payment to owner at the time of subscription 15,000
Cost of the car (EMI) 3,500-4,500

Source: Company sources

About the authors

Dr Rajeev Verma is an Assistant Professor at Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna
(CIMP) and an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore. He has been
instrumental in leading significant research consultancy projects sponsored by
Government of Bihar, UK Global Research Fund and ITTO Japan. Rajeev Verma is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: rajeevsuccess@gmail.com

Prof Anuj Sharma is an Assistant Professor at Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna,

India with specialization in Data Mining and Business Analytics. He is a board member of
Startup Selection Committee and having five years of industry experience in Decision
Sciences with IBM and Impetus.

Prof Jyoti Verma is an Assistant Professor at Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna,

India with specialization in the area of Human Resources and Knowledge Management.
She has consulted several projects for Central Government, UNICEF and various
departments of State Government of Bihar. Her research expertise is in the area of gender
resource management.

PAGE 12 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j VOL. 9 NO. 2 2019