&ldquo;IIT Jodhpur is committed to impart quality education to facilitate the creation of qualified, competent and responsible human resources to meet the emerging technological challenges of the world. It is working towards creating an equitable learning platform that is positive, accessible and effective in the face of the modern societal and scientific advancements.

Flexibility in curriculum, in all its academic programs, encompassing elements of teaching, research, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship is the most unique feature of IIT Jodhpur. The Department of Science and Technology (DST), under the National Mission on Cyber Physical Systems, has identified IIT Jodhpur as a Technology &amp; Innovation Hub in the area of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. The institute has also been nominated as the coordinator for the Jodhpur City and Knowledge Cluster by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India.

The sprawling 852-acre IIT Jodhpur campus is a majestic tribute to the deep-rooted diverse cultural heritage of the region. The campus is an architectural masterpiece, which is slated to become an international exemplar of sustainability with net-zero energy, and advanced water and waste management strategies.&rdquo;

IIT Jodhpur

Learning outcomes: The case discussion will help the participants figure out ways the entrepreneur could handle problems such as labour shortage, demonetisation and customer retention and find possible strategies to overcome them. Case overview/synopsis: MVR Leathers is a small-scale leather-processing unit located in Chennai. MVR was the brainchild of Venkat Raj, who started his career in 1982 as a casual labourer in an unrelated domain. His unwavering persistence helped him to become an independent entrepreneur by 2008. In achieving his dream to become an entrepreneur, Raj encountered many challenges and an equal number of new opportunities. Each time he faced a challenge, he met a new set of people who helped him. However, at times, the same people who had helped him once might throw him out of the scene. In brief, his struggle is never-ending. He keeps fighting to come back and find new avenues to success. A different set of challenges surfaced as he took charge of his firm as a sole owner. Once again, he countered those challenges with courage and grit. In doing so, he made full use of his experience. Complexity academic level: The case can be used for discussions at the executive, postgraduate and undergraduate levels. Academic courses that address topics such as entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs, small-firm strategies, business environments, leather industry, leadership, human resource management and entrepreneurial journeys can use the case for classroom learning. Supplementary materials: Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code: CSS 3: Entrepreneurship. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

School of Management & Entrepreneurship

World University root node

Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies

Making of an entrepreneur: a journey with leather – MVR Leathers

Learning outcomes: Using the case, students will learn about the following topics: identification of the right shareholder for a start-up. Need for a tech co-founder for an app-based start-up. Delay in building the right team at the right time. Lack of preparedness; a start-up’s challenges in identifying the business model. What was the real pain point (problem identification)? Did the solution meet market expectations (solution quality)?; consumers’ usual social habits. How do people’s habits hinder a product’s survival in the market? Why do consumers continue to behave the same way they have? Technology-related constraints. Case overview/synopsis: KnoDues was a mobile application (app)-based start-up in the domain of split expenses. The business idea germinated in early 2015 and became a reality toward the end of 2015. In a developing country context, the case provides rich insights into lean vs traditional start-up formation, founders’ knowledge, opportunity identification, product development and investment. India is a growing economy with ever-increasing smartphone users and internet consumers. Despite its deep-rooted rural-urban divide in the usage of modern technologies, India possesses a vast market opportunity in big cities. Rightly so, KnoDues intended to target the urban youth (between 15 and 35 years of age) population. Although KnoDues was not a unique product or the first of its kind, the founders perceived it to be the “first mover” in the Indian market. In its initial days, the product received an overwhelming response from accelerators and business-plan judges. Although KnoDues achieved more than 20,000 downloads by the end of 2016, customer retention and attracting investors became a difficult task. Founders felt that the difficulty was because of people’s “usual social habits,” and inadequate revenue model. Toward the end of 2017, KnoDues’s founders contemplated on ceasing their business. Complexity academic level: Undergraduate, postgraduate and executive. Supplementary materials: Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code: CSS 3: Entrepreneurship. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

KnoDues – a start-up with a solution to India’s split-expenses problem

Learning outcomes: The learning outcomes are as follows: to gain insights into an immigrant community with an emphasis on positioning stakeholders using power, legitimacy and urgency constructs; to help participants dwell on a decision-making process under challenging circumstances; and to help learners understand the level of commitment and efforts needed in initiating and sustaining a volunteer initiative. At the micro level, the case helps learners understand the nature of an interaction between two distinct social groups (ragpickers and volunteers). At the macro level, the case helps the learners understand the way marginalised migratory communities think and behave in the larger scheme of politics, religion and ever-increasing migration at the global level. Case overview/synopsis: This case is about an informal educational activity initiated by a group of volunteers who intend to eradicate illiteracy amongst ragpickers’ children in Rohtak, a small city in Haryana, India. This town has a population of <0.4 million and houses several immigrant families who come from different regions of India. Most immigrant families are into construction and rag picking. The localites mostly perceive ragpickers as undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh. Usually, most ragpickers’ children engage in garbage collection and do not attend school. In this backdrop, a group led by Mohan set up an evening class in an open ground, which in turn attracted several children from both the ragpicker and local communities alike. However, after a few days, the harsh weather made the volunteer team to shift the classes to a closed room. The shifting from the open ground to the closed room infuriated the parents and resulted in the parents not allowing their children to go to school. In this context, the volunteer team has to decide whether to continue the voluntary school or shut it down. Complexity academic level: Executive, Under-Graduation and Post Graduation Supplementary materials: Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code: CSS 7: Management Science © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Volunteer educational initiative for undocumented immigrants’ children

This study attempts to compare ‘the ethical value positioning’ of students of Business and Management studies from India and Germany. A complete enumerative survey was conducted for management students using the Ethical Positioning Questionnaire (EPQ) of Forsyth (1980). There were 134 respondents from India and 57 from Germany. The objective was to confer the differences in ethical positioning of students of two economically and culturally diverse nations. By the end of the research, it was constituted that both German and Indian students demonstrate a high degree of Idealism and Relativism and can be qualified as situationists. Exploratory analysis of the responses resulted in extraction of four factors (values): Non-Violence, Individualism, Non-Consequential, and Situational value. Within the analysis, Indian students displayed a higher preference for Individualism compared to their German counterparts. This study contributes to the literature in cross-cultural ethical value positioning of young managers. This study also opens a window for future research in the factors such as educational qualification, closed social groupings, and background of the students. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature.

Journal of Academic Ethics

Ethical Value Positioning of Management Students of India and Germany

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the cyclical pattern of social expenditure during 1980-2012 for a set of Asian countries. The extant literature available so far has captured the cyclicality of fiscal policy only for member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and for Latin American countries. Moreover, previous studies have largely ignored Asian countries. Design/methodology/approach - The analysis used panel data from global macro-databases of the International Monetary Fund, Statistics of public expenditure for economic development and Asian Development Bank. The cyclical components of social spending (health, education, and social protection) and GDP were determined by using the Hodrick-Prescott Filter. A positive (negative) correlation indicates procyclical (countercyclical) fiscal policy. In line with the existing literature on fiscal cyclicality (Gavin and Perotti, 1997; Lane, 2003; Frankel et al., 2013) that has examined the behavior of fiscal policy over the business cycle, regression analysis is used to examine the impact of political and institutional factors on the behavior of social spending. Findings - It was found that government social expenditure is procyclical across Asian countries during 1980-2012. However, during the past decade, emerging Asian countries have been able to shift from procyclical to countercyclical social spending. This shows that they had taken several initiatives to boost expenditure in the social sector - be it in social protection, health, or education services. The significant determinant of social cyclicality is the quality of institutions, which could help the government to increase fiscal deficit during recessions and repay the debt during economic booms. However, to some extent, their countercyclical action is restrained by the high accumulated level of public debt. Originality/value - In the context of the Asian region, it is important to understand the cyclical pattern of social policy for several reasons. It has been said that crises offer an opportunity for countries to rethink their social policy to achieve more sustained and equitable development. By studying the social spending behavior, the authors can see whether Asian countries were able to grab the opportunity for reshaping their social and economic agenda after the Asian financial crisis. © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited.

International Journal of Social Economics

Social cyclicality in Asian countries

If the proposition of Williamson that “highly standardized transactions are not apt to require a specialized governance structure” (1979, p. 248) is to be accepted, then a discrete transaction market between small business owners and their suppliers can be easily organized in the market. This view essentially nullifies the possibility of there being a relational transaction. In this backdrop, this research attempts to explore the small buyer–supplier relationship in the context of a small city. Keeping embeddedness (Granovetter, Am. J. Sociol., 1985; 91: 481–510) as a theoretical foundation, we explore the social content in an apparently pure economic exchange. Although, earlier attempts (Khoja and Kauffman, J. Small Bus. Manag., 2012; 50: 20–40; Uzzi, Am. Socio. Rev., 1996; 61: 674–698) conformed to embeddedness in transactions between a buyer and a supplier among businesses of various sizes, they largely ignored very small-size buyers and suppliers owing to the miniscule size of business transactions and less frequent interactions between buyers and suppliers. Based on the grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research-Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques, 1990), in this study, we conducted in-depth interviews with 57 very small business owners to develop detailed narratives. These narratives were organized under four themes: Contractual relationship, Strategic information sharing, Caste as a proxy, and Trust Factor. The findings clearly indicate that small business owners foster continued relationships with their suppliers, owing to social conditioning factors. © 2016 International Council for Small Business

Journal of Small Business Management

Nature of Buyer–Supplier Relationship: Small Businesses in a Small City

Interactions with members of the ragpicking community in Rohtak and attempts to get their children admitted into schools under the Right to Education lead to some significant insights into how teachers, the authorities and society in general view ragpickers.