Vision
23(2) 215–216, 2019
© 2019 MDI
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DOI: 10.1177/0972262919844623
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Case Analysis I
Carasid: Interventions that
Make Businesses Sustainable
Sumi Jha
1
Mr Sunil said that they are catering to North Indian tourists
by offering chola bhatura and to Maharashtrian tourists by
offering a variant of vada pav. This strategy has largely
remained unexplored by Carasid.
Market penetration: This quadrant indicates that the
organization is selling the same product and services to
the same target audience. If an organization operates from
this quadrant, they can offer loyalty schemes and price
competitiveness. Carasid enjoyed this quadrant for many
years, and while maintaining their basic cake and pastry
business in Miramar road location, they are expanding in
other locations to offer a variety of products and services.
Product development: In this quadrant, an organization
offers different products to the same base of customers.
Carasid has moved from being only a café joint to a joint
which offers all-day breakfast, which includes hot parathas,
sandwiches, etc.
Currently, Carasid is more aggressively looking at market
development and in future will look for diversification. The
market expansion calls for a similar kind of enthusiastic
team base to keep the zeal of the organization alive.
Therefore, the next challenge Carasid has is to mitigate the
risk of expansion without compromising on the quality of
employees.
What Should be the Human Resource
Strategy to Match the Growth Plan?
The second question has been analysed using Snell and
Bohlander’s Matrix-Mapping Human Capital (Bohlander
& Snell, 2007). The matrix has two axes, ‘value to the
organization’ and ‘unique to the organization’. The quadrant
titled ancillary suggests that the employees in this quadrant
would exhibit low uniqueness and low value to the
organization. Carasid should not spend time in recruiting
such employees, to align with the future growth and strategy.
Another quadrant is compulsory—here, employees are
Case Analysis
1
Associate Professor (OB and HR), National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Corresponding author:
Sumi Jha, Associate Professor (OB and HR), National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Powai, Mumbai 400087, Maharashtra, India.
E-mail: sumijha05@gmail.com
Background
The case offers a unique situation of an entrepreneurial
family. The couple was well-settled in corporate life at
Mumbai. They thought about shifting base and starting a
new business of a cafe, and moved from Mumbai to Goa.
They offered unique quality products (cake and other
baked items) and services to customers and opted for
several classic employee engagement programmes to retain
and engage employees. To expand business, customers need
and requirements were captured through a research-based
systematic approach, and then the findings were applied to
increase the customer base.
The case has been analysed from the following two
different perspectives.
What Should be the Strategy for Carasid
for Future Growth and Development?
The first question can be analysed by plotting Carasid’s
growth strategy on the Ansoff product/market expansion
matrix (Ansoff, 1957; Watts, Cope, & Hulme, 1998). The
grid or matrix offers four quadrants: market penetration,
market development, product development and diversi-
fication, on two axes, namely, existing and new markets
and existing and new products or services.
Market development: This quadrant explains that if an
organization is in this quadrant, the organization’s strategy
is to offer the same product and services to different people
(different target groups and different localities). Carasid
has started moving in new places in Goa in a franchise
mode. It can also plan to expand its reach using different
sales channels like online selling.
Diversification: When an organization uses this strategy to
expand, it tries to offer completely different product and
services to different customers. Carasid has not ventured
into this quadrant. A glimpse of it is seen when owner