Saumya Kapoor

As the pace of change accelerates, business leaders must focus on pace over perfection to keep up. Our latest AlixPartners Disruption Index found the gap between winners and losers continues to widen, with companies who prioritize action over analysis often racing ahead. Our CEO Simon Freakley outlined the 4 key areas where speed is of the essence for all businesses:

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Sharing the recording of a session with the KPMG UK Board Leadership Centre hosted by KPMG UK Chair Bina Mehta and Timothy Copnell. The discussion can be accessed here: https://lnkd.in/erb5WNpW Centred around my book, The Global Trade Paradigm (HarperCollins, 2023), the discussion was timely. Bina Mehta highlighted how geopolitics has become an important topic of her conversations with business leaders; she noted the KPMG CEO Survey lists geopolitics as a top concern for CEOs around the world.   What specific steps should boards and senior leadership take to address the implications of geopolitics on their corporations and stakeholders? Some suggestions:   1.   Establish mechanisms to get sharp insights into the dynamics of geopolitics that affect their companies. This may include working with think tanks that understand relevant regions and countries as well as functional domains (supply chains, cyber security, sustainability would be examples.)   2.   Engage with governments in ways that are effective and appropriate. Public affairs functions need to be staffed with the right competencies and must work closely with firm leadership.   3.   Monitor investment postures in key geographies, exposures in crisis zones, and resilience of supply chains.   4.   Add geopolitical expertise to boards or establish an advisory committee for the purpose.   In the broad ranging discussion with the BLC, I noted the pause, if not a reversal, that we see today of the decades-long secular trend the world experienced towards globalization and integration. A transformative change of the last three decades has been the rise of global value chains driven by various factors including the advance of technology as well as of logistics and infrastructure – underpinned by the imperatives of comparative advantage.      These global supply chains make the world vulnerable to disruptions. Present day examples include those arising from Ukraine, the Israel Gaza situation, the tensions in the Middle East, and the China-Taiwan dynamic. Additionally, the trade landscape must today contend with the ongoing US- China discord and global concerns about China’s ambitions. With 25% of global manufacturing being in China, that country is critical to almost every supply chain. The situation creates an imperative for alternative -- or additional -- nodes in global supply chains, supplanting or supplementing China. This in turn creates opportunities for locations ranging from Mexico to India.

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I met Saurabh Mishra back in January 2022 We were introduced via a common friend & entrepreneur. My entire focus was to convince Saurabh on why he should not become an entrepreneur👇 ▶ Saurabh was a Partner at McKinsey, and tracking well towards being a Senior Partner, a role that many would give up an arm and a leg for. Saurabh, however, was convinced that he needed to be an entrepreneur. He would rather fail than live with the regret of not having tried. I thought he had lost his mind and fallen for the startup hype that India (and the world) was going through in 2021-22 ▶Saurabh’s work at McKinsey was focused on sales acceleration of large IT/BPO services, and he was exploring how technology can help Account Executives in these companies to identify opportunities in large enterprises. We found the problem difficult to solve, and the space cluttered - we'd just exited Slintel, our portfolio co. focused on identifying top of the funnel for B2B companies ▶During that experience, we came across dozens of companies amassing vast amounts of public data to help identify top of the funnel opportunities. While Slintel was a very successful investment for Stellaris Venture Partners, given our experience in this space, I was even more convinced Saurabh shouldn't leave McK to pursue an idea that made no sense But entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs! 🚀 ✨In 7 months since our conversation, Saurabh left McK and partnered with Swapnil Saykar, a product leader at Amazon who'd spent 8 years in the US and India, and was running the ads platform for India. While Saurabh brought the domain knowledge to the problem, Swapnil brought the experience of building complex, enterprise scale systems ✨Saurabh & Swapnil had the problem of plenty, i.e. too many people with deep pockets wanted to invest in their venture. As they were contemplating starting their journey in August 2022, they weren't looking for VC money. We're fortunate that they agreed to have us as part of their angel round, and allowed us to be thought partners as they started building their product ✨Fast forward to 12+ months, we've been amazed at the speed and frugality with which they've built what they've built, and the kind of customers they've been able to penetrate. Most people who had not met with OrbitShift.AI were initially dismissive of technology’s ability to help AEs of large IT/BPO service providers do their job better. It's a highly skilled job that AI can't help with. But reference calls with the customers were diametrically opposite. They were delighted with the value OrbitShift added, and the possibilities of solution extension ✨ In my last 11 years as a VC + a previous decade in software sales, I've learnt that no matter what new concept you take to the market, you'll find very few believers in the beginning. There are few early adopters. But if there's a pain point and real value being created for the early adopters, there is a large business to be built Continued in comments👇

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A holistic approach to managing costs can increase a transformation’s chance of success by contributing to three critical outcomes: Sustained value creation, a step change in capabilities, and a sustained shift in the culture. This BCG article features a compelling case study of a specialty retailer that implemented a comprehensive performance transformation, funded by an outcome-based cost management strategy, resulting in a quadrupling of its market capitalization in just three years. BCG on Transformation #BusinessTransformation #BCGonTransformation #CostManagement

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Meet the man who built India's largest logistics company at 40,000 CR. 1. It was March 2010. The Internet boomed to 210.23 million users in India. Sahil Barua, a consultant at Bain studying the telecom sector for three years, knew the Internet would be massive. He wanted to start a startup. With two of his friends from Bain, he took a big step. 👇 2. He took a six-month sabbatical but could not find the idea for months. And one day, his food order was late by half an hour. That's when Sahil realised that online food companies could get the orders online but lacked the logistics to deliver them. He wanted to solve it. ✅ 3. He partnered with local restaurants and set up an office with six employees and four delivery persons from a 250 sq ft room in Gurgaon. Sahil started clocking 100 orders daily with deliveries in under 30 minutes, but the big wake-up call arrived. 👇 4. Food delivery was getting solved with emerging players like Zomato, but E-commerce was still an open market. Conventional players like DTDC could not make doorstep delivery. Sahil changed the plan. In January 2011, SSN Logistics started, and Delhivery was born. 🚀 5. Sahil delivered free for a month, on the condition to do thirty deliveries monthly and upgrade to 50 in the next month if satisfied. And the idea worked. By 2012, Delhivery delivered over 500 shipments across five customers and scaled to three centres within Delhi NCR. It raised 7 CR from Times Internet. 6. Delhivery skyrocketed to 2 million orders across 90 clients. They kept the pricing as low as Rs 35 for a 500-gram packet. It also opened two 10,000 sq ft fulfilment centres in Delhi and Chennai. Seeing the growth, Nexus Venture Partners pumped 35 CR. 💸 7. Delhivery kept growing and processed 9000 orders daily. 90% of revenues came from shipping, and Delhivery expanded to 180 towns and cities in India. On 8th September 2014, it raised 212 CR led by Multiples Alternate Asset Management and became a 500 CR company. 💰 8. Growing 400% yearly, Delhivery handled 3 million monthly transactions for 1,500 e-commerce companies. It had beaten the competition by focusing on 45,000 non-e-commerce enterprises for order management and warehousing solutions. As it expanded to 1 million sq. ft of warehousing space, it raised 506 CR from Tiger Global and became a 2000 CR company. 📉 9. Delhivery grew on steroids and grossed a revenue of 1073.64 CR, 15,000 pin codes and 30 fulfilment centres across 12 cities by 2018. On 24th March 2019, it raised 2766.82 CR led by Softbank and became the first unicorn of 2019. As Delhivery became a 10,000 CR company, the headline news came. 📰 10. On 11th May 2022, Delhivery went for a 5235 CR IPO and saw an oversubscription of 1.63 times. 🙌 ➡️ Today, Delhivery has shipped 2.1 billion parcels across 30,000 businesses and 99.5% of India's population. It leads with a 21.5% market share. 💪 Sahil Barua's small dream has become a 40,000 CR company today. 🙏 #india #startup #casestudy

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Congratulations to BCG Henderson Institute (BHI) Fellow Sagar Goel and BHI Ambassador Orsolya Kovacs on winning the 2023 HBR Prize! The HBR Prize, judged by an independent panel of business and academic leaders with input from members of HBR’s Advisory Board, spotlights the most outstanding article published each year in Harvard Business Review. As a part of their BHI research, Sagar and Orsi co-authored a study on how companies are reskilling their employees in a rapidly evolving era of automation and AI. For their article “Reskilling in the Age of AI,” Sagar and Orsolya, together with Jorge Tamayo, Leila Doumi, and Raffaella Sadun, interviewed leaders at some 40 organizations around the world that are investing in large-scale reskilling programs. Their analysis revealed five paradigm shifts emerging in reskilling. Read the winning article now:

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Four key trends are increasingly shaping the FMCG M&A market In the current context, FMCG companies are focusing increasingly on what worked best in terms of M&A ROI over the last decade with four trends getting more & more reinforced: 1) Mid-size vs. small/ large deals as those transactions deliver better ROI (best risk/ reward ratio) 2) Growth assets on same categories with an omnichannel footprint to fully leverage acquirer's expertise/ GTM scale vs. deals on adjacent categories or involving assets with majority of revenue online 3) Mostly US-based assets to de-risk value creation case (local scale-up enough to deliver a ROI, US-based assets tend historically to 'travel' better than assets from other regions) 4) Divesture value continues to exceed M&A value as FMCG companies continue to rationalize their portfolio, seek to step-change their growth/ profitability footprint (easiest/ fastest way remains divesture) while building further their B/S to drive their EPS (esp. share buy-backs) in an increasingly challenging top-line context Exciting times To read our full perspective: FMCG CEOs: M&A Q1 2024 In Review - A New Bottom & Four Reinforcing Trends 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: https://lnkd.in/efD5RNWX 𝗧𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗸, 𝗽𝗹 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗧𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀, 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝘀/ 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗙𝗠𝗖𝗚 𝗖𝗘𝗢𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: https://lnkd.in/ea4gy65y

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The BPC industry’s growth rate in India > the growth rate in the UK + USA + Germany combined!! It’s a massive segment but, it’s getting nuanced and competitive…. 6-7 years ago, if you told me that a customer in a tier 3 city of India would know what niacinamide or hyaluronic acid is - I’d be shocked. That’s the reality today. This industry has matured more in the last decade than in the previous 60 years since independence!  With a higher degree of consumer awareness than ever and 3000+ brands, India’s BPC market will be worth over $30 Bn by 2027! 💄 This is greater than the GDP of the entire country of Mauritius 🔥 In this market - E-commerce has been the driver of growth. It has worked because of the nature of the product - low volume, high value and strong gross margin (>80%). Sales via online will dominate growth and account 1/3rd of the entire segment. I’ve said this 10s of time now - market is getting more and more competitive. A cookie cutter approach and creating something for ‘everyone’ won’t work. Winner products will now be built in niches and micro markets. Think about this: 🛒 Gen Z face acne issues & prefer affordable & result-driven products 🛒 Millennials want products with long-term efficiency 🛒 Gen X and Boomers with wrinkles & fine lines look for simpler solutions This diversity opens doors for brands to innovate and disrupt by offering specialized value! As disruptive digital native brands have emerged we’ve seen the traditional BPC players also evolve. They’ve become savvy with social media, have in-house D2C teams and even develop e-commerce marketplace exclusive SKUs! As with most spaces in India - the growth will be driven from Bharat going forward. Last year during Nykaa’s Pink Friday Sale, 57% of sales were generated from tier 2 and 3 cities! What does the future look like? My predictions: ✅Growth will continue to be rapid  ✅Winner products will be more ‘Indianized’ in terms of size, pricing and offering as Bharat will dominate growth  ✅100 Cr+ brands will be built in micro niches that you haven’t even heard of yet  ✅Customers will become more fussy  What still remains a question for me is, will Indian brands go global? 🌍 What do you think? Any other BPC trends I’ve missed? #india #beautyandpersonalcare #fmcg #brands #startup

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Sujith Nair, Beckn's WhatsApp-averse, badminton-loving chief mover and shaker, gave us a peek into the world's first # e-commerce protocol. Imagine if Colgate wanted to sell a lot of toothpaste, would it open separate exclusive stores on every street? NO! Instead, it ensures its products are available in all stores where people come to shop, and not just toothpaste. Similarly, Beckn is a way for an online business to make its products and services available on other stores (popular daily-use consumer apps) instead of setting up its own store (its own consumer app) and waiting for customers to come in droves! The Beckn Protocol underpins Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC) and is a universal translator for e-commerce platforms. We would normally call it the Rosetta Stone for digital services, but now we have BHASHINI 😉 . It allows disparate systems to "speak" to each other seamlessly. The Beckn Protocol has become a verb in the tech world. "Just Beckn it!" has become a common phrase among developers when discussing open-source solutions for digital commerce. In fact, we like it so much that we are using Beckn use cases as our episode artwork (instead of our normal groovy cover art) to spread the word in our own little way. Some may even argue that the yellow and black in the artwork denote open mobility networks (read taxis) 😀. The even more nerdy might catch the movie reference in the title 🎬. So, is it an app? Is it an aggregator? Is it a platform? No. It is a Super Capability - #decentralised and #open. Listen, learn and use. sujith nair | Pramod Varma | Sanjay Purohit | Shankar Maruwada | Shireesh Joshi | T Koshy | Namma Yatri | FIDE | Antler | Bingepods (Ideabrew Studios) | OpenExO | Thinkers360 | IBM Alumni | Microsoft Alumni Network | The RSA (The royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce) | World Economic Forum | Digital India Corporation | nasscom | Abhishek Singh | Nilesh | Sheetal https://lnkd.in/dydrjnbU

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Business transformations aren’t uncommon: Our research shows that more than one-third of large companies are currently in a transformation effort. But are they successful? In this installment of The Bain Brief, we offer our insights on #TransformationsThatWork.

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Speed is a moat in of itself. This thread [1] does a great job of breaking that down But, speed / urgency is also a moat in sales. Sales teams that: - respond right away to an inbound lead - do same day follow ups - set up POCs in a day instead of a week just compete better. This is because to get speed, you have to solve so many problems upstream from tooling to hiring to culture. [1] https://lnkd.in/gCkewMJV

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Discover the reasons behind the $135B decline in UK M&A deal value in 2023 by watching our webinar recording featuring Bain's M&A experts, Peter Horsley and Suzanne Kumar, as they delve into Global and UK M&A industry insights.

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Traditional licensing and seat-based pricing have been the most commonly used pricing models in the SaaS segment till now but SaaS startups are moving towards consumption based pricing or user based pricing (think Amazon Web Services (AWS). The emerging pricing model enables customers to pay for a product according to usage of the software vs basis no. of seats. This lowers the barrier to entry for new customers to get started and not worry about fixed or a high product fee. The adoption for usage based pricing is increasing at a faster rate. 45% of SaaS companies now have some form of usage-based pricing (UBP), up from 34% last year. It is also said that investors pay a premium of ~60% to startups which have a CBP model since it allows investors and startups to understand the monetizable pain point they are really solving for and can also help them to strategize GTM for different use cases. Unlike basic subscription-based pricing models, usage fluctuation can result in a less predictable revenue stream. This is unlocking a new opportunity for SaaS focused billing software companies to address this pain point (think Zenskar). What do you think about the usage based pricing model? Comment your thoughts and connect with me and Ayushman Choubey for more such interesting reads.

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Bain's India 2024 PE report is now live. While overall deal activity in 2023 was down v. 2022, exits were up (buoyed by public market sales) and India's share of total APAC PE-VC deals has continued to rise (20% of APAC PE-VC deals in 2023 v. 15% in 2018). Investments in SaaS and new age tech (up 80%+ p.a. 20-22) were down 60% over the last year. Link to the full report below. https://lnkd.in/eCJhNvVe

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Outside pharmaceutical application, biotech has tremendous potential across sectors as a climate intervention: it can cut up to 8% of global GHG emissions, save 10% of fresh water use and fee up land of the size of India. At #mckinsey's Green Business Building summit, we discussed that it takes to unlock biotech for sustainability applications with Floor Saris, Henk Noorman and Luba (Liubov) Protopopova 🇺🇦. Key insights: 1. Deliver 65% cost out by accelerating R&D and capital and operational excellence to compete against fossil alternatives at-scale and across sectors 2. Capitalize on the USD 1tn green business building opportunity in biotech by scaling investments to USD 500bn and launching advanced market commitments 3. Create an ecosystem to deliver though win-win partnerships between incumbents, startups and investors Thank you Laura Millroy for co-hosting the panel and thank you Kevin Ren, Philip Ackermans, Mark Patel, and Roberto Uchoa de Paula for your great involvement.

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Brilliant insights explained with a simple usecase. This suggestion looks deceptively simple because the sweet spot of of balance between quality vs speed varies for domain, company , team and many other factors. It has been my experience that 3 to 4 months is some how the golden number for saas software for me. If you get an idea and if you don’t put the crudest mvp in customer’s hands during the 4th month, you’ll be late. If you try to do it in less than two months, you’ll face other types of challenges like too less scope or not injecting enough innovation to differentiate the product.

How are 3,000 C-level and senior business executives around the world responding to disruption, and how might this differ between female and male leaders? This year, for the first time, we have examined the global findings of AlixPartners' annual Disruption Index through the lens of gender – enabling us to answer that question. Explore the findings in our latest report. https://lnkd.in/eD4_VRrT

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