Product Overview

In 2019, Ajith Rai, Executive Chairman of Suprajit Engineering Limited (SEL), a pioneer in the design and manufacture of mechanical control cables in India, is contemplating his company’s future growth strategy in the face of changing trends and demands in the automotive sector. Established as a private limited company in 1985, SEL became a public limited company in June 1995. In its over three decades of existence, SEL had grown from a single-product, single-customer, single- segment, single-brand, and single-location company to a multi-product, multi-business, multi-brand, multi-customer, multi-location, global company. SEL’s growth and evolution as a truly diversified company was the result of Rai’s ability to expand its operations in domestic and overseas markets organically and inorganically through acquisitions. In 2019, when the case is set, new developments in the automotive sector, both in terms of new technology as well as competition, made it necessary for SEL to take stock and plan for the future. Rai decided it was time to conduct a thorough analysis of the business, its growth both organically and inorganically, its ability to integrate its acquisitions, and its environment, in order to reinvent itself and identify the next wave of growth. By tracing SEL’s inspiring growth story and highlighting the reasons behind its success, the case provides valuable insights into the rapid growth strategies used by entrepreneurial firms.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the importance for a firm of constantly reinventing its product portfolio and the business for survival and growth. • Understand the use of rapid growth strategies such as diversification, mergers & acquisitions, and internationalization by entrepreneurial firms. • Examine the performance of a company’s diversification strategy. • Understand the options used by a rapid-growth entrepreneurial firm to strategize and exploit significant opportunities in an evolving market environment.