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June, 2011

Ms-93 : Management of New and Small Enterprises

1.  (a)   Discuss the role that small and micro enterprises can play in ensuring balanced and inclusive growth of our economy and society.

(b) Distinguish between skill and competency. Give suitable examples to support your answer.

2.  (a) What  are  the problems that a young entrepreneur usually faces in India while setting-up a new business ?

(b) Discuss the framework for opportunity scanning and consequent identification of a suitable business for rural India.

3. (a)    As an interpretation in the general  insurance business how would you select intermediaries for selling this service in the rural areas?

(b)        What are the lessons that a prospective entrepreneur can learn from the high failure rates of small business in India?

4.  (a)  Discuss the main sources of financial support for small entrepreneur

(b) Give a detailed overview of project preparation process.

5. Discuss the merits and demerits of different forms of business organization. What key factors guide the choice of ownership form by an entrepreneur?

December, 2011

Ms-93 : Management of New and Small Enterprises

SECTION  - A

1. (a) Examine the role of Govt.-of India in the development of SSI sector.

(b) "Entrepreneurial Competencies and skills can be developed through suitable training

Interventions" Comment.

2. (a) Discuss the role of Non-Financial Institutions in India for one development and growth of small businesses. Do you feel any need for reorganising these institutions to serve the SSI sector in a better way ?

(b) What factors a small entrepreneur should keep in mind while making the choice of suitable technology for his venture ?

3. (a) How would you assess the market demand for a new product ?

(b) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of partnership form of business organization.

4. (a) What are the hurdles faced by a small business in arranging Bank Finance in India ?

(b) What in market segmentation ? If you were an entrepreneur in the packaged food business, what basis would you use to segment your market. Give reasons for your choice.

5. (a) "An appropriate plant lay out can lower the cost and enhance the productivity" Discuss.

(b) What does human resource planning entail in a small business ?

SECTION – B

Read the case study given below and answer the questions given at the end of case.

Case Study Mr. Amit Sharma recently retired from the Central government services. A physical fitness enthusiast and lover of nature and environment, Mr. Sharma has been leading an active life, regularly going to the gymnasium every morning. His wife, Meena, regularly practices yoga in the house. She has been trained by a popular yoga guru when she was much younger. The Sharma's two sons are very well educated. They are married and stay abroad. Their third . son is doing his final year in B. Com . in the local college. Mr. Sharma has been planning to start a business of his own from the retirement benefits

he has received from the Central government. He feels his third son may help him in the business after his graduation. Mr. Sharma had always felt concerned about the low standard of physical fitness of an average Indian. During his early morning walks, Mr. Sharma would discuss with the people and found that starting a health club would offer a

good business opportunity, besides fulfilling an important need of the community. He has visited many health clubs not only in India but also abroad and has a fair idea about the business. Mr. Sharma with the help of his wife is planning to establish a gymnasium and a yoga centre in the health club to be located at Kolhapur, Maharashtra. He would initially cater to the needs of company executives and businessmen. He would later extend the scope of this venture to include housewives and working women too. He is optimistic that with the hectic lifestyle of the present-day business personals and the growing consciousness about good health, he would be able to attract a good number of

customers. He is, however, aware of the financial investment required for the project and would like to be careful before taking any long-term decision in this regard. He would like to estimate the possible demand for this type of service and an indication of the financial returns that he can expect.

6.  (a) Suggest a step-by step procedure to estimate the market demand for this type of activity.

(b) How would you analyse the competitive situation for this enterprise ? Explain. 

December, 2012

Ms-93 : Management of New and Small Enterprises

SECTION-A

1. "Entrepreneurs ae self driven people with strong internal locus of control". Explain giving examples of some successful entrepreneurs.

2. What are the various financial institutions providing long and medium term loans ? Discuss their role in brief.

3.  (a) What factors a small entrepreneur has to consider while deciding the location of the plant ?

(b) Enumerate the positive and negative sides of family business.

4.  (a) What is meant by market segmentation? What are the bases for market segmentation ?

(b) Define "Advertising". What are the functions of advertising ?

5. What is Human Resource Management in small Industry ? What are the activities that are performed as a part of HRM in small business ? Discuss.

SECTION-B

6.  Read carefully the case given below and answer the questions given at the end  :

He can afford to blow his own horn, Loudly. And the reason lies right under your hood. After all, the 45-year-old K. Ramaswamy's Roots Industries (Roots) is the largest manufacturer of electric horns in the country. Of the 9.3 lakh horns sold in the replacement market each year, over half are branded Roots. And the man who built this Rs 12-crore start-up has even swung a tie-up with the German automobile components gaint, Bosch. "I can finally call my company a Bosch licensee, "says Ramaswamy proudly. By end-1994, Bosch will relocate a horn-making line from its La Carolina facility in Spain to the Roots unit in the Ganapathy precincts of Coimbatore(Tamil Nadu). And this Rs.5-crore project will hike Roots' annual capacity to two million horns from the present 1.2 million. By March 1996, says Ramaswamy, Roots' turnover will double and exports will rise five-fold to Rs. 7 crore. "Bosch's decision to go with us is an affirmation of its trust in our quality," says he. Bosch is not the only transnational to trust Ramaswamy. Germany's Hako Group picked up a 26 percent stake in his first diversification. Roots Multiclean, which was set up in January 1994. Making industrial commercial vacuum cleaners, Roots multiclean is cleaning up, with a monthly turnover of about Rs.18  lakh.  And in July 1994, Reliance Capital and Finance Trust picked up 25 percent of Roots' Rs. 1.60-crore equity at a premium of Rs. 150 per share in a bought-out deal. "A public issue would have taken me months", admits Ramaswamy, who has coolly picked up Rs. 4 crore, promising only to get Roots listed on the over The Counter Exchange of India in 15 months' time. Carving out a niche hasn't been easy, though; it is the culmination of a 30-year obsession and several false starts. A farmer's son, Ramaswamy recalls tinkering around with cars from his childhood. He had ample opportunity to do so : his father, R.Krishna swamy Gounder, 87, would buy a new car every two years, and import the latest horns accessories that fascinated his son. "It always

used to beat me why we couldn't make good horns in our country," he recalls. That, as he was to discover, was easier said than done. After aquiring a diploma in mechanical engineering from the Coimbatore institute of Technology in 1968, Ramaswamy studied automobile engineering at the Lincolor technical Institute at Newark in the US for a year. Checking up a $ 7000 a month job with Ford motors, Ramaswamy returned to coimbatore in 1969, And he set-up shop in a small shed, calling his firm American Auto Service (AAS). "My father backed me financially and emotionally, " he says. After developing two bombs-a recovery system that improved radiator efficiency and a low-pressure vacuum brake for cars -Ramaswamy had to beat a hasty retreat. And he managed to develop an air-pressure horn. But he could sell only 500 of them in all of 1974. Finally, in a last-ditch effort to stay in business, Ramaswamy and his team of engineers went back to the drawing board and designed the country's first electric-powered air horn. Strategically, Ramaswamy priced his product at Rs. 85, 15 percent higher than the competition. "I was doubly sure of my product," he says. Five years later, when he was selling over 25,000 air horns a year. Ramaswamy also developed an electric horn. " Experience taught me to be different." Four times lighter, it used far less power than competing products sold by leaders like Lucas, TVS and Jalwa. Starting off as a supplier to Hindustan Motors, Roots' client base soon included Premier Automobiles and TELCO. But in order to grow, Ramaswamy had to enter the replacement market. He did so in 1985, when he launched Vibrosonic, a heavy-duty horn priced at Rs. 150. By March 1988, AAS was selling over 100,000 horns a year, and turnover had crossed Rs. 1 crore. Earlier, in 1985, Ramaswamy set up Roots Auto Products-named after the telegraphic address of his father's sago unit, ROOTS-to make an exhaust-powered jack from polyvinyl chloride-coated (PVC) material. Then, the government hiked the import duty on PVC from 98 percent to 298 percent, which resulted in the doubling of the jacks' retail

price to  Rs.600.  After Ramaswamy had lost Rs. 50 lakh on that product, he transferred his electric air horns business to Roots Auto. And by 1989, both Roots Auto and AAS had cornered market shares of 70 percent and 40 percent in the air and electric horn segments, respectively. In 1991, Ramaswamy renamed AAS Roots Industries to cash in on the brand's equity. Now, his strategy is clear  :  focus on quality, keep costs low, price high, and cap dealers' margins. Frugality is reflected in Ramaswamy's personal life. A devotee of Lord Muruga, he rises at 5 a.m. is a strict vegetarian, doesn't even drink tea, and prefers nature cure to allopathy. He wears the Roots uniform-cream shirt, brown trousers-and cycles to work each day. Don't be fooled by this conservative exterior; under the three horizontal lines of vibhuti on Ramaswamy's forehead is a mind obsessed with the state-of-the- art. His office has sophisticated communications systems, and most of his senior executives have been provided with pagers. And Ramaswamy relished a challenge. When Bosch refused to even meet him when he first sought a tie-up, he decided to prove his mettle. After Ramaswamy dared to exhibit his products at the Automechanica, auto components fair in Frankfurt (Germany) in September 1992 exports shot up from Rs. 41 lakh in 1992-93 to Rs. 1.4 crore in 1993-94. "My basic idea was to get a toe-hold in the world market and be noticed for my quality," he says. If that were partly fulfilled when Bosch agreed to team up with him, it will be doubly endorsed when Ramaswamy receives the  150-9001 certification in Germany this month. Clearly success is finally honking at Ramaswamy's door.

Questions :

1. What factors were responsible for the success of Ramaswamy as an entrepreneur ?

2. Evaluate the strategy "Focus on quality, keep costs low, price high and cap dealer's margins" adopted by Ramaswamy in terms of longterm implications. 

June, 2013

Ms-93 : Management Of New And Small Enterprises

SECTION-A

1. Briefly explain the meaning of Entrepreneurial competencies.Discuss the stages in which it is developed?

2. What are the factors which influence the decision for selection of site for a Small Scale Enterprizes (SSE). State the locational problems confronted in the selection of plant site with respect to single as well as multi-facility location.

3. Discuss the common errors committed in the formulation of a Business plan.

4. What are the functions carried out in work services and how are these managed ? Illustrate.

5. Write short notes on any four of the following:

(a) Total Performance Index.

(b) Inventory control

(c) Firm Flexibility

(d) Professionalisation in family Business.

(e) Market Demand Analysis.

SECTION-B

6. Read carefully the case given below and answer the questions given at the end of the case :

IT'S ALL ABOUT MONEY

Nirmal Jain came from a family of commodity traders.Over the years,they had made and lost large sums of money.After completing his postgraduation from TIM Ahmedabad,he decided to start his own venture rather than take up a job in the corporate world.Starting Probity Research,an equity research firm,really paid off.The nineties was the time the Indian masses had discovered the stock exchange as an investment vehicle and they needed all the advice they could get to understand this uncertain environment.By 1999,Probity Research had a turnover of almost one crore and things were looking good,But Nirmal was not happy; he wanted to try for something much bigger. It was around that time that the Internet too was having an impact on business and society in India.Anybody who knew a little about it was getting into some business based on the Net in the fear of missing out on something big.Nirmal too was excited about this new medium of communicating and doing business.He took a big risk and put all his content online by launching Indiainfoline.com.This put an end to the way he was conducting his business and opened up entirely new possibilities.Not everyone was convinced that he was on the right track.Many members of his top management at Probity Research left him and his family was apprehensive that he had prematurely ended a good business. Initially things seem to have worked out for the better. Even though he had not started making profits, Indiainfoline was making a name for itself and was able to gain very high visibility in the right circles. He was attracting interest from banks and venture capitalist alike. Indiainfoline became the first company to offer e-broking in India and Nirmal was even contemplating starting a TV channel. With the dot-com bust, everything seemed to come apart. Good employees left the firm, financer pulled out and revenues plummeted .The stock market plummeted and that affected his basic business premise. As a reaction to the macro-economic changes, he scaled down operations, got rid of all frills and concentrated on e-broking and financial services. He persevered with his new business model through some harrowing times and finally things started looking up in 2003. Currently, Indiainfoline has revenues of over Z 300 crore and annual profit of over Z 60 crore. Nirmal Jain's stake in Indiainfoline to be worth over Z 300 crore.

Questions :

(a) Do you think Nirmal Jain took a gamble by starting Indiainfoline?

(b) What are the external factors at work which prompted Nirmal Jain to take the plunge?

7. To facilitate small scale sector government has stipulated that investors bringing FDI in single brand retailing should source 30% of there products from small scale sector. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this measure for Small and Medium Enterprizes (SMES).