Course Work

Overview This assignment is worth 100 points (10% of your total grade). The purpose of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to apply what you have learned so far about international business foundations to a real-world situation that happened in the recent past. Reading Chandrasekhar, R. (2011). Mahindra & Mahindra in South Africa. Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation. If you purchased the case pack for Assignment #1, this case was also included. If not, see “Individual Assignments Overview” above for a link. Background and Alternatives Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (M&M) is a manufacturing leader in the utility vehicles (UVs) segment in the Indian automotive industry. Since 2004, M&M has been exporting UVs to South Africa, the only country in the African continent with a significant middle-class population. M&M has set up a wholly owned subsidiary in South Africa, where it has also established a servicing and spare parts infrastructure and a dealer network. The case is positioned as of May 2011, when M&M’s subsidiary must choose from among four alternatives: M&M can continue with its prevailing business model of importing completely built units (CBUs) from its Indian operations to meet local demand while using South Africa as a re-export hub to target the burgeoning markets in sub-Saharan Africa. It can also choose to form a joint venture, collaborating with a local vendor to assemble vehicles locally from completely knocked down (CKD) components imported from India. Alternatively, M&M may choose to set up a manufacturing facility of its own in South Africa, a model followed by many of its competitors. Lastly, M&M can choose to continue its cautious approach and watch until it notes clear signs of revival in demand. The case provides an opportunity for you to examine each alternative and make a decision on M&M’s way forward in South Africa. Your Assignment State your recommendation for the BEST alternative. You may select ONLY one. Justify your answer, using facts from the case and concepts from the text. Your justification is more important than your recommendation. Be sure to provide solid arguments supported by facts in the case. Your justification should discuss advantages of your chosen alternative, but should also address disadvantages of the other three alternatives. This is an important part of making the best choice; just because one choice has advantages doesn’t mean that other choices might not be better. Additional research is not useful for this case, since it is dealing with a situation that arose several years ago. In addition, what M&M actually chose to do is not important; it might not have been the best choice. Format and submission requirements Click the link above and submit your assignment as a Microsoft Word document. Your assignment should be at most 1,000 words long. This requires you to be complete but concise. See the Individual Assignments Overview item in this area for rules and guidelines about content, format, citations, and late penalties. See the rubric attached to the assignment for grading criteria.