Rapid growth firms: A contrasting study of two growth stories

Abstract

In our CCS study, we studied “Rapid Growth” firms and tried to find if there are some basic or common factors responsible for their success. We considered two firms for the same, VA Tech WABAG and Shriram Transport Finance Company. What makes these companies special is the fact that the rapid growth of both these companies are sort of counter intuitive, in the sense that the companies considered have consistently beaten industry standards, and embarked on a huge sustained growth path. The selection of companies was done after much deliberation. Both the industry structure and operations are completely different for the two companies considered. While one (VA Tech WABAG) prides itself as a “cutting edge technology player at a low cost”, the other fully depends on the “human network and focused marketing”. One is in the Water Business industry, and the other in the Financial Services NBFC industry. We thought it would be quite interesting and challenging to actually study the growth of two companies which are so diverse in nature. We first studied the industry structures, growth stories of the two companies and tried to identify certain inflection points in their growth life cycle. We tried to study each stage of the growth cycle, identify the stage in which the company currently is, using the framework proposed by our guide Prof. R. Srinivasan. We tried to figure out if each of these propositions were satisfied by the companies considered. We compared and contrasted the two companies based on the above propositions, and derived inferences from the study undertaken.