To Own or To Host
You step into the role of CEO at Zipcart, a newly launched Indian e-commerce marketplace, and face the central choice of the business from day one: own the stock and keep a large margin per order, or host sellers and stay asset-light on a smaller commission. An early lesson makes the trade-off visceral before the scored game begins, showing how fixed costs punish low volume. Once the business has grown, you take funding, open a warehouse, and run Zipcart for eight quarters, each representing one market period. You plan capacity ahead of demand knowing that expansion takes a full quarter to go live, negotiate price and reliability with two courier partners who behave very differently under pressure, and decide when a lost customer is worth the cost of under-serving a peak. Market events force you to read the signals and act before they are named. In the end, you discover whether your operating decisions built a resilient, reputation-driven business or one that chased short-term savings at the cost of its customer base.
- Distinguish between an asset-light hosting model and an asset-heavy ownership model and identify the demand conditions favoring each
- Analyze how fixed costs behave against volume and why low demand cannot sustain a heavy cost base
- Plan warehousing and delivery capacity ahead of demand given a one-quarter lag on capacity expansion
- Negotiate third-party logistics contracts by balancing cost against reliability across competing vendors
- Protect a compounding customer base by prioritizing reliable service, especially during demand peaks
- Branching onboarding sequence that lets players feel the consequence of owning inventory too early before the scored game begins
- Nine-step calculation engine covering demand, capacity, routing, delivery failures, financials, reputation, and loyalty each quarter
- Two-vendor 3PL negotiation module with a deterministic haggle mechanic balancing price against reliability
- Dynamic market events, including a cost spike and a courier reliability slump, that force players to adapt their strategy mid-game
- End-of-session analytics and an auto-generated debrief report tracking bank balance, fill rate, and the hidden loyalty engine for structured classroom discussion
- Students learn to evaluate strategic business model choices by reasoning through fixed versus variable cost structures rather than margin alone.
- Students develop the discipline to plan operating capacity ahead of demand, internalizing the cost of reacting too late.
- Students practice structured negotiation under a cost-reliability trade-off, learning when to concede and when to hold firm.
- Students build intuition for how service quality compounds into customer loyalty and future demand, not just current-period profit.
- Students internalize that operational excellence is a compounding advantage, and that reputation lost through poor service is far harder to rebuild than it was to earn.
