Digitally Enabled Business Transformation: Rewiring Nestlé India to Be Future Ready

The case describes the digital transformation (DT) journey at Nestlé India as it sought to come out of the Maggi noodle crisis in 2015 and strengthen its foothold in the hypercompetitive Indian fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market. Suresh Narayanan, chairman and MD, led the initiatives from the front. The case highlights several areas of importance in the firm’s DT journey on the basis of the lessons learned from the crisis and the new realities of the Indian market—Customers are becoming increasingly digital, seeking greater engagement and transparency, and health and wellness focused. 

The firm took several major initiatives to this end: a) redesigned its technology backbone of the distribution infrastructure, b) streamlined the consumer engagement services (CES) department to make it proactive and customer centric, c) reduced the new product development (NPD) cycles and launched a significant number of new products (50 over the past three years), d) heavily increased digital marketing spend and renewed focus on e-commerce, and e) partnered with tech start-ups to spur digital innovation. 

The firm had come a long way in the past five years and had tasted several successes. However, Narayanan was still searching for answers to several key questions. While the firm had kick-started several transformation initiatives, how would it weave all of them into a coherent strategy? What would be the next steps in its digital strategy? How could the firm leverage new technologies to enhance or create digitally enabled value chains? How would the firm ride the e-commerce boom ahead of the curve? 

Learning Objectives:

The case will help students 

1. appreciate the various forces that drive incumbents in an industry to embark on a DT journey, 
2. evaluate the pros and cons/effectiveness of the strategic and operational decisions firms take in their DT journeys, and 
3. appreciate the range of tools and approaches firms adopt to kick-start DT journeys.