🔒 This resource is locked
Login to unlock the full case deck
Login to Unlock
1. About the Case Competition
The JSW Challenge 2021 is one of India’s most competitive corporate case competitions, hosted by JSW Group across premier B-schools nationally. The competition tasks participants with solving live strategic problems across JSW’s business verticals. This deck represents the National Semi-Finals entry from Team PAOer at the Indian Institute of Management Shillong, a strong finish that reflects the depth of market research and strategic thinking embedded in the submission.
2. Problem Statement Overview
JSW Steel, holding a 22% share of India’s steel market, faced an underutilisation problem in its Color Coated (CC) Sheets segment, a high-quality, competitively priced product that remained poorly penetrated in semi-urban and rural markets. Construction dominates steel demand at 62% of total sector consumption, yet traditional roofing materials like clay tiles, asbestos sheets, and concrete RCC continued to dominate despite their pain points, water leakage, high maintenance, poor aesthetics, and low durability. The challenge was to identify the right customer segments, size the opportunity rigorously, and design a brand penetration strategy that could convert latent willingness to switch into actual market share.
3. What This Winning Deck Covers
The deck opens with a structured industry overview, crude steel demand projected to grow from 110 MT in FY20 to 230 MT in FY30 at 7.65% CAGR, and the global roofing market expanding from $8,585 Mn to $14,862 Mn by FY30 at 11.53% CAGR. A perceptual map positions JSW CC Sheets as the only high-quality, low-price alternative to RCC, establishing the product’s competitive white space before any strategy is proposed.
The research and segmentation section is the deck’s most distinctive section. The team conducted primary research across 18 respondents- builders, architects, end consumers, and suppliers, across urban and rural geographies, mapping seven feature preferences and identifying core pain points by segment. With 72.2% of surveyed customers expressing willingness to switch to better alternatives, the demand signal is validated, not assumed. This consumer insight-to-segmentation approach, grounded in primary research, is also central to the brand strategy in MondelÄ“z Maestros – Bournville Growth Strategy.
The market sizing model quantifies incremental CC Sheet demand at 4.28 lakh metric tonnes, 2.70 from household growth and 1.57 from warehousing sector expansion, translating to a 20.56% growth opportunity for the CC Sheets market. The brand penetration strategy operates across three channels: mobile van displays for category activation in semi-urban and rural areas, temporary structure placements (festival pandals, police booths) for emotional brand-building under the “Will of Steel” positioning platform, and B2B tie-ups with large commercial establishments including warehousing giants and infrastructure conglomerates. The competitive matrix reveals JSW’s clear superiority over TATA BlueScope, Everest Industries, Bansal Roofing, and Hindalco across aesthetics, superior technology, and better value, a gap the brand strategy exploits directly.
Key Takeaways:
- Perceptual mapping before strategy design prevents misaligned positioning, the price-quality matrix here is textbook
- Primary research with a small but targeted sample (builders, architects, end users) yields sharper insights than secondary data alone
- Quantifying demand growth from two independent drivers (households + warehousing) makes the market sizing more defensible
- Emotional brand repositioning (“Steel as a verb, not a noun”) is a creative leap that differentiates from feature-led communication
- B2B tie-ups with infrastructure conglomerates and government bodies are an underused lever for industrial product market entry
4. The Numbers
India’s crude steel demand is projected to grow from 110 MT in FY20 to 230 MT in FY30 at 7.65% CAGR. The CC Sheets market opportunity totals 4.28 lakh MT of incremental demand, 2.70 from household growth, 1.57 from warehousing expansion at 19.01% CAGR, representing a 20.56% growth window. JSW holds 22% of the overall steel market. Survey data shows 72.2% of customers willing to shift to better roofing alternatives.
5. Who Should Study This Deck
This deck is essential for MBA students preparing for B2B GTM, brand strategy, or rural market entry cases, particularly those targeting FMCG, manufacturing, or infrastructure sector competitions. The primary research methodology, bottom-up demand sizing, and three-channel penetration framework are all directly transferable to other industrial product cases. Marketing students will find the “Will of Steel” brand repositioning a strong example of emotion-led B2B branding. Explore more such decks across sectors and competition types at CaseBuzz.
6. Related Decks on CaseBuzz
- JSW Challenge 2023 – The sustainability and digital transformation counterpart from the same competition series; together the two decks offer a full strategic picture of JSW’s business challenges.
- Marketing Ace – IIM Rohtak – VedaVibe Dual-Brand Growth Strategy – Brand architecture and GTM execution across urban and rural segments; complements the dual-market penetration model in this deck.
- MarkQuest Masters – FMS Delhi – B2B GTM, competitor analysis, and execution roadmap; strong methodological parallel for students preparing industrial or infrastructure product cases.