Abstract:

This case describes the entrepreneurial journey of two college friends — Anchal Taatya and Abhiram Nukalapati. While studying at IIM Ahmedabad, they saw an opportunity for aggregating credit card discounts and launched a pilot in February 2019 under the name Circles. Circles helped discount seekers and credit cardholders to connect and make transactions. Case A outlines their journey until the launch, where they faced the dilemma of choosing between a B2B and a B2C business model.

The key objective of this case is to understand the business formation stage of a college start-up, and how they arrived at opportunity identification. The case is aimed at enabling classroom discussions on the role of trust in platform businesses and how regulations — or lack thereof — can shape the destiny of new ventures.