?Introduction
- Do you want to expand your business?
- Do you know how to expand your business at a low investment?
In the last century, the business was done in the traditional way wherein a businessman needed to develop the whole business. However, with the advancement in technology, the way to do business has changed.
Now, you need not develop the whole business. You can convert a small idea into a big conglomerate.
In this article, 6 case studies of renowned companies will articulate you how to expand your business. They didn’t do everything by themselves. Instead, they made one thing their competitive strength and spread their business all over the world.
Case Study -1: Apple iPhone
No one knows better than Apple, the world’s most premium mobile manufacturing company, how to expand business across the world without increasing expenditure.
Apple manufactures zero mobile of their own. Each and every part of Apple's mobile is manufactured by a different company. For instance,
- Batteries of Apple phones are manufactured by Samsung in South Korea
- The display is outsourced to Japan Display & Sharp Electricals in Japan and LG Display in South Korea
- Flash memory is made by Toshiba in Japan and Samsung in South Korea, etc.
The main reason behind the success of Apple is that they focused on the asset-light model by outsourcing the manufacturing part to different companies all over the world.
Had it been manufacturing all parts on its own, it needed to spend a lot of capital, manpower to establish and manage its manufacturing plants, which would have made it difficult for the company to spread all over the world.
Therefore, instead of manufacturing different parts, they have focused on innovation and building their strength to get a competitive advantage.
Case Study -2: WhatsApp
WhatsApp, the world’s largest internet-based messaging services provider, has no server of its own. It uses the fly light model, which is one of the ways to how to expand your business.
Before creating WhatsApp in 2010, Brian Acton and Jan Koum went to get a job in Facebook but they were rejected.
As Facebook felt the warmth of mind-blowing success of WhatsApp, it acquired WhatsApp for $19
billion in 2014.
Case Study -3: AIRBNB
It is another case study which shows how to expand your business.AIRBNB, the world’s largest accommodation provider, possess zero property in their own name.
They are the first one to directly connect consumers with consumers (C2C).
They earn 10% commission from property owners (i.e. hotels) and 3% on each successful transaction from customers.
Flying on the asset-light model, now, more than 2 lakh people are daily booking hotel rooms through AIRBNB globally, making it 30 billion-dollar company.
Case Study -4: Facebook
Despite having zero content of their own Facebook has emerged as the world’s largest content management company.
 Today, Facebook has more than 2.27 billion active users around the globe. |
Initially, it was created by Mark Zuckerberg as a site, ’Hot or Not’, during his college days, which was a failure.
From past debacles, Zukerberg learned better how to expand business as he dropped out of college to start Facebook in 2004.
Learning from his previous failures and understanding the market need, Zuckerberg brought many massive changes in it.
Case Study -5: Uber
It is a case study of how to expand your business.
With no taxi of their own, Uber, has become the largest taxi service provider in the world.
By connecting the taxi owners with travelers, not only they made traveling hassle-free, but they generated hundreds of thousands of jobs around the world. Currently, it has 2 million drivers globally with 50,000 drivers joining it per month.
Case Study -6: Alibaba
Alibaba is the largest network of sellers and buyers. It is the world’s most valuable retailer with zero inventory in its own name.To scale up the business, Alibaba created its own payment portal. Now, they don’t need a third party for payment gateway.
- It focused on its strength and innovation.
- Currently, it has 600 million consumers across the world.
In the above case studies, you have observed that the success of a company depends on how easily it can expand in the different parts of the world. To do so, your business should be based on the asset-light model.
| If you want to expand your business all across the world, then make it scalable, make it light enough to fly high in the sky. |
