DashKart
A quick commerce strategy simulation
“You never raise money when you have to, and you can never raise it well when you need to.”
You have inherited DashKart, a quick commerce company in Hyderabad that delivers groceries in about ten minutes. It has forty-eight dark stores, a fleet of contract riders, and about two quarters of cash.
Taught in Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship, ready to teach on Pedagogix Course Designer.
See what DashKart feels like
Transcript of the DashKart intro video Captions are part of the video
You have inherited DashKart, a quick commerce company in Hyderabad that delivers groceries in about ten minutes. It has forty-eight dark stores, a fleet of contract riders, and about two quarters of cash. You have eight quarters and one score: what your own stake in the company is worth at the end.
The experienceDark stores are small warehouses that serve online orders only. You place them across thirty districts of Hyderabad, each with its own incomes, rents, traffic, and neighborhood kirana shops. Choosing neighborhoods is choosing customers, and five kinds of customers want different things, from Clock Watchers who pay for speed to Deal Hoppers who follow discounts.
You set rider pay and routing, prices and fees, store staffing, product range, and marketing, and you decide when to raise money. Every raise is quoted before you commit, and the money arrives a quarter later. A raise made in desperation comes with terms that can leave a founder owning a share of very little. Four rivals, Jhapak, Vegam, NowNow, and Sabzi Lane, grow stronger every quarter. Orion, a giant with deep pockets, will enter at a time that nobody tells you.
A market outlook arrives one quarter ahead, and new capacity takes one quarter to build, so the second Diwali tests whether you learned from the first. Three executives, Rukmini Rao, Devraj Menon, and Aisha Qureshi, read the same numbers and want different things. The debrief names the strategy you built, sets it beside Blinkit, Zepto, BigBasket, and Instamart, and tells you whether you repaired the weakness that your strategy created.
- In a business that consumes capital, growth and unit economics must be traded against each other.
- A company that commits to one way of winning beats a company that is competent at everything, and every commitment creates a weakness that must be repaired.
- Raise money from a position of strength, because the terms of a late raise can cost more than the dilution.
- A forecast has value only to a manager who acts on it before the capacity is needed.
- Customers who are hard to win away are the best defense against a richer entrant.
- A strategy here is a commitment. Students choose a way to win, accept the weakness that the choice creates, and decide how to repair it.
- Growth and unit economics pull against each other in a business that consumes capital. Students manage that tension for eight quarters, with a richer rival on the way.
- Students form a founder's judgment about capital: when to raise, how much ownership to give up, and what it costs to act late.
- Capacity takes time to build. Students develop the habit of committing on a forecast before the evidence is complete.
- Company and role
- Founder of DashKart, with a 60 percent stake, forty-eight dark stores in Hyderabad, and an executive committee of three
- Discipline
- Competitive strategy and entrepreneurship
- Also fits courses in
- Venture capital and entrepreneurial finance, e-commerce and retail, platform strategy, operations
- Format
- Solo. Everyone in a class plays the same market, set by the instructor. On the cohort Results tab the instructor can score the room, present the class results, and download every run as a CSV (comma-separated values) file
- Time
- Eight quarters, with two Diwalis and two monsoons. Plan a 75-minute session, with about 40 minutes of play and 20 of debrief
- Advisers and AI
- The three executives speak from rules tied to your actual results, so every line they say can be traced to your own numbers
- How you are scored
- Founder value: what the company is worth, less what investors are owed first, times the share you still own. Capture compares that value with the best play found for your market. The strongest committed strategy captures 73 percent, and the company that tries to be good at everything captures 36 percent
- Teaching materials
- Student Guide and Instructor Guide with session plans, a board plan, grading guidance, and a briefing on the Indian quick commerce industry. The instructor dashboard offers eight markets, five difficulty settings, and three presets
- Audience
- MBA core strategy, entrepreneurship and venture finance electives, undergraduate capstone courses, and executive education
DashKart beside The Startup Game
The Startup Game, from Wharton, through Harvard Business Impact. Mollick, is the simulation most programs already know here. Where ours differs: The student runs the company for eight quarters: stores, prices, service, and the timing of every raise.
| What is compared | The Startup Game | DashKart |
|---|---|---|
| Who plays | 20 to 86 students play founders, investors, and employees | One student, the founder |
| Time | 60 minutes | One 75-minute session: 40 minutes of play, 20 of debrief |
Formats and times come from each publisher's own product page, September 2026.
DashKart comes ready to run in class
Student Guide
Instructor Guide with session plans and grading guidance
Board plan
Briefing on the Indian quick commerce industry
Class results to score and present, with every run as a CSV file
Eight markets, five difficulty settings, three presets
Instructor dashboard
Founder value scored against the best play found
Bring DashKart to your classroom
You can check out online in a few minutes. For a campus or a big group, just ask us for a quote.