🏢

The Last Board Meeting

A company is in crisis. Every function is in the room.
Nobody agrees on what went wrong — or what to do next.

📋 Mission

A fictional Indian company is 90 days from collapse. You will be assigned a role, investigate the evidence, run the Board meeting, vote on the rescue plan, and discover what really killed the company.

The number that explains everything: 0.47
Figure out what it is. Figure out what it means.

🎭 Your Role Briefing
⏱️ Game Flow
Phase 1: Investigation (20 min) — unlock evidence cards
Phase 2: Board Meeting (25 min) — ask questions, debate
Phase 3: Vote on the rescue plan
Phase 4: Reveal what really happened
🎯 Remember
Stay in character during the Board meeting.
Figure out what 0.47 means — before the room does.
Everyone is partially right. Everyone is partially responsible.
🔍 Investigation Phase
Unlock evidence. Find what the company is hiding.
20:00
TIME REMAINING
🧮 Interest Coverage Ratio Calculator — The Number That Explains Everything

📁 Evidence Cards — Click to unlock

Each card reveals a piece of the story. The full picture only emerges when all cards are open.

⚖️ Who Is Most Responsible?

Rank each suspect. You can update this in the Board Meeting.

🏛️ Emergency Board Meeting
Every role must speak. Every claim must be backed by a number.
25:00
BOARD TIME LEFT
Rs.2,200 Cr
Revenue Year 3
Rs.180 Cr
EBITDA Year 3
Rs.4,800 Cr
Total Debt
0.47×
ICR — CRITICAL 🔴
Rs.320 Cr
Marketing Spend Yr 3
Rs.384 Cr
Interest Expense Yr 3
14,000
Employees at Risk

ICR Timeline — When Did It Become Irreversible?

Key Comparison: Rs.320 Cr marketing spend vs Rs.384 Cr interest expense — same year, same company. The company spent almost as much building the brand as it owed on the debt it could not service.

Mandatory Cross-Examination Questions

These questions MUST be addressed before the vote. Check each when your group has answered it.

Questions addressed0/8

Board Room Discussion Log

🗳️ Cast Your Vote
The Board must decide. 90 days remain.

📊 Live Class Vote (simulated)

Cast your vote first to unlock the reveal.

✈️
KINGFISHER AIRLINES
Founded 2005 · Ceased operations 2012 · 20,000 employees · Rs.9,000 Crore in unpaid debt

The Marketing vs Finance Debate — Resolved

CMO's Claim
Rs.4.2 in revenue for every Rs.1 of marketing spend
Horizon: Current year. Debt impact: Not considered.
CFO's Claim
Rs.320 Cr debt repayment saves Rs.317 Cr NPV in perpetuity
Horizon: Long-term. NPV = Rs.38 Cr / 0.12.
The actual answer: Both were partially right — measuring different things with different frameworks.

Marketing-attributed revenue: Rs.1,344 Cr × 8.2% EBITDA margin = Rs.110 Cr incremental EBITDA. Interest cost of Rs.320 Cr debt: Rs.25.6 Cr/year. The campaign was individually profitable — but the total debt pile was already causing insolvency.

Marketing ROI in revenue ≠ Marketing ROI against cost of capital. A campaign generating Rs.4.20 per rupee looks brilliant on a marketing dashboard. But if the company cannot service its debt, that profitability is irrelevant — the company will not exist to harvest the brand equity it built.

This is exactly what this course teaches you to see.

Kingfisher's HR Head submitted a 1,200-person hiring plan when the company's ICR was 0.47× (case figure — simplified for classroom use). The actual ICR from audited BSE accounts in the last year of positive EBITDA was 0.107×.

She did nothing wrong by ordinary HR standards. She followed process. The plan was justified by business need. It was approved by the CFO.

She was missing one skill: reading the balance sheet before submitting a budget.

If she had seen 0.47× — or the real 0.107× — she would have known the company could not service its debt from operations. She might have given 1,200 families an honest conversation about risk before they joined a company that was already technically insolvent.

The 5-Step Check Every HR Leader Should Run Before Submitting a Budget:
1. Net Debt ÷ EBITDA → Debt/EBITDA (>4× = high risk)
2. EBITDA ÷ Interest → ICR (<1.5× = covenant danger)
3. EBITDA Buffer = Current EBITDA − (1.5 × Interest) → your hiring headroom
4. Maximum safe payroll = Buffer × 0.85
5. If Buffer is negative → do NOT submit a hiring plan. Submit a cost reduction plan instead.
That five-step check takes 10 minutes.
It would have changed everything for 1,200 people.
📖 Faculty Debrief
Discussion questions, answer keys, course connections.

📋 Your Full Decision Record

🧮 ICR Scenario Lab — Live Calculations

Play Again with a Different Role

The CFO experience is very different from the CMO experience.