A collection of successful case interview

experiences of the students of the 55th

batch of IIM Calcutta with McKinsey &
Co., Boston Consulting Group, Bain &
Co., A. T. Kearney, Alvarez & Marsal
and Accenture Strategy

Consulting
Casebook
Summers
(55th Batch)

Published by:
IIM Calcutta Consulting Club
Copyright © 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or

transmitted in any form, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or
mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the Consulting Club, IIM
Calcutta.
 NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
IIM Calcutta Consulting Club is delighted to present this latest version of Consulting Interview
Experiences.

75 students of the 55th batch, having secured summer internships in firms such as McKinsey &
Co., the Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Co., A.T. Kearney, Accenture, Alvarez & Marsal, have
contributed over 40 cases, and we thank them for their time and effort. We would also like to
thank Ansh Srivastava from the 55th batch for extending his help.

The motive of this booklet is to present the diversity of cases that can be asked during Day 0
interviews. It offers not only a variety of cases, but also a feel of how an interview proceeds, what
interviewers expect, and how even simple things can seem complicated when the pressure is on.

How to use the book?

One can use the book as a self-study resource or to practice cases in groups. A case group of 3-4
people is ideal to practice with, wherein 1-2 people can administer/observe any given case.
Anything upwards of 40 cases/candidate is ideal for a thorough preparation for consulting
interviews.

There are two most important aspects that will be evaluated in any case- structure and
communication. The best way to progress in your prep is to re-visit your framework after every
case, identify the gaps, and incorporate the new findings. Needless to say, there are certain
common interview case types that candidates must focus most on – such as profitability, go-to-
market, revenue growth, pricing etc. However, companies have increasingly started asking the
more unconventional/ real life cases and therefore it is important to practice these as well.

We hope this will be a valuable resource for students preparing for similar interviews.

EDITORS
KARTIK SINGLA (55TH BATCH)
VARUNI GOEL (54TH BATCH)
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES .................................................................................... 3-108

MCKINSEY & COMPANY ............................................................................................ 3-27

Kartik Singla ............................................................................................................. 3
Ayush Gogia ............................................................................................................. 7
Kartik Tyagi ............................................................................................................ 10
Ansh Srivastava...................................................................................................... 13
Mayank Kumar ....................................................................................................... 16
Ekansh Agrawal...................................................................................................... 21
Yatharth Rana ........................................................................................................ 24

BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP.................................................................................. 28-67

Atishaya Jain .......................................................................................................... 28
Priyanjit Biswas ...................................................................................................... 32
Abdulhussain Songerwala ...................................................................................... 37
Suraj Suresh Khot .................................................................................................. 39
Sachet Jain............................................................................................................. 42
Adarsh Kapoor ....................................................................................................... 45
Shrey Verma .......................................................................................................... 47
Yash Patel .............................................................................................................. 50
P Pratham .............................................................................................................. 55
Manan Ved ............................................................................................................. 57
Shelley Singh ......................................................................................................... 59
Rajat Garg .............................................................................................................. 63
Subramaniam T ...................................................................................................... 66

BAIN & COMPANY .................................................................................................. 68-94

Naveen Kumar Reddy Pasham .............................................................................. 68
Akshay Srivastava .................................................................................................. 72
NantaKumar R ........................................................................................................ 76
Indira V ................................................................................................................... 79
Prerna Ajitsaria ....................................................................................................... 82
Namrata Sharma .................................................................................................... 84
Ashwin K Pandian .................................................................................................. 87
Atishay Agarwal ...................................................................................................... 89
Siddharth Srivastava .............................................................................................. 92

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 A.T. KEARNEY ...................................................................................................... 95-104
Tanishq Mehra........................................................................................................ 95
Parnil Singh ............................................................................................................ 97
Pranav Mohindroo ................................................................................................ 100
Ashrit Tandon ....................................................................................................... 102

ALVAREZ & MARSAL ........................................................................................... 105-106

Prateek Sachan .................................................................................................... 105

ACCENTURE ........................................................................................................ 107-108

Sushmita Haldar ................................................................................................... 107

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INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Kartik Singla

Interviewing firm McKinsey & Co.
Slot 8AM
Interviewer Amit (Associate Partner), Alpesh (Partner)
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT(BHU), Varanasi
College
Branch 2017
Work Experience 8 months
Firm ZS Associates
Sector Consulting
ROUND 1
Interview Experience Unconventional Case
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer You look nervous, do you need some water?
Candidate Had some water and then started with the interview
Interviewer Tell me something about yourself?
Candidate Told him about my undergrad college, my interests and my experience at
ZS.
Interviewer In which industry did you work at ZS Associates? What was your project on?
Candidate I explained him about my project in the hospitality industry, with a US based
hotel chain. The project revolved around revenue management, and what
were my key responsibilities..
Interviewer Why do you want to work in consulting?
Candidate Have an answer ready for why consulting. I linked it to my previous
experience of working with a consulting firm, and how I liked problem
solving and seeing my work's real time impact on client's revenues.
Interviewer Great! So I have a question, can you tell me why the fiscal deficit of India
high?
Candidate I did not have much clue about this. Confirmed about fiscal deficit, where he
mentioned he was interested in knowing about major imports of India.
Interviewer What are the major imports for India you can think of?
Candidate I talked about military equipment, machine tools, pharma etc.. But forgot
one main import, i.e. Oil.
Interviewer Okay, so your case is how will you reduce consumption of Oil in India? And
the case needs to be solved fast, without you asking much questions.
Candidate I started by asking about which oil products are we considering (Petrol and
Diesel), who is our client (government of India) and what is the timeline we
have in our mind?
Interviewer He stopped me in between and said lets start working towards the solution.
How will you go about doing it?

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Candidate I broke the total oil consumption into vehicular consumption and non-
vehicular consumption (used in factories).
Interviewer You can focus on the vehicular consumption for this case.
Candidate So I think consumption from vehicles can be split into consumption per
vehicle*no of vehicles. I will first start by analyzing how to decrease
consumption per vehicle. This can be done in two ways, either we can try to
increase the mileage of vehicles, or we can make fuels more efficient so that
the vehicles consume less fuel.
Interviewer Okay, now how would you decrease number of vehicles?
Candidate For number of vehicles, we are talking about vehicles that use petrol/diesel
for operating. So we can either focus on decreasing the already existing
vehicles (phasing out the old inefficient vehicles, promoting the idea of
pooling) or promote the type of vehicles that do not use petrol/diesel
(electric vehicles).
Interviewer Great, so can you focus on how we can promote the use of electric
vehicles?
Candidate I approached this from the supply and demand side. We have to take care
whether the automobile companies have sufficient incentives to make e-
vehicles and whether the public is actually interested in using the e-
vehicles. First, talking about the automobile companies, I discussed about
PPP models like Joint Venture, providing them subsidy etc. Coming to the
demand side, I used the awareness, accessibility, affordability framework
and discussed all the 3 elements.
Interviewer So if the government has two options, of either promoting the e-vehicles for
public transport (buses, trains) or private transport (cars), so which
alternative should it choose?
Candidate I thought for some time and then said the government should first try to
promote e-vehicles for public transport as the consumption of fuel by these
large vehicles is more as compared to small cars, and this will serve as a
platform to make people aware about the concept of e-vehicles. Then we
can start promoting the use of electric vehicles for private transport as well.
Interviewer Okay, great! Thank you for your time and all the best.
Candidate Thank you Sir!
ROUND 2
Interview Experience Profitability Case (Revenue Side problem)
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer So, how is it going for you till now?
Candidate It is going fine for me sir. I had one interview where we talked about
consumption of oil in India.
Interviewer Don’t call me Sir, its Alpesh. Started to ask about some personals like what
did you do in your college, how was your experience at ZS, why consulting
etc.?
Candidate Talked about the points in my CV, especially about my POR's. Then
explained my motivation to do consulting, almost similar to the answer in
the previous interview.

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Interviewer Okay, so let’s do a small case. My friend is a restaurant owner in New Delhi,
and his is seeing declining profitability as well as profits. You need to
explore the reason why and give me some solutions.
Candidate I started by asking about some preliminary questions about what type of
restaurant is it (Italian restaurant), what type of dishes it serves (both food
and drinks), market saturation, what has been the timeline for decline,
whether it is an area-wide problem (No) etc.
Interviewer Go ahead!
Candidate Then I first talked about profitability, being the ratio of profits over
revenues. We have been given that profits have been declining, so the 1st
reason can be declining profit margins (revenues- V.C.), another reason can
be a change in the product mix and a 3rd reason can be change in fixed
costs (they may have increased significantly).
Interviewer I would say that costs have remained almost similar.
Candidate Okay, so then the revenues might have declined in the past year, or there
might have been a change in the product mix. I will first begin by analyzing
the decline in revenues, and then talk about the change in product mix. Is
the approach fine?
Interviewer I wanted to understand what exactly do you mean by change in product
mix?
Candidate By change in mix, I mean if there were some food dishes which were
profitable and sold earlier and are not being sold now, or if we had high
margin drinks that were being sold earlier and not now.
Interviewer Now he has realized that there is a need to increase revenues. What
alternatives can you think of?
Candidate This case now transformed from a profitability case to a growth case. I
started by saying there are 2 alternatives: We can either increase revenues
per customer, or increase number of customers. Do have any specific
objective in mind?
Interviewer We cannot increase number of customers, so let’s focus on increase
revenue per customer.
Candidate Revenue per customer can be increased by either increasing the quantity
consumed per customer or increasing the price. Since we are in a
competitive market, increasing the price does not seem to be a good
option. So we should aim at increasing quantity consumed per customer.
Interviewer Great, so what ideas do you have of doing the same?
Candidate I am thinking of 3 main options: We can design customer loyalty programs
so that we retain our customers and encourage them to visit the restaurant
frequently. We can offer bulk discounts on a specific order value, and we
can try to cross-sell our products, by that I mean is when a customer only
comes in for food, we can have promotional offers on drinks etc.
Interviewer Ohk what else can you think of?
Candidate I was somewhat stuck at this point and was trying to think point-wise, which
made it appear that I was trying to make a bucket list. Then I tried to split
quantity into food and drinks. Gave solutions to increase food consumption
and drinks consumption separately, like introducing more options in the

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 menu, have special complementary offers on drinks certain time of the day
when the count of customers if low etc.

Interviewer Fine Kartik, I think you did well. But we would need to take a 3rd round of
interview to be absolutely sure!
Candidate I got a bit nervous, but kept my calm and happily said that would be great.
He called in another partner, who asked me how my interviews were going
till now. I said they were fine and I will try to improve in the next round. But
he said we felt they went really good and we would like to give you an offer
:)

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INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Ayush Gogia

Interviewing firm Mckinsey and Co.
Slot 0M
Interviewer Round 1 - __________ (Partner), Round 2- Prasad (Partner)
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Roorkee
College
Branch Civil Engg
Work Experience 20 months
Firm EXL Service
Sector Analytics
Round 1
Interview Ice-breaker Questions, Case-type: Reducing volumes. To my surprise, it was a
Experience (CASE - telephonic interview. I was a bit unprepared for this but pulled myself together
TYPE) and maintained my composure.
Interviewer Tell me about yourself Ayush
Candidate Told a pre-prepared answer
Interviewer How has Term-I been? What have you done in college apart from academics?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Okay let's do a quick case. Your client is a NBFC which has seen lean volumes
lately. How will you address the problem?
Candidate Reiterated the problem to make sure that I got it correctly. Asked the
preliminary questions about who are the customers, what geographies do we
operate in, what are the channels through which we approach prospective
customers, what is the industry phenomenon,etc
Interviewer We have very limited data about all of this, since this is a short case, I want you
to illustrate what are our possible options to address the problem?
Candidate Okay. First of all I'll see which segment of borrowers we target and find out the
reason they are not borrowing. If it is not an industry-wide problem, we can use
the customer funnel to see where the problem lies - awareness, likeability, and
availability.
Interviewer Good. Carry on.
Candidate If awareness is a problem, we can concentrate on the channels through which
we approach our prospective customers. As far as likeability is concerned, we
can improve that by offering credit on more lucrative terms
Interviewer How else can we improve our volumes?
Candidate Apart from this, we can look to expand our market size by catering to a larger
set of customers, this can be done by expanding our target segments, i.e. the
size of firms we cater to, or the geographies that we operate in.
Interviewer Any other suggestions?
Candidate I have already talked about both the aspects related to volumes - market share
and market size. I think that's all I have. Do you want me to explore any other
aspect?

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Interviewer I think that'll be it. Any questions?
Candidate Nothing in particular. Great talking to you.
Interviewer All the best for the next interview!
Round 2
Interview Insurance industry. Low renewals
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer Hi Ayush. Tell me about yourself.
Candidate Crisp answer that I had pre-prepared
Interviewer Why consulting?
Candidate Pre- prepared answer.
Interviewer Okay let's start the case. Your client is an insurance provider and is seeing a fall
in insurance renewals. You have to suggest the client on how to improve the
situation.
Candidate Okay. I want to understand the scenario from 3 aspects, Client-Customers-
Competitors. First of all, what is the type of insurance that we are offering and
who are our customers?
Interviewer We are offering automobile insurance, consider only cars for this case.
Candidate Great. Who are the competitors and are they facing the same problem?
Interviewer The industry is fragmented, we are not aware about the competitor’s situation.
Candidate To proceed with the solution, I would like to know how does this business
function. What are the channels through which new policies and renewals are
sold?
Interviewer Great question. There are mainly 3 channels - Dealer's store, Agents and Walk-
ins.
Candidate I assume that the agents are most crucial channel when it comes to renewals,
am I right?
Interviewer You can concentrate on the agents for the time being.
Candidate What kind of contract exists with the agents?
Interviewer Agents sell policies and renewals for various insurance firms. They are firm
agnostic since they are receiving the same commission form each one of them.
Candidate Okay great. I see that the problem might lie here. An agent will push our
scheme only if he receives some additional benefits from selling our renewal
policy.
Interviewer How will you analyze these benefits?
Candidate I will break the benefits into economic and non-economic. Economic benefits
could be higher commission per renewal. Also, we could set a bonus on
achieving a target of a certain number of renewals.
Interviewer What about the non-economic benefits?
Candidate We can provide agents non-economic benefits through more inclusion and
recognition. One of the solutions might be to turn some agents into exclusive
agents, thereby making them feel more a part of the company. Moreover,
recognitions such as best agent of the month can cater to improving the
situation.
Interviewer Great Ayush. I think that'll be it. Good case.

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Candidate *Exited the room and was given an offer straight away*
DOs and In Mck interviews, cases are usually very broad, you have to come up with ideas
DONTs/Important for each situation. One must not forget that these ideas should not come as a
Tips bucket list. Keep following your framework and keep churning out ideas at each
step. Also, expect the unexpected. I never expected to be interviewed on the
telephone. They'll also judge you on your composure. You just have to believe
that you belong there.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Kartik Tyagi

Interviewing firm Mckinsey
Slot 9:00
Interviewer
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Madras
College
Branch Mechanical
Work Experience 2 years
Firm ICICI
Sector Analytics
Round 1
Interview
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer You are advising NITI Ayog, the think-tank of the Government to gauge the
viability of pushing Electric Vehicles related grants in India
Candidate To consider the viability I'll be looking into the monetary part and non-
monetary part. I need a little more info before proceeding. So, is it fine if I
proceed by analyzing the economic feasibility and I'd be requiring some data
as we go on.
Interviewer Great, go ahead.
Candidate So, without any loss of generality I will be considering only the revenue that
government gets from sale of fuel and not the registry of vehicle, road tax and
other taxes related to vehicles. I need to find the revenue government get
from the sale of petrol and diesel currently…
Interviewer Before delving into that, I'd like to tell you that India's vehicle segment is
currently 80% dependent on crude oil and is growing at the rate of 7% YOY.
Also, the import cost is going to rise by 70% in the next 10 years.
Candidate Ok. So I believe we are going to be more dependent on oil if the current trend
continues. (There was couple of back & forth conversations understanding the
increment in import costs)
Interviewer Yes, Can you tell me how much would vehicles segment be dependent in the
next ten years?
Candidate Currently, the segment is 80% dependent and growing at 7%. Thus, using the
rule of 70 in the next 10 years we would be 160/170 % dependent. This
should be around 94%.
Interviewer Great…. You can list down few non-monetary aspects now
Candidate Pollution would reduce, the maintenance cost for the owners might reduce
despite Evs being higher priced as total cost of ownership might
reduce…calculations would be needed to appropriately comment on this
aspect. Then less dependability on Oil can decrease Current Account Deficit of
India and those funds can be put to better use.

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 Interviewer A brief set of questions about what I like about the firm and shared a bit of his
own personal experiences.
Round 2
Interview
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer Standard introduction and chat. Let's do a case
Candidate Sure
Interviewer You are advising an Indian car manufacturer, say Tata motors. How should
they go about entering a new market, say Nigeria? Jump straight to the case,
take all the assumptions from your general knowledge and just think out loud.
Candidate Standard market entry case. I will be looking at three parameters -
Attractiveness of the market, Viability of the operations and Feasibility of the
plan
Interviewer Sure, Go ahead. Please mention the examples of any company that you can
think of as you go along.
Candidate Sure, So to look at the attractiveness of the market I'll be looking at the
following aspects - Market Size, Market Share and the Margins.
Interviewer Go on
Candidate With respect to market Size I'll be looking at its growth rate, current trends -
what kind of cars are currently available to them in the market. In regards to
market share, I will look the competitive landscape - if the industry is
concentrated or fragmented, the growth that I can get once I enter the
market, from customer point of view whether the customers have brand
loyalty, how price sensitive they are, what the switching cost are. w.r.t to
margins part I'd look at which model should I introduce first and which
variant. What other costs would I have to incur while completing the supply
chain.
Interviewer He seemed convinced with this list. Great, Go ahead
Candidate Now jumping onto the viability aspect, I'd be looking at two parameters -
barriers to entry and Risks. Barriers to entry could be in the form of
Government regulations, regulatory requirements. Few of the risks that are
coming to my mind are Competitive reaction- they can collude, price
penetration can happen. How people may perceive our car over there and in
other markets as well. Whether our cars would be accepted by people over
there or not. There could be various parameters - price, design, features,
foreign product etc. And just in case we fails, what exit options would be
available.
Interviewer By this time I realized the interviewer Is checking the breadth of my
knowledge. Go on.
Candidate While checking the feasibility of the above mentioned points. I would be
looking at different aspects of the value chain till the end costumers and the
financial capability of the firm to meet those requirements. Do you want me
to get into that?
Interviewer No, that's not required. Tell me three most critical decisions that you will take
as the CEO of Tata Motors before you enter the Nigerian Market.

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 Candidate Sure, Can I take two minutes to think upon this?
Interviewer Sure.
Candidate 1) First the calculation of the attractiveness of the market should be
quantified in terms of the profit making opportunity.
2) Which car model should I launch first? This should be in accordance to
market needs and should appeal the masses. By this time I had realized that I
haven't given any example so thought of talking about how Jeep came into
Indian market when people where shifting from sedans to SUVs and since
there was not much competition in this segment, the initial promotional
offers helped Jeep to be a huge success. So, selecting the right car to be
launched first is very crucial
3) As CEO of Tata Motors, which is already quite established in other markets.
My priority in the short run would be to capture as much market share as
possible in the Nigerian Market. Thus, the right kind of promotion and PR
campaigns to let the masses know about our entry needs to be done. This
coupled with the right car type would surely allow us to carve a hefty share
for us from the pie. In the long run however, I'd looking of introducing other
car models and streamlining the operations to maximize the profit.
DOs and Be thorough with standard case types. Maintain your calm that day even if
DONTs/Important you screw up your previous interviews. It gives the selectors an indication that
Tips the person can take on the stress appropriately. Have a good sleep the day
before your interview. Ask the right questions, it comes with practice. Don't
jump to conclusions. Assumptions are generally not to be taken unless
specifically told by the interviewer. All the Best!!!

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Ansh Srivastava

Interviewing firm McKinsey & Company
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Alpesh Chaddha, Namrata Dubashi
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate College IIT(ISM) Dhanbad
Branch Mining Engineering
Work Experience 10 months
Firm PricewaterhouseCoopers
Sector Consulting
Round 1
Interview Experience (CASE General Discussion-Minor GTM case-General Discussion
- TYPE)
Interviewer Tell me something about you that I don't know
Candidate Told about an intern that I had done which was mentioned as one line
in my CV. I knew that the partner was doing a project with the
company I had interned with and hence we talked a bit about my
intern.
Interviewer Let's start the case. I want you to imagine the year to be 1990-2000. A
gold based fund is being introduced in the market. What do you
understand the fund will be?
Candidate Answered how the fund will be linked to the price of gold and how it is
now a mainstream savings instrument offered by multiple NBFCs
Interviewer Who would you think would be the target customers and what would
be the product's value proposition to each of the customers?
Candidate Tried segmenting into different categories. In the end stuck with
personal users and businesses and told how it will be a safe
investment, especially in India where investors (especially households)
consider gold a very safe investment
Interviewer Discuss the pros of the instrument and tell me how you'd sell this
product to the individual customer who buys for personal use
Candidate Defined personal use as to how a person invests in gold jewellery and
other gold items for long term, only to use them in times of heavy
spending like marriages or when in dire need of large sums of money
Interviewer What will be the cons of owning gold (in the form of jewellery, biscuits,
etc.) in comparison to owning the product
Candidate Told about how the jewellery would have making charges and how it
will have a specific design, trends might change in the long term (Lost
structure for a bit and started to list out unrelated points). Came back
to talk about the pros of currency and how the product would alleviate
the need of actually keeping gold and the risk associated with it. Talked
a bit more about how it will be a facilitator to have ready money to buy

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 gold as and when needed, a more liquid investment which can be
encashed at anytime.

Interviewer If you had to point out one pro of this product to win over the
customer, what would it be?
Candidate Answered how I'd pitch it as a product that offers the security of
owning gold without the hassles of owning and handling actual gold.
Round 2
Interview Experience (CASE Cost reduction of Steel Producer-Decision to insource core banking
- TYPE) solution
Interviewer Since we have only 15-20 minutes, let's jump right into the case
Candidate Hi. Okay let's begin, I am ready.
Interviewer So we have a steel manufacturer who is looking to reduce costs.
Candidate Asked some preliminary questions about manufacturer's scale,
geography, customers, order pipeline etc. Then I delved into the value
chain and covered all intricacies of steel making from my prior
knowledge of the industry.
Interviewer The partner was impressed with the knowledge and happy that it'll be
an intelligent discussion from then on.
Candidate I started to talk about the raw material costs
Interviewer The partner clarified how we have an indigenous iron mine and how we
source coal from abroad, say Australia
Candidate I continued by pointing out various cost saving opportunities in the raw
material procurement and storage, the blast furnace process of steel
making, finishing and selling/distributing. Although I covered the whole
process I couldn’t figure out any definitive cost cutting measures
Interviewer The partner noticed how I was befuddled by the intricate details (I had
myself introduced) and not finding out any major cost cutting
measures. She suggested me to refrain from using any prior knowledge
of the steel manufacturing process and handle the case as you would
any normal case. So now tell me what would be the major cost drivers
that you'd look at in a generic B2B manufacturing setup
Candidate Answered with all the cost drivers that I could think of in a well thought
out, structured manner.
Interviewer The partner immediately changed the case to the next one, where I
was to advise the head of a national bank on whether to insource a
core banking solution
Candidate I asked probing questions to understand and confirm what a core
banking solution is, how it is installed, implemented and used on a daily
basis.
Interviewer The partner answered all the questions and helped me make a
cohesive understanding of the solution that a national bank might have

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 Candidate It was clear how it is a single solution and it handles the core
operations. I clarified how I understand that it is a huge decision and
that parts of the solution's services can't be insourced. I confirmed the
same with the partner
Interviewer To expedite the process and close the case, the partner asked me the
parameters I'd look at to decide whether to insource or to leave the
solution with the outsourced party, and hence make a final suggestion
to the head of the national bank
Candidate I understood how this could be the final question and went all out in
listing parameters, with relatively good structure. I missed giving the
final recommendation and
Interviewer The partner asked for a final recommendation in a manner that I would
put it to the head of the bank
Candidate I understood how this was a call to summarize the whole discussion
and make a cautious recommendation, which I did.
DOs and DONTs/Important Keep calm in the interview. Don't look for a case that fits your
Tips frameworks. Listen well to the questions and if you can't find an
overarching framework to apply to the case, try answering each
question in a structured and exhaustive manner. Don’t contort simple
questions by giving complex multi-layered answers (as I did when I
recounted all the pros of currency to glean out pros of the gold based
savings instrument).
Try to practice cases from your area of expertise and unhinge yourself
from your prior understanding when practicing such cases, in order to
not transfer your biases and predispositions onto a fresh case.
If a question is asked which has multiple sections that need answering,
take each part of the question one at a time and don't miss a part of
the question.
Even when the conversation feels like one random question after
another, try to keep a cohesive narrative and keep linking your answer
and logic to previously answered questions about the same case,
because many a times the partner poses follow up questions to guide
you in the right direction and to help you in answering a previously
asked question.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Mayank Kumar

Interviewing firm McKinsey and Co.
Slot 9.30 a.m.
Interviewer Each round of interview was conducted by a partner from the firm.
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate College Indian Institute of Technology Ropar
Branch Computer Science and Engineering
Work Experience Fresher
Round 1
Interview Experience (CASE - Guesstimate
TYPE)
Question 1.
Interviewer Calculate the number of people in Kolkata who avail the metro rail
transportation every day.
Candidate (Repeated the question. There was some confusion in the beginning,
but it got clarified after a few minutes) Shall I assume the calculation
for a normal weekday? Or do I have to consider a weekend/holiday?
Interviewer You can assume it’s a weekday.
Candidate (Requested for a few minutes to structure the approach).
Interviewer (Granted me some time to think).
Candidate We can use a top-down approach and try narrowing the population
of Kolkata down to the metro users. Shall I proceed with this
approach?
Interviewer Yes, please go ahead.
Candidate Since it’s a weekday, I will factor in only those people who travel for
work purposes. Those who travel for entertainment purposes can be
considered as negligible.
Interviewer Ok, continue.
Candidate The population of Kolkata is around 60 lakhs. I will consider only the
working age group i.e. people aged 20-60 yrs. Assuming an average
life expectancy of 70 yrs and a uniform distribution, we come down
to (40/70)*50 ~ 30 lakhs.
Interviewer Ok.
Candidate I will divide the 30 lakh into males (50%) and females (50%) and use
a suitable unemployment rate for each segment.
Interviewer Ok. Do it for the male segment first.
Candidate Ok. Within the male segment (15 lakh), I will assume an
unemployment rate of 10%. That leaves us with 13.5 lakh people.
Interviewer Ok.
Candidate Now I will further divide this segment according to income levels,
since the high income group won't be using the metro rail as much
as the lower income group. I can use a suitable percentage who avail
the metro for each income group. Is this approach fine?

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 Interviewer Yes, please go ahead.
Candidate I'll start with the low income group first. I assume that they will not
be using cabs or private vehicles for travelling to work and will
mostly be relying on public transport. Is that a fair assumption?
Interviewer Yes, fair enough.
Candidate Since Kolkata has a fairly nice bus transport network, people
predominantly use either buses or the metro for travelling to work. I
think 50% of the population will be using metro rail and the other
half will be plying by buses.
Interviewer Ok.
Candidate Shall I now move ahead with the other income level group?
Interviewer No, that’s fine. Let's move on to the second question.
Candidate Sure, sir.
Question 2. This wasn't really a case, but more of a discussion on how to use data to design a new
product.
Interviewer Since you have mentioned about artificial intelligence (A.I.) in your
resume, how would you go about using AI to design a cricket bat. (I
had also mentioned cricket as one of my interests in the extra-
curriculars section of my resume).
Candidate (Asked a few clarifying questions about the problem).
Interviewer Let's say you have all the data related to a practice/training session,
the shots played by the batsman, the ball speed, the trajectory of
the ball etc.
Candidate I described how I would create a product which would place a
camera inside a groove in the bat to detect the ball's trajectory and
hint the batsman as to where to hit the ball (on-side or off-side).
Interviewer But don’t you think that doing the calculations and then telling the
batsman where to hit would be too slow, since there is hardly any
time between when the bowler throws the ball and the time when it
reaches the batsman.
Candidate Yes, you're a correct. That would be a problem. Can I take a minute
to think this through?
Interviewer Sure, go ahead.
Candidate Ok. I believe the in-built chip will take very less time to detect the
ball and do the calculations.
Interviewer Agreed.
Candidate To convey the decision to the batsman, I would install a vibrating
device on the handle of the bat. To indicate playing towards the
right, the handle would vibrate on one side, and to indicate playing
on the left, it would vibrate on the opposite end. That should be
quick enough.
Interviewer Ok.
Candidate (I further demonstrated the working of the handle using the water
bottle placed in front of me).
Interviewer Ok. That will be fine. Thank you.

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 Round 2
Interview Experience (CASE - Profitability
TYPE)
Interviewer Our client is a vehicle insurance company, which has been seeing
low revenues since the beginning of its operations a few years ago.
Diagnose the situation and suggest recommendations.
Candidate (Repeated the question to make sure that I understood the question
correctly). Can I have a few minutes to structure my preliminary
questions?
Interviewer Sure.
Candidate What kind of vehicles do we cover? Cars, trucks, etc.
Interviewer We provide insurance for personal cars.
Candidate Where do we operate?
Interviewer We operate mostly in North India.
Candidate Who are our competitors?
Interviewer We only have a few sizeable competitors.
Candidate Can I have a few minutes to structure my approach?
Interviewer Sure.
Candidate (Drew the standard profitability decision tree). What are our client's
major revenue streams?
Interviewer Well, our client majorly earns their revenue via new subscriptions
and the renewal of existing subscriptions.
Candidate Which of the streams is facing a decline in revenue?
Interviewer The revenue from renewals have gone down.
Candidate How long does a renewal last for?
Interviewer We follow yearly subscription plans.
Candidate Since Total revenue = No. of renewals X Price per renewal, has the
price per renewal been decreased by the firm?
Interviewer No, the pricing scheme has remained the same. The number of
renewals has gone down.
Candidate Has the overall market for insurance renewal declined or is our client
losing customers to our competitors (loss of market share).
Interviewer Yes, we are losing customers to our competitors.
Candidate (I went on to ask the reason for this by comparing our product with
the competitors' on the following factors - availability, accessibility,
affordability and likeability of our product.)
Interviewer (The interviewer replied that we were at par with our competitors
on all of these parameters.)
Candidate (I asked for some time to think about what else could be the reason
for losing market share).
Interviewer Think about how customers actually avail renewal of their existing
insurance policies.
Candidate There can be two broad techniques - customers could be renewing
their subscriptions online via an app or a website, or could be visiting

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 our client’s offices for the same. What are the other channels via
which we distribute our product?
Interviewer Apart from what you’ve mentioned, we also provide subscriptions
via car dealer shops, which is the primary channel where we have
been seeing a decline.
Candidate Since you’ve mentioned that our products aren't much
differentiated from that of our competitors', I assume that the car
dealers can influence the buying decisions of the customers when
they come for renewals, unless they specifically ask for your product.
Interviewer Yes, you are correct.
Candidate Have the car dealers been recommending our competitors' products
to our customers?
Interviewer Yes, you are correct. What could be the reason?
Candidate There can be multiple reasons - perhaps our competitors are
offering a greater commission per unit sale to the dealers or they
have been providing incentives to encourage them to recommend
their own products.
Interviewer Yes, you are correct. They have been providing incentives to the car
dealers.
Candidate Can I take a few minutes to pen down a few recommendations?
Interviewer Sure, go ahead.
Candidate I have the following things to recommend:
1. If possible, our client can also start an incentive program for the
car dealers.
2. We can introduce and popularize online methods for subscription
renewals. This can be done automatically or at one touch, via mobile
apps or websites, thereby avoiding the car dealer channel
completely.
3. We can introduce longer term subscriptions, let's say 5-year or 10-
year long subscription plans, to lock in our customers.
Interviewer That will be fine. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate (Asked about the process of assigning the candidates to their
projects/industries during the internship).
Round 3
Interview Experience (CASE - Unconventional
TYPE)
Interviewer Let's say I have an investment product. You can invest any sum of
money, and I will guarantee you the exact return on your principal as
what you would have got when investing the same amount in gold.
Candidate (I asked for some more clarifications on the product. The interviewer
gave me an example as follows).
Interviewer Suppose you invest Rs. 100 in the product. After one year, let's say
that the price of gold appreciates by 10%. So your principal increases
to Rs. 110 (10% return on my principal). Now you have to sell this
product to a client. How would you do it?
Candidate (Asked for a few minutes to list product features).

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 Interviewer (Granted me some time to think). Think about what people mainly
use gold for.
Candidate Ok. Since people mainly use gold for jewellery, our product can help
people hedge their risks against fluctuations in gold price. Suppose
you want to buy jewellery for your relative's marriage which is going
to happen after a few years. You can invest your money in this
product today and ensure that you get the same amount of gold
after two years.
Interviewer Why not buy the jewellery today itself and store it for two years?
Candidate (After thinking for a bit). There are two counter arguments to this -
first of all, people generally don't like to store gold items in their
residences due to fear of theft, and secondly, you would like to buy
the jewellery which would be in fashion/trending two years later
rather than store jewellery, which would go out of fashion soon.
Interviewer Any other points in favour of the product?
Candidate (After thinking for a bit). Our product can also help people who
would like to invest very small amounts of money in gold. It would
be very inconvenient for them to buy and store gold in milligrams.
Interviewer Agreed. Now I would like you summarize and list down three final
points that you would pitch in front of a potential investor.
Candidate (A little confused by this time, I nicely summarized the
aforementioned two points, while trying hard to think of the third
point).
Interviewer (Interrupting in between). Good. Well the third point is that we are
offering you the internship.
Candidate Thank you very much.
1. Make sure that you know all the important demographic datapoints beforehand, like population,
income group split, literacy rate, unemployment rate, urban-rural split, GDP figures, economic
growth rate etc.
2. Do not make a laundry list of possibilities unless you have gone down sufficient number of levels
in the decision tree.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Ekansh Agrawal

Interviewing firm Mckinsey
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Partner - Financial Services Practice
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Bombay
College
Branch Chemical Engineering
Work Experience 22 months
Firm BCG, Ola, Citi
Sector
Round 1
Interview Experience Unconventional
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Hi Ekansh, let use this time to get to know each other, why don’t you tell me
something about yourself?
Candidate (Kept the answer simple and crisp. Highlighted that I have changed jobs and
why I did that.
Interviewer Which sport do you like?
Candidate I like badminton. I play it as a hobby!
Interviewer Would you know players and leagues of badminton?
Candidate No, I don’t know that!
Interviewer So let’s do this, choose a sport and player of your choice, and we need to
find a bidding strategy for the player
Candidate I chose IPL and MS Dhoni. First, I will try to value the player. Second, I will
assess the bidding strategy. Third, I will look for alternatives(If we lose the
bid)
Interviewer Good. Let’s focus on the first two. How will you come up with the value of
the player?
Candidate I will calculate the difference in revenue the player brings to calculate the
value
Interviewer What are the different revenue streams for an IPL team?
Candidate The streams are stadium revenue, Ads on TV, Merchandising
Interviewer Good, Lets calculate the difference in revenue for Stadium and
Merchandising
Candidate So the volume(occupancy rate) of stadiums will go up if we get a player like
MS Dhoni
Interviewer What else other than volume do you think can change the revenue?
Candidate (After giving some thought) Price, higher prices stands could be sold more
Interviewer Yes, it gives us the ability to charge higher. Let’s look at the merchandising
part now

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 Candidate The difference will be similar to tickets in stadiums, as it will give us the
ability to charge a higher price and increase sales volume of the
merchandise. Also, we would be able to partner with bigger and better
brands like Nike, Adidas etc.
Interviewer Great. So now you have calculated the difference in revenue and the value
of player comes out to be 100 Crores. How will you bid?
Candidate The contract period is generally for 3 years, and bid value is the annual cost
of the player, so I would calculate annualized cost after subtracting profit
margins from 100 Cr
Interviewer I guess we are done here. Do you have any questions?
Candidate I asked an already prepared question.
Interviewer End
Round 2
Interview Experience Market Entry
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Hi Ekansh, I was going through your CV, why don’t you start by telling
something about yourself
Candidate I gave the answer, again focusing on work experience and why I did what I
did and also ended up answering why consulting a little bit by the end
Interviewer Great. Let’s do a case now. Suppose your client is a pharma company, no
wait you already have some pharma experience! Let’s do a case on
automotive Industry instead
Candidate Sure
Interviewer You client is a major automobile company looking to expand outside India.
How will you go about choosing the countries and strategy?
Candidate So first we will try to assess the market size and market share in the
countries
Interviewer Ok. What else?
Candidate We will look at the competition presence and how is that place. We will
look at the current product offerings in the country to assess our ability
Interviewer Ok What else?
Candidate We will look at the regulations and licensing required and our ability to so.
Also we will look at our capabilities in terms of production and supply chain,
HR
Interviewer Ok What else?
Candidate (Now it was getting a little deep, he told you can go into details) We will
also look if the production in some way cannibalizing our core country sales,
citizens of the country are loyal only to a local company
Interviewer Ok Suppose that the business metrics all look fine, what else may still stop
you from entering the market?
Candidate (Thinking) I confirmed, by business metrics you mean that we will profit if
we enter the market, we still decide not to enter?
Interviewer Yes

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 Candidate (Thinking, he gave an hint- think from country's perspective) So I will look at
2 things, first, our firm values and brand should not be compromised in any
way, like we may not want to enter countries like North Korea with political
tensions. Second, if there is a lot of uncertainty to foreign players in a
country for example China, you may never know when they will tell you to
shut shop
Interviewer Great. Now let’s consider that we have finalized on the Kenya as our
country. Can you tell 3 creative strategies to enter the market with this
context?
Candidate Sure. (I took some time)
Interviewer (while I was scribbling)Look at the problem from Kenya context, there the
penetration of car is 30%.
Candidate Yes, so I have already considered that division. There will be 2 kinds of
people. First, there will be ambitious car owners (70%), here 2 strategies
can be, 1. Provide a low cost alternative as propensity to pay for Kenya is
lesser 2. Provide a never seen before car variant with new and innovative
features that are not existent in the market currently. Second, Current car
owners (30%) - Launch a premium vehicle as an upgrade to them.
Interviewer Great. We can end the case here. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate I asked what made you stay in Mckinsey for 10 years and if he thought of
leaving sometime in between?
Interviewer Answered
Candidate I added to the answer by telling him why I asked this question and then we
had a good small chat around it
Interviewer Great Ekansh, let me walk you out!
DOs and What worked for me is not really going into any conventional structure, but
DONTs/Important Tips more thinking and talking to the interviewer than writing. I wrote 20-30
words each at max in both interviews. So I believe you need to gauge the
kind of behaviour the interviewer is looking for and speaking your mind
helps in bringing that clarity early in the interview.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Yatharth Rana

Interviewing firm Mckinsey & Co.
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Round 1- Jaidev Rajpal, Round 2- Amit Gupta, Round 3- Alpesh Chadha
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate Delhi Technological University
College
Branch Electronics and Communications
Work Experience 11 months
Firm Bain Capability Centre (Bain & Co.)
Sector Consulting
Round 1
Interview Experience Market strategy
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer The client is a tyre company that operates in India. It is one of the top 3
companies in the tyre business currently. The client has come to know that
one of its competitors is planning to launch a new scheme- whenever you
buy a new tyre, you can either get a 20% flat discount or get 2 retreads of
the tyre free. You have been hired by the client to gauge will it have any
effect on their business. And if it will, come up with a support strategy.
Candidate Paraphrased the question and tried to understand the objective better. Also
asked what retreading was and how the retreading process and business
operates.
Interviewer Retreading is basically required when your tyres have been used for say,
20,000 kms. It further increases the life of tyre to 50%, i.e. 10,000 kms
more. Gauging the effect of this new scheme is all I'm looking at.
Candidate Since our primary goal here is to assess the strategy of the competitor, I
would initially begin by looking and understanding the industry, the
proposed scheme, the customer behaviour and the company better.
Interviewer Alright. Go ahead.
Candidate *Went into each bucket and asked the relevant questions to understand the
landscape better*
Would you also want me to pick up the quantitative effect of the
introduction?
Interviewer No. A qualitative analysis. A list of things that we would take into
consideration, rather, would help me.
Candidate Since I have understood the industry, company and scheme already, now I
just need to gauge how far the introduction this set of landscapes.
Interviewer Alright. How would you about doing this?
Candidate *Applied the typical marketing funnel. Awareness-->Likeability--
>Accessibility-->Availability*
To understand the effect, I would try and understand the current standing of

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 competitor's business and distribution system. I would do this under 4
heads- awareness, likeability, accessibility, availability of the competitor.

Interviewer Alright. How will you carry the analysis ahead?

Candidate *Went into each one of them and told how I will decide if competitor is
strong enough under that subhead. A strong competitor means strong
market influencing power*
Interviewer Alright. We can stop here.
Candidate Thank you.
*This round didn't go to well for me. Early morning and a typically
unconventional case. Could have gotten the framework and analysis a lot
better*
Round 2
Interview Experience General, unconventional+ Strategy
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Tell me something interesting about yourself, something that your CV
doesn't talk about.
Candidate Went on to talk about how I've changed schools and countries as a kid and
how they shaped my mindset and hobbies. Small discussion on differences
between India and Russia as well as pollution in India.
Interviewer So as you correctly talked of the pollution. Let's do a case there. India's
pollution is primarily due to oil consumption. Suggest some ways to control
the oil consumption
Candidate Began by paraphrasing and asking if we meant oil in general or just
petrol/diesel. A couple of other supporting questions to understand the
scope better.
Interviewer We're just talking of fuel oil here- basically petrol and diesel
Candidate Began by listing out all the use cases of petrol/diesel in the country:
1. Vehicles
2. Industries
3. Villages and households as fuel
4. Airplanes
Interviewer Let's only focus on vehicular pollution for now
Candidate To reduce the pollution through vehicles, we can basically break down the
entire vehicular journey and parts associated and look for improvement
opportunities in each area.
A typical journey would be:
Vehicle -->Road-->Time to reach the destination-->Journey over-->Vehicle
deterioration (and pollution effects) -->Repeat
So we basically need to target the following things to improve the situation
1. Vehicle themselves
2. Roads and time taken
3. Quality of fuel
4. Laws and checks regarding pollution
5. Public transport, etc.

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 Interviewer Sounds good. So how would you improve the situation?
Candidate Went one by one and suggested measures in each one of them. Talked
about subsidies on eco-friendly vehicles. BS VI engines, public transport
strengthening, improving road quality and time of vehicles on streets,
stringent fines on old vehicles, etc.
Interviewer *Kept pushing for more creative solutions throughout*. Great! It was a good
discussion. We covered a great width and considerable depth. Best of Luck!
Round 3
Interview Experience Unconventional- Market Entry
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer *Before the interview, I was told I was 80% through and had to a decent
enough job in this interview to ensure the offer*
Your client is a bank that is thinking of bringing out a new investment
scheme wherein whatever money you invest today, you can redeem its value
in gold after a fixed duration. We need to come with a business and
marketing plan.
Candidate So in the business plan, we're looking to come up with a marketing plan,
core value for propaganda, target customers, strategy and competitors.
Anything else that I'm missing out on?
Interviewer No. Seems good. Go ahead with them. What is the most important thing to
take care about while launching such a scheme?
Candidate As I see it, there is good amount of risk associated with the investment
scheme here. The amount that would be redeemable after the period
would depend on how the Gold prices have fluctuated in that period. So I
think most important would be to make sure that the risk doesn't come
across as primary deterrent for the customers.
Interviewer Okay. And how will you do it?
Candidate I would focus on directed marketing strategies. Strategies that are solely
focused on the long term benefits associated with the scheme and not on
the risks.
Interviewer Alright. Move ahead. Who would be your target customers in this case?
Candidate My primary target customers would be households with married women.
We can pitch the scheme as an investment wherein if they invest the money
today, they can get gold jewellery/coins some years down the line.
Interviewer Okay. So if I buy the Gold with my money today and store it in my house.
After say 3 years, value of my jewellery would be equal to Gold price at that
date. How is our scheme better than just buying the gold and saving for
future?
Candidate In depreciation value. Gold doesn't depreciate, but storing the gold would
depreciate its making cost and would also involve some handling and
maintenance cost for jewelleries.
Interviewer Alright. What else?
Candidate In the Indian context, we can also target the middle class families with
young girls. Scheme can be presented as a long term option where the
parents put in money and can redeem the worth in Gold when near
daughter's marriage.

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 Interviewer Great! Can you summarize the marketing strategy for me?
Candidate *Summarized*
DOs and 1. Listen well to understand the question entirely. And always SOLVE FOR
DONTs/Important Tips THE QUESTION. We end up solving what wasn't required in many cases and
entirely miss the actual question.
2. Be mentally fresh and prepared. Since most interviews at 8:00 am don't
give enough time to buckle up in the morning, have a great sleep the
previous day. More important than it looks.
3. Don't be nervous if one round goes bad. There's always a chance to come
back in subsequent rounds. Most companies understand that you can have
a bad round. Round 1 didn't go all too well for me.

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`
 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Atishaya Jain

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 8AM
Interviewer Partner
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate College IIT Bombay
Branch Mechanical
Work Experience 1year
Firm Times Internet
Sector IT( ProdMan)
Round 1
Interview Experience Market Entry
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Asks how I am and after some casual conversation asks whether we
should begin with the case. He mentions it is a market entry case which
he did a few years back and I can ask questions later if I have any.
Candidate Okay. Sure.
Interviewer The client is a Japanese tractor manufacturer that wants to enter Indian
market with a new type of tractor called 'compact' tractor. They want you
to analyze how attractive Indian market is, what is the size of the market
and how should they go about entering.
Candidate Repeats the problem statement and clarifies the mentioned objectives.
Next: I wish to understand what this compact tractor is and how is it
different from normal tractors.
Interviewer This tractor is compact which means it’s smaller in size, easy to man
oeuvre, slightly more fuel efficient and costs almost same as normal
tractors but It needs less maintenance. Its duty cycle is lesser than the
normal tractors. The objective is just to analyze the Indian market right
now, not looking for any profit or revenue figures or timelines as such
Candidate What is a duty cycle and how does it affect the owner
Interviewer Duty cycle can be closely approximated as how long can it be used for in a
day or at a time. This tractor cannot be used for jobs needing longer
working hours and more power/load requirements.
Candidate Understood. May I take a few seconds to structure my thoughts.- Next I
would like to know more about the company, the customers, the industry
and its growth rate and the existing competition in the market.
Interviewer Okay, ask what you want to know.
Candidate Begins by asking about the customer segments that the company wants
to target in India-
Interviewer What do you think should be the customer segments
Candidate We can look at rural and urban users broken into agro and construction
as tractors are typically used for these activities. Small farmlands and
construction look like good options here, am I missing something.

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 Interviewer Why small farmlands?
Candidate Because 1. it’s easy to maneuver and 2. its less costly and I assumed that
small farmlands would have lower duty cycles as well, is that fair.
Interviewer Yes. Construction on the other hand is higher duty cycle activity and
hence unsuited for this. But how would you judge whether the product
suits your customer segment, how will you decide.
Candidate <Confused what he wanted to know, but then it hit me> Oh, I would
compare with how the tractor is being used already in Japan and other
countries where the company sells. Do we have that information?
Interviewer Good, So we sell in Thailand to farmers owning small farmlands growing
particular crops, In US to households for lawn mowing and snow removal.
Sales in Japan are low for compact tractors.
Candidate This is interesting. And apart from agriculture, in India we can also look at
some urban usage, although the households are different and snow
removal is not needed in a large part of the county, but other jobs like
cleaning of roads, carrying materials can be considered, would you want
me to look into them
Interviewer That’s fine but the need is mostly of higher duty cycles, so let’s proceed
with farmlands. I now want you to estimate a market size for me.
Candidate Okay. <takes a few seconds to come up with a guesstimate> We can go
by looking at number of farmers in India (population - households- %
farming in rural+urban areas - %owning small farms(SEC criteria could
help as a proxy)
Interviewer No, it will take a lot of time, do you have any other method
Candidate (surprised, but tries) Okay, let’s look at the rural vs. urban land split
directly and take a percentage for small farms to which he says we do not
have this kind of data, is there another method. <Thinks for 5 seconds>
Lets use existing tractor sales as a proxy and find the share of small
farmers buying tractors. (Eureka :D)
Interviewer Okay, this looks good because ideally only those who've already used a
tractor would go for a newer variant mostly. Tell me what data you need.
Candidate The annual tractor sales, percentage sold for agriculture and percentage
used by small land owners
Interviewer Okay, assume overall tractor sales 2L tractors annually, 60% sold for agro
use, rest for construction, and we don’t have much data on small land
owners so assume that percentage and go ahead.
Candidate Great. So for now can we just focus on agro as a use to calculate market
size (interviewer nods) and I assume a percentage of small farmers to
come up to a size.
Interviewer Will this be the final market size?
Candidate <Looked good to me, I suddenly realize the particular crop and duty cycle
part> You mentioned they use it only for particular crops in Thailand, it’s
an assumption that some crops must be lying in the duty cycle range of
these tractors while others don’t. Can there be other reasons? Also, do
we know what crops and their %land coverage in India?

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 Interviewer Right, so sugarcane and rice typically have lower duty cycles than other
crops and hence the tractor can be used for them. In India, x% tractors
sold are used to grow rice and cane.
Candidate So the final size of 72000 tractors annually sold in India.
Interviewer Looks good, how will you check whether this is attractive enough?
Candidate <Jump to porter 5 forces, interviewer interrupts and says just looking at
the number is this attractive> Oh, so we can benchmark with 2-3
different parameters. 1- sales of normal tractors in India, but since this is
a new product, we are comparing apple to orange so we should use
second approach. 2- sales of tractors in thailand since target segment is
similar. Do we have any data?
Interviewer Market size for Thailand is about 70,000 annual units. We have 60% mkt
share there.
Candidate Okay, so size wise it looks okay, but India being a larger geography, we
might have to put in more investment and set up a better distribution
network to capture the market. So it looks attractive
Interviewer Cool, now we can move to attractiveness of industry. Tell me your key
parameters to decide
Candidate Ask about growth rate and existing competition before analysis. No other
competitor (this was supposed to be a preliminary question, but we dived
into customer segments and size calculation). Porter 5 forces. Buying
power moderate, supplier's power (we are going to import initially so low
supplier influence), substitute - existing tractors (but our products suits
the requirements of this segment better that substitute), new
competition may arise, but high investment needed and exit barriers are
high too - overall attractive. I asked if there are any entry barriers and
import/export barriers we might face?
Interviewer Okay, no barriers as such. This looks good and time is running out, is
there anything you want to add
Candidate Can I quickly perform a feasibility analysis and see how we should enter.
Highlight need for a complex network distribution - <recommendation>
partner with 3rd party already established. Also mentioned High
investment in setting distribution.
Interviewer What are the investments in distribution?
Candidate <Hmm, interesting>If we do it on our own, warehousing, logistics etc. will
be main investments. If we tie up with a partner, inventory will be a
major investment. <he asks anymore?> I wrote down Promotion-
marketing
Interviewer It is marketing. <I literally show him what was on paper>, tell me to
proceed
Candidate So the company can enter organically without any partnerships, start
initially by importing tractors from other manufacturing facilities and
gradually set up plants in India, after a thorough cost-benefit analysis. It
has first mover's advantage and with proper marketing and distribution it
can earn well in Indian market.
Interviewer Great, would you like to add anything
Candidate I would like to synthesize. <small synthesis>

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 Interviewer Let’s close the case. Any questions?
Candidate What did the company actually do? How did they position it?
Interviewer They entered 1 year back, targeted the same segment. They focused on
the overall lower cost of ownership.
Candidate
DOs and 1. Keep calm, I think it helps a lot because they are willing to give time
DONTs/Important Tips and ample attempts and hints only if you can utilize them best. Have a
brief conversation before to cool yourself down, it helps with the
confidence too. Keep the interview conversational too, don't just dive
into solving the case for the next 10 minutes without even looking up at
the interviewer.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Priyanjit Biswas

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 08:30 AM
Interviewer
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate Jadavpur University
College
Branch Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering
Work Experience 10 Months
Firm PwC
Sector Consulting
Round 1
Interview Experience Growth Strategy
(CASE TYPE )
Interviewer The client is a manufacturer of fire extinguishing canisters and is looking to
grow 4X in the next 3 years. How should the client go about it?
Candidate Just to ensure that we are on the same page on this. So the client
manufactures fire-extinguishing canisters and wants to grow 4 times by
revenue within the next 3 years? And is looking for strategies regarding how
to go about it?
Interviewer Correct.
Candidate Before going ahead, I would like to clarify a few things so as to understand
the client and the situation better.
Interviewer Sure, go ahead.
Candidate Where does the firm operate?
Interviewer The company is based out of India and operates pan-India.
Candidate Okay. And what are its revenue streams like? Does it manufacture and
generate revenue only from fire-extinguishing canisters? Also, since the
client is manufacturing equipment, what kind of value-chain are we looking
at?
Interviewer Yes. The company manufactures and sells fire-extinguishing canisters only.
There are no other revenue streams. As for the value-chain, the company
simply manufactures and directly sells the units to its customers.
Candidate Great. I would like to understand the product and the customers a little
better here. Are these fire-extinguishing canisters similar to the units we
come across in malls, schools and other public/private spaces? Are there
different types/variations of canisters, maybe aimed at different segments
or possibly at different price points?
Interviewer Yes. That is correct. These fire-extinguishing canisters are similar to the
ones we encounter in malls and schools. Also, we manufacture and sell a
single type of canister at a fixed price.
Candidate And what kind of customer segments are we looking at?
Interviewer What kind of customers do you think the client is likely to have?

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 Candidate Given the kind of canister we are looking at, I would assume that we are
selling these units mainly to corporates, malls, schools and the like. Any
major segments I am missing out on?
Interviewer Correct. We are selling our units to corporates, malls and other institutions.
Candidate Great. And what about the competition in the market? What does our
market-share look like?
Interviewer Currently, we are the leaders with a market share of 35%. There are 2 major
competitors with shares at 20% and 15% respectively. The rest of the
market is fragmented with multiple smaller players.
Candidate Great. So my overall strategy here would be to (1) grow in existing markets
and (2) explore new markets. Given the fact that the client intends to grow
4 times in 3 years, it is likely that an aggressive strategy has to be pursued
here. Any one of the two, you would want me to analyze first?
Interviewer Yes. This sounds like a fair approach. Analyze growth in existing markets
first. Also, please consider the growth numbers the client is looking for?
Candidate Sure. Looking at the existing market whereby we are selling the fire-
extinguishing canisters pan-India, we have a market share of 35%. What is
the expected growth rate of this market?
Interviewer The market is expected to grow at about 10% every year.
Candidate Interesting. The market grows at 10% every year. So it seems that growing
4X in revenue (from a market share of 35%) within 3 years wouldn't be even
possible by selling the current units at the same price-point. Also, growing
4X would require aggressive growth strategies which is why we should
probably consider the new market opportunities in particular here. (Ran
through all the numbers on paper - showed how 4X growth figures exceed
the expected market size figures)
Interviewer Correct. It is not possible to grow 4X in the existing market. But if we were
to grow in the existing market, what would you recommend?
Candidate I would like to run through the customer purchase journey here and focus
on the following points: (1) awareness of the product [sales, marketing] (2)
likability of the product [price-point, product quality, service, perception,
convenience] (3) distribution of the product [availability, accessibility] and
(4) affordability of the product. Post that, I would like to benchmark
ourselves with the competition in the market and check if we can work on
any of these points to manufacture and sell more fire-extinguishing
canisters and therefore, grow in revenue. Also, we can consider acquiring
some of the other major players in order the capture a larger chunk of the
market. (Ran through these points)
Interviewer Sounds fine. Let us explore the new market opportunities then.
Candidate Sure. To explore growth in new markets, I would like to consider (1)
exploring new geographies (2) exploring new customer segments (3)
diversifying and launching new/modified products.
Interviewer Okay. We are not looking to enter new geographies. At the same time, we
are not considering diversification or launch of entirely new products at the
moment. Any other strategy?

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 Candidate We can do the following: (1) We can attempt to increase the market size for
fire-extinguishers in India by pushing for specific regulations. For instance, a
regulation necessiting all institutions, corporates etc. to house fire-
extinguishers by law would ideally increase the market size for fire-
extinguishing canisters across India. Also, regulations necessiting the
replacement of fire-extinguishing units every few years (for safety reasons)
could help increase the volume of sales through an increase in frequency of
sales. (2) We can invest in R&D and try to come up with a modified and
patented variant which is more effective/ safer and less hazardous/ eco-
friendly etc. We can further garner Government support to promote the
new variant vis-a-vis competitor products on grounds of safety and
effectiveness so as to capture a major part of the market. A modified
variant also allows us to play with the price-points in order to boost growth.
(3) Finally, we can acquire other players and capture the market while being
in a position to manufacture and distribute to a large customer base.
Interviewer Great. Sounds like a fair approach. That will be all.
Round 2
Interview Experience Growth Strategy
(CASE TYPE)
Interviewer Nissan has a 1% market share in India. The company wants to capture a
market share of 10% within the next 2 years. What should Nissan do?
Candidate The client is Nissan - the automobile manufacturer "Nissan" we know
about? The company currently has a market share of 1% and wants to
capture a market of 10% within the next 2 years?
Interviewer Yes. The client is the automobile manufacturing company Nissan that we
know of.
Candidate I would like to clarify a few things before I proceed. The market share
figures correspond to the automobile market in India in terms of the
number of vehicles sold?
Interviewer That is correct.
Candidate In that case, what do we exactly mean by the automobile market? Are we
including all kinds of vehicles such as cars, buses, trucks etc. or do the
figures correspond to a specific segment in the automobile market?
Interviewer The market here corresponds to the market for 4-wheeler family cars in
India.
Candidate And what about the competition in the market and the shares of the major
players?
Interviewer Consider it to be similar to the current Indian family car market dominated
by players like Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai.
Candidate Okay. And for how long has Nissan been in this segment in India? Has it
entered this market recently?
Interviewer No. Nissan has been manufacturing and selling family cars in India for over a
decade.
Candidate Great. So the overall strategy here would be to push for aggressive growth
in the family car segment while also analyzing why and how the market

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 leaders in the segment are being able to sell so many vehicles in India as
compared to Nissan.
Interviewer Sounds like a reasonable approach.
Candidate To capture a larger piece of the market, Nissan can (1) work towards
increasing the sales of the current line of vehicles it sells in the market and
(2) consider introducing new vehicles after analyzing the competition as
well as the customer sentiments. Having said that, attaining 10% market
share requires aggressive growth that might not be possible through step 1
alone (i.e. focusing on current line of vehicles).
Interviewer Fair enough. How can we go about it?
Candidate To increase the sales of the current line of vehicles, we can work on the
customer purchase journey and focus on customer demand by analyzing (1)
awareness (2) likability (3) distribution (4) affordability of the vehicles
currently manufactured and sold by Nissan in India. (Ran through all the
steps). Having said that, to capture a 10% share of the market we might
need to look at new options as well.
Interviewer Yes. Selling about ~10X within the next 2 years calls for more aggressive
strategies. What else can be done?
Candidate What are the different cars that Nissan sells in the family car segment in
India? What are their price-points?
Interviewer Nissan sells 4 models in India. All of the models are priced over ~20 lakhs.
Candidate So Nissan deals mostly in a higher-priced family car segment in India. Do we
have data on the cars which sell the most in the family car segment along
with their respective price-points? Also, do we have data on the models
which sell more in the higher-priced family car segment?
Interviewer Sales are average even when considering only the higher priced segment.
Which models do you think sell the most in India in the family car segment?
Candidate I think that the models selling the most in the family car segment in India
would include names like Maruti Suzuki Alto and Swift, Hyundai Santro and
i10, Honda City etc. My guess would be that the masses in India are largely
price-sensitive and therefore, lower priced models often dominate the
market in the family car segment?
Interviewer That is a fair assumption. What can we do about it?
Candidate We can consider introducing new lines of vehicles in the family car segment
in India while particularly introducing more affordable and lower-priced
lines of cars.
Interviewer Okay. What are the factors that you think are most important to a customer
when purchasing a family car?
Candidate In my opinion, the most important factors when deciding on which model
to buy, would be (1) price (2) design (3) brand perception. Factors like
Mileage and After-Sales service are also very important to a customer.
(Discussed about these in detail - Focused on design of vehicles e.g.
Hatchbacks vs. Sedans, LUVs, MUVs, and SUVs etc.)
Interviewer What can we do to design new models that sell well in this segment?

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 Candidate We can conduct detailed market surveys to understand the customer
sentiments better. Additionally, we can look at the existing lines of vehicles
in the market which sell really well and understand the factors that are
important to the customers (e.g. design, mileage, after-sales services etc.).
At the same time, we should think of differentiating factors that would
make the new line of Nissan vehicles stand out amidst the competition
thereby creating a sense of exclusivity. Finally, we would need to craft
strong sales and marketing campaigns to drive the sales in the family car
segment in India.
Interviewer Sounds good. That would be all.

DOs and DOs - Jot down the frameworks clearly on paper and ask clarifying
DONTs/Important Tips questions before jumping to framework driven solutions. Use MECE
structures when breaking down the problem into different segments.
DONTs - Do not get nervous in the event of a stress interview and do not try
to force-fit frameworks to solve cases. (Approach cases logically while
analyzing the data/information available at hand)

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Abdulhussain Songerwala

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 8 AM
Interviewer 2 Project Leaders, 2 Partners
Pre-College
profile
Undergraduate College of Engineering Pune
College
Branch Electronics & Telecommunication
Work Experience Morgan Stanley
Firm BCG
Sector Consulting
Round 1
Interview Market Entry
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Tell me about yourself. Asked questions on specific parts as he had similar
interests.
Interviewer Your client is into pillow covers, sofa covers, etc. He's looking to enter a new
market to expand his business. Help him identify a lucrative market.
Candidate Asked preliminary questions about the company, market entry objective, current
operations and whether the client had certain geographies in mind.
Interviewer The client has narrowed it down to US, UK and Dubai. You can compare these
three markets.
Candidate Stated different parameters to compare the markets on. Also laid down a
structure for a Guesstimate of market size in each case.
Interviewer Which is the differentiating factor in the market size in each geography?
Candidate (The answer had to come from guesstimate structure only) Population.
Interviewer Let's assume you chose US due to highest population. What are the two major
factors which will prevent entry/make entry difficult in the US?
Candidate After listing different factors on the paper, handling the competition and cost of
setup (sanctions, manufacturing facility, etc.).
Round 2
Interview Data Analysis
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer This is the financial data for Jet Airways. As you know, they are facing cash
crunch issues (I was asked to state the problem being faced by them). Based on
this data what do you think is the cause of their problems? You can ask for more
data if you need.
Candidate Looked at the figures and asked to compare with competitors for benchmarking.
Interviewer Provided the data for Indigo.
Candidate The major difference is in the Misc. Expenses - Jet Airways is much higher.

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 Interviewer State the different kind of misc. expenses an airline can face.
Candidate Gave different expenses like food, maintenance, etc.
Interviewer Focus on repair & maintenance - why is that cost higher?
Candidate Broke it into efficiency, repair frequency and tools/consumables used in repair
(had stated a couple more but these were the ones he was looking for).
Round 3
Interview Guesstimate
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Estimate the washing machine market size in India.
Candidate Clarified the question (type of washing machine, etc.). Gave the approach I
wanted to take (top-down starting from population).
Interviewer The approach looks good. You can proceed. Gave inputs/approval on each of the
estimates taken.
Candidate Put down the relevant percentages & assumptions and calculated the final
answer.
Round 4
Interview Guesstimate
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Our client has come up with a new compact tractor. He wants to estimate the
potential market for the same in India. Use benchmarking & comparison where
applicable. Don't use top-down approach.
Candidate Came up with an estimate by using the current number of tractors in India and
area of usage of the compact tractor in different geographies. The relevant
percentages for India were applied to get a final number.
Interviewer How do you know whether this number is good or bad?
Candidate Compared with current sales in its two major geographies and found this number
to lie in between hence it was good.

DOs and Be confident and don't give out the impression that you're nervous. Focus on the
DONTs/Importan questions being asked, sometimes they are very specific and you may go off
t Tips track if you haven't clearly understood the question. Good amount of case
practice will reflect in your structure & ideas and should be sufficient to get you
through. Once the case begins just trust yourself and go with the flow (don't
second guess yourself and waste time). If you're going off track the interviewer
will certainly help you. Watch out for the hints they give out.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Suraj Suresh Khot

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer
Pre-College
profile
Undergraduate IIT Delhi
College
Branch Production and Industrial Engineering
Work Experience 24 Months
Firm Estee Advisors Pvt. Ltd.
Sector Financial Services (Algorithmic Trading)
Round 1
Interview
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer So Suraj, How are you feeling?
Candidate Feeling good sir! Excited about this opportunity…
Interviewer Okay! Tell me about your family background (Where are you from, no. of siblings
etc.)
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Now tell me about your professional experience
Candidate Talked about school, college followed by work experience
Interviewer Great! Now tell me three things in life that you're most proud of..
Candidate (Asked for a moment) Answered
Interviewer Let's now move to a case. Your client is Nissan. They want to increase their
market share in India from 1% to 10%. How would you go about this?
Candidate Talked about my approach first. Told him 3 steps that I would follow
1. Understand about client's objectives in detail, their current business,
competitive scenario etc. (Preliminary questions basically)
2. Analyze different possibilities for improving market share
3. Final recommendation
Interviewer Okay! Go ahead.
Candidate [Asked about time frame the client is looking at, other side objectives (if any), …]
Interviewer Answered
Candidate I would now like to understand about client's current business. As per my
understanding, Nissan is mostly in the business of economy cars. Am I right?
Interviewer Yeah you can assume that
Candidate How does their value chain look like?
Interviewer Why do you want to know this?
Candidate Before analyzing different possibilities, I would want to have a general idea
about how our client operates. This would help me further in the case.

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 Interviewer Leave that. Tell me five ways through which you can increase market share. I will
choose one of these five and we'll deep dive into it.
Candidate (Taken aback) Okay. (Asked for a minute)
1. Product category wise (2, 3, 4 wheelers within automobiles)
Within 4 wheelers,
2. Geographical expansion
3. Product type (Hatchback, Sedan, SUV)
4. Distribution channels
5. …..[Don’t remember this]
Interviewer Okay. Let's consider different car types. Consider only hatchback for now. Tell
me five things that you will consider here.
Candidate [At this point of time, I was completely blank as to what was going on. There was
no structure and all I was doing was making a laundry list. But since interviewer
himself was asking me such specific questions, I had no other option]
1. Customer needs
2. Competitor's offering
3. Model variants
4, 5. [Don't remember these]
Interviewer What do you mean by customer needs? Tell me five needs that you will consider
Candidate [Stuck again!] Asked him for a minute and could come up with only four needs.
Started with the first and most basic need, travel
Interviewer [He cut me off here] Travel is understood. Tell me five other needs
Candidate I can think of only three other right now
Interviewer Okay. Tell me
Candidate 1. Safety
2. Luxury
3. Comfort
4. Affordability
Interviewer What do you mean by affordability?
Candidate A middle class person usually buys car on EMI. So there are two things to be
considered here.
1. Price 2. Financing options
Interviewer Do you think these are the only things to be considered?
Candidate Umm….running cost of the car needs to be considered as well. So mileage of the
car and repair & maintenance would also play a role in the decision.
Interviewer What else?
Candidate [Thought thought but couldn't come up with anything else]
Interviewer [Helped me a little here] Let’s say you were to make a metric to decide which car
you should buy based only on affordability factor as you pointed out, how will
you do it? What else will you considered?
Candidate Resale value of the car as well
Interviewer Right. And it will depend on?
Candidate Average age and brand value
Interviewer Okay. What will be your final formula?

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 Candidate Wrote just an addition subtraction formula. Total cost = Price + Interest +
Running cost - Resale value
Interviewer No.
Candidate NPV?
Interviewer Yes. Perfect. You must have learned this in your courses?
Candidate Yes sir. Did not strike me at first.
Interviewer Okay. Let's leave the case aside. How much did you score in first term?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Why consulting?
Candidate [Started my ans]
Interviewer No mugged up answer please. Leave it, fine! Thanks!
DOs and I think what helped me the most was being calm during the case. Ask for time
DONTs/Important whenever you feel you're stuck.
Tips

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Sachet Jain

Interviewing firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Slot 9AM
Interviewer Principal
Pre-College
profile
Undergraduate IIT Delhi
College
Branch 2012-16
Work Experience 24 months
Firm KPMG, Deloitte
Sector Consulting
Round 1
Interview Growth (25-30 mins)
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Is this your first interview?
Candidate I had an 8 am scheduled with AT Kearney, but they did not call me at 8. Luckily
BCG did at 9 :). I calmly answered (despite the anger), yes: D
Interviewer Asked about a project I did during bachelors (scanning through the resume).
Candidate Explained the project. Was cross questioned, answered it.
Interviewer Case: A textile player wants to expand sales/profits. They are not looking for
high capex.
Candidate Asked preliminary questions about 1) Geography 2) Products 3) Value Chain 4)
Customers 5) Competitors
Interviewer The textile player is present across globe. There are 3 products in their portfolio.
They manufacture Rayon, Acrylic & Cotton Yarn
Interviewer The client manufactured yarn and supplies to the weaving units. The
competitors have similar products.
Candidate We have options to expand in the existing market or look for newer markets.
Since newer markets would require Capex, I asked if I can ignore them.
Interviewer Yes, focus on the existing business
Candidate Within existing market, we can look to expand via existing customers, or look for
newer customers
Candidate Checked if there is a supply demand.
Interviewer There is no supply-demand mismatch. Infact all factories are manufacturing at
capacity.
Candidate Checked the quality of our products vis a vis our competitors
Interviewer The quality can be assumed to be same
Candidate Checked if the price of the yarn can be increased. And if we are supplying in line
with the competitors
Interviewer He questioned as to how will you know competitors prices? As they are
supplying to the weaving units

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 Candidate I mentioned that we can check with the competitor suppliers directly, but they
might not share the data. I said that we will have the MRP of the final products,
and we also know the margins that each stakeholder is charging. We can come
up with the price using it. Or we can also check with any consult firm for
benchmark data.
Interviewer He seemed to be happy with the last option. He said that the prices cannot be
changed.
Candidate Moving on to the new customers, I asked the current production and margins of
the 3 products in the portfolio.
Interviewer Production -> Rayon - 60%, Acrylic - 30%, Cotton - 10%. The margins are highest
for Acrylic, and cotton is the fastest growing in the market.
Candidate Since Rayon and Acrylic are both man-made fibers, can I assume their yarn
manufacturing process to be similar?
Interviewer Why do you ask this question?
Candidate In case they are similar we can reduce the rayon content in our portfolio and
replace with Acrylic. This will result in larger profits with minimal capex.
Provided the demand of Acrylic is there in the market.
Round 2

Interview Market entry (15 minutes)

Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Tell something about yourself?
Interviewer An office infrastructure player wants to enter the home infrastructure business.
Candidate Asked questions about the office market. Geography? Products? Supply Chain?
Interviewer We are a B2B company, supplying all forms of office infrastructure.
Candidate Asked questions about the home market. Geography? Products? Supply Chain?
Interviewer Home market will obviously be a B2C market.
Candidate I tried to understand the synergies between the markets. Concluded that the
synergies are high with respect to most parts of the supply chain.
Candidate Listed down that customer acquisition could be a challenge though, as we do
not have a B2C experience.
Interviewer Playing with his phone. (Seemed to be a stress interview)
Candidate Moved on to accessing the industry attractiveness. 1) Regulations 2) Growth
rate 3) Customers (numbers & needs) 4) Competitors (us vs. them)
Interviewer Answered the questions I asked. The growth rate was 8-9%.
Candidate I mentioned that all the factors seem to be favorable. I will now look at the
potential profits and then look at the feasibility of the model.
Interviewer Asked to me summarize the case.
Candidate Wished me luck with a hand shake. I knew I had an offer :)

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 DOs and 1) Smile and be confident. 2) Always have a question ready for the interviewer
DONTs/Important to be asked after the interview. This shows your seriousness to the firm
Tips

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Adarsh Kapoor

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot Morning
Interviewer Partners (Can't recall their names)
Pre-College
profile
Undergraduate IIT Bombay
College
Branch Chemical Engineering
Work Experience 23 months
Firm Credit Suisse, as a quantitative analyst
Sector Finance
Round 1
Interview Market Entry
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Hi Adarsh.. so, which interview is this?
Candidate Took a while and said '5th'. He looked surprised..before he could say anything, I
was like '1st with BCG, 5th of the day.. McK took 4 and then rejected. So, yeah,
5th in total'
Interviewer Okay. That's fine.. Then he asked few general questions about my PoRs at IITB.
Candidate
Interviewer Then we did a case.
Candidate
Interviewer This case was a general discussion on my approach to the case. The interviewer
was interested in my thought process and didn't ask for any kind of numbers to
work with. I frankly don't remember the exact case.
Round 2
Interview Market Entry - Tractor company wanted to enter into Indian market.
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Interviewer entered with coke in his hand and asked 'Do you need one'
Candidate No sir, thank you. I don't drink coke. I already asked for water bottle that should
be on its way.
Interviewer Still, have it if you want or feel so.
Candidate Alright, I can have one. To my surprise, interviewer left his can on the table and
went outside to get another one for me. :P
Interviewer Some general questions and then we started the case.
Case problem: Your client is a tractor manufacturing firm and they are planning to
enter Indian market. I don’t want you to solve the full case, but just let me know
the factors you'll be considering for this problem.
Candidate My approach here will be to first understand the industry and the business of the
firm. And then, I'll analyze the industry landscape in India and see if it is attractive

45 | P a g e
 to the firm to enter in this geography or not. Further, if required, I can estimate
the profit numbers and check feasibility at the end, along with the potential risks.
Interviewer Okay. What all information you'll require to move ahead.
Candidate I'd like to know majorly 4 things: 1. The firm's current business locations, value
chain and product portfolio. 2. Potential customer segment in Indian market they
are targeting. 3. Competitors' presence in Indian market. 4. Product specifications
and price (to compare and analyze against the competitors')
Interviewer The firm is planning to enter with a 'Compact' tractor. They current manufacture
2 types of tractors, one of them is 'compact'. Knowing the types of products we
manufacture, what else you should know right now.
Candidate What kind of tractors are these. From my knowledge, I'm assuming they are used
for agricultural purposes. Is that a fair assumption?
Interviewer Yes
Candidate Okay, now I'd like to understand why you're planning to enter with only
'Compact' one and not the other product.
Interviewer Okay, what do you think?
Candidate To understand this, may I know currently where (geographies) are you selling
your products?
Interviewer We sell in USA - normal tractors, and Thailand - Compact tractors.
Candidate I think the types of tractors being used in different locations can be due to the
differences in the agricultural practices.
Interviewer That's correct. Can you think more on what can be difference in usage?
Candidate In USA, we generally see that there are big agro farms, unlike small pieces of
lands (for e.g., in India and Thailand)
Interviewer Correct. Thus, compact tractors are useful for Indian farmers. After this, what else
you can think of in terms of understanding the potential farmers in India.
Candidate Among farmers, to narrow down further. Are there any specific types of crops, for
which the Thai farmers are using these tractors?
Interviewer Yes, it is used by the farmers who are into paddy (rice) crops.
Candidate Alright, I think given the current usage of the compact tractor, we can have rice
growing farmers as our initial target segment to start with.
Interviewer That's fine. I don't think we need to go more into the case.
Candidate After this, we discussed some general stuff about Joka... how things (and culture:
P) have changed from the interviewer's time.

DOs and Stay calm and trust your prep, your abilities. Chill maaro and keep a smile on your
DONTs/Importan face.
t Tips Practice different types of cases. The interviewers are going to judge you more on
your structure and thought process.
Take time and listen properly to what is being asked. Don't rush for the final
solution.
I went to BCG after not getting in McK. The thing that worked in my favor (in BCG
interview) was that I didn't panic and believed in myself.
Again, most important tip: Chill and wear a smile.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Shrey Verma

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Varun Bopanna (Principal)
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Kanpur
College
Branch Mechanical Engineering
Work Experience 23 months
Firm PwC Diamond
Sector Management Consulting
Round 1
Interview Sales Force Optimization / Customer Targeting
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer Our client is a health insurance firm, and we believe our sales agents are not
performing at par with our expectations. What should we do?
Candidate Before I begin my analysis, I would like to understand more about our client.
Where do we operate? How big are we? What kind of products do we offer?
Also, how do sales force in health insurance industries operate?
Interviewer We are based out of India, and have multiple products available. There are
three major competitors in the industry, each having a 30% market share. Sales
force representatives have a low variable pay and high fixed pay based on the
number of customers they convert. The people that they need to meet up with
is decided by us.
Candidate Okay, I would like to look at three main things. First, I would like to understand
whether our expectations are set right, or are we having too high expectations?
I would like to benchmark our targets with our competitors. Second, I would
like to look at whether we are capturing information correctly, or is there a
problem with our document keeping? Third, if our expectations are good and
documentation works fine, I would like to evaluate if there is an internal issue
within the organization.
Interviewer This is an uncommon structure. Let's say the problem is the third case, where
our sales force is actually not performing well. Could you come up with an
exhaustive structure, which can cover all of the aspects?
Candidate Sure, first I would look at the salesforce employee capability and willingness.
For capability, I would look at the hiring and training procedure. For willingness,
I would benchmark the pay, quality of work and other factors with competitors.
Second, I would look at the customers we are targeting. Do these customers
require insurance, do they have the willingness to pay. Third, I would look at
whether we are assigning the target customers to salesforce appropriately. Are
the territories designed optimally, or is there a scope of improvement. Fourth, I
would look at whether the salesforce is able to make contact with potential
customers. Are they missing appointments, are customers not answering calls.

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 Fifth, I would look at the product we are offering, is it competitive in the
market. Finally, I would look at the onboarding procedure and see if this was
the major hurdle why people are not joining.

Interviewer The major hurdle here is we are not targeting the right customers, and they are
not interested in health insurance products. Could you suggest a way we can
reach out to our target customers?
Candidate Yes, we can scout places where are likely target customers can be. We can go
to hospitals and figure out the patients coming over there, along with couples
who have had babies as they would have a higher propensity to buy due to
greater financial burden. We can also look at marriage registrar and figure out
newly married couple, whom we can sell our product to. We can have a tie-up
with Google and ask them to provide details of people who search for health
insurance online. We can also have tie-up with corporates so that all of their
employees are covered under our scheme.
Interviewer This looks good. We are done with the case.
Candidate Thank you.
Round 2
Interview Market Entry/ Product Benchmarking
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer Our client is a motorcycle manufacturer and they are planning to enter a new
market. Help them decide what to do
Candidate Before I analyze, I want to understand more about our client and its objectives.
Where are we present? How large are we in our market? What kind of bikes do
we sell?
Interviewer The client is based out of India and sells normal consumer bikes. They have a
leading market share in the Indian market, and are looking to expand
internationally. Profitability is their major driver.
Candidate Okay, I would first like to determine which market to enter. First, I would look
at what are possible drivers of purchase for a motorcycle and which factors are
the dominant drivers in a particular market. I would like to then match are core
advantages with the driving factors, and identify which market to enter. Then I
would look at the competitive landscape in the industry, and understand
whether there is an opportunity to enter and should we expect retaliation.
Once that is done, I would like to decide on how do we manufacture and
distribute, and how do we finance our expansion.
Interviewer This looks good. Let's suppose we have finalized our market and we have one
key competitor in that geography. I want you to benchmark our product with
our competitor on all the parameters you think are important, and see if we
can beat them. What are the parameters you would look at?
Candidate I would look at the brand name, design and aesthetics, safety features, weight,
engine power, mileage, price, availability of financing, availability of service

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 centers, annual maintenance costs, life of the bike, and availability of
insurance.
Interviewer Let’s say we are similar with our competitor in all parameters apart from
mileage and price. Our price is Rs 60,000 and the competitor's is Rs 50,000. Do
you think we should enter the market?
Candidate Instead of comparing direct prices, I would like to market our product based on
the net cost to consumer. To do this, I would like to estimate the annual fuel
and maintenance costs, salvage value and the price. Based on the life of the
bike, I would discount the annual costs with the appropriate discount factor. If
our lifetime expenditure comes lower than our competitor's we can enter this
market.
Interviewer The interviewer gives numerical data on life of bike, mileage, no of kilometers a
bike runs in a year, annual maintenance cost and salvage value. Based on the
computations, our product comes out to be cheaper.
DOs and Be confident in the interview. Always make sure to clarify what you are solving
DONTs/Important for, to ensure you don't solve the wrong problem. Also, the initial ice-breaker
Tips questions are a great way to build rapport with your interviewer, so try to have
a good first impression. At the end of the interview, when you are asked if you
have any questions, make sure you ask a question, and the question comes out
to be genuine and not asking just for the sake of it.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Yash Patel

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer 1st Round - Director, 2nd Round - Partner
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Madras
College
Branch Civil Engineering
Work Experience 2 years
Firm EXL
Sector Analytics
Round 1
Interview Experience Profitability
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer I have few questions from your work experience and then we will do a case.
Asked tell me about yourself and went in depth to understand about job.
Interview was 25 mins out of which this went on for 10-12 mins.
Candidate Explained all the questions that he had about my work experience
Interviewer Ok. Let's start with a case. Your client is a bank who look at the wholesale
business. It has 2 divisions, trading and global markets. They want to
increase their profitability. How would you proceed?
Candidate Reiterated the question. Asked about the objective and if there is any
specific profitability target they have in mind
Interviewer We don’t have any specific target.
Candidate What is the current profitability and what was the expected profitability?
This is to understand how the targets are set and understand if the
company lacks somewhere or they have good profitability and just want to
increase it further
Interviewer Don’t go into specific numbers. Profitability has been below the
expectations since last 3-4 years
Candidate I want to ask few questions to understand the situation better and want to
scope out questions into 3 parts (listed all 3 and discussed each one by
one):
1) Company and services- Where do they operate, What services do they
provide? How much does each service account for in the total revenues and
cost?
2) Customers - Who are the target customers, where are they present?
3) Competition - Any other players operating, market share, any known
difference in services provided? Are they facing similar issues?

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 Interviewer Answering to the above questions:
1) Operates in the US. Services provided - like any normal bank, trading,
securities, banking, operational, loans, mutual funds, asset management,
etc.
2) Mostly corporate customers. Clients present all across the globe
3) Few players in the market providing similar services. Only our client is
facing this issue
Candidate Ok. I would now like to analyze the profits, which comprises revenue and
cost. Do you want me to analyze any specific branch first?
Interviewer Yeah, why don't you list down the different costs involved in this business
Candidate Sure. I can think of 4 costs for the bank, Service cost (cost of providing
services), Infrastructure (offices, hardware and software), Salary and
Financial costs (ATM, Loans, interests, etc.). Is there any other cost I am
missing or should I proceed with these costs?
Interviewer Why don't you analyze the salary component in this
Candidate Sure. Salary can be broken down based on hierarchy or departments. Do
you want me to break it into any specific component?
Interviewer Consider we pay same salary to everyone
Candidate Sure. Total salary expense can be broken into total number of employees
and salary per employee
Interviewer Our salary per employee is actually below the industry standards.
Candidate So is it safe to assume that we have more employees than needed? Direct
benchmarking against competition might be difficult since the scale of
operations will differ.
Interviewer Yeah, that's right. What do you think could be the reasons that we have
more employees than required?
Candidate Took 30-45 secs to list down the various reasons possible. I have noted
down 4 reasons that can lead to the following situation:
1) Low capability of individuals - skill mismatch which reduced the quality of
work
2) Low willingness of individuals, due to motivation, type of work, salary,
etc.
3) Earlier requirements were higher that led to hiring more employees that
are not required now
4) Inefficiencies in forming and managing the teams and processes, leading
to poor quality of work
Interviewer Alright. What do you think the company should do?

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 Candidate I mentioned points based on the problems I stated above.
1) Hire employees based on the type of projects available with the company
2) Instead of having more employees and low salary, increase salary and
hire better, but fewer employees who have more skills. We can try and
come up with optimal number of employees and salary to be paid using trial
and error or several other algorithms.
3) Try and ensure that number of projects offered do not reduce. Improving
quality of work by hiring better skilled employees will help with this. Also,
since projects will usually come from good relations in B2B, try and ensure
that we have good relation or engagement managers. If needed, training
can be held for them.
4) Try restructuring the team or organization structure that can help in
reducing process time. Can use different models of how team can be setup,
for example, split multiple modules into multiple teams to ensure that
specific work is done by one team? This will help in increasing working
speed.
Interviewer Ok, good. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked a question I had prepared to ask.
Interviewer Answered and then asked me to wait for 2 minutes

Round 2
Interview Experience New Product Entry
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Let's do a case first, then you can ask me any questions if you have and then
I have few questions from your resume.
Candidate We did a case but he did not ask any personals or questions from resume
after completing the case
Interviewer Your Client wants to analyze the electric automobile market to understand
if they should enter the market
Candidate Reiterated the question. Asked about the objective and criteria based on
which they will decide if they should enter or not
Interviewer We don’t have any specific target. Just want to do industry analysis
Candidate I want to ask few questions to understand the situation better and want to
scope out questions into 4 parts (listed all 4 and discussed each one by
one):
1) Company - Where do they operate, What they do, which part of supply
chain they operate, financial condition?
2) Automobile - What type do they want to build, 2 or 4 wheeler? Multiple
variants? Difference between this and normal vehicles?
3) Competition - Any other players operating, market share, their vehicle's
USP?
4) Customers - Who are the target customers, are we manufacturing for
premium or economy customers?

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 Interviewer Answering to the above questions:
1) Operates in India. Planning to launch in India. Client builds normal 2 and
4 wheelers currently. Have their own showrooms where they are sold.
Financially in a good position and not a concern.
2) 2 or 4 wheeler - we haven't planned anything, please suggest.
3) Very few players as industry is still in growing stage. So none that we
should be worried about.
4) For everyone
Candidate Took 30 secs and laid down the structure. I want to split analysis into 3
parts.
1) Market attractiveness (for 2 and 4 wheeler)- Understand industry size,
growth rate, barriers and other important factors to be considered
2) Perform cost benefit analysis and understand how much profit can be
generated along with how to set up the value chain
3) Decide on mode of entry
Interviewer Sure. Go Ahead. Can you find the market size for me?
Candidate Wrote the formula for finding the market size. He wasn't interested in
numbers, so asked me to move ahead after I wrote the formula.
Interviewer Ok. Can you list down the factors that the company should consider?
Candidate Parameters that should be considered - Government regulations,
government targets of 2030 to produce all electric vehicle can be helpful,
first mover advantages if any as less competition currently, infrastructure
for charging vehicles, cannibalization of current business, acceptance of
electric vehicles which will drive the demand
Interviewer Which one do you recommend to launch, 2 or 4 wheeler?
Candidate I think of all the factors, infrastructure might play one of the biggest roles.
Since infrastructure (charging stations) might be difficult and take longer
time to setup across the country, we can start with 2 wheelers which will be
typically used for short distance and can be charged at home. Later in few
years once decent infrastructure is built for charging 4 wheelers, can launch
them then.
Do you want me to analyze anything else or should I move to cost benefit
analysis?
Interviewer Good. What do you want to do in cost benefit analysis?
Candidate I would like to find the revenues that can be generated based on the market
size, market share and price of the vehicle. Then I want to find total costs
that the company will incur. Based on that, I will find how many years it will
take to break even and if that meets with the company's targets
Interviewer Ok. But we haven't decided what price we should charge. Can you help me
find that?
Candidate Sure. We can do that in 3 ways. Cost based, Competition based, Value
based. I will try to find the price range from each approach and try to come
to a final number
Interviewer Let's say after doing this you got a price that is more than the price of
current vehicles

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 Candidate I want to find the total lifetime cost of the vehicle for the customer. That
will include the fuel-charging costs, maintenance costs majorly along with
the buying cost. We will have to discount the charges every year and try to
find the present value of the total expenses and compare with the current
vehicle's lifetime cost
Interviewer He Provided me with the lifetime costs for the customers. Electric - Rs.1.3L,
Normal - Rs. 1.5L, Life of 7 years
Candidate Suggested that based on this numbers, customers will save more in the
entire lifetime even if they are spending more for buying. We will have to
stress on this in all marketing campaigns, along with the sense of saving
environment due to decreased pollution.
Interviewer Ok. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked a question I had prepared to ask.
Interviewer Answered and then asked me to wait for 2 minutes

DOs and 1) Know your resume in and out. Since the partners are highly experienced,
DONTs/Important Tips a very easy way to test the candidate is to ask a case in the sector they have
worked on. My first case had an overlap of 50 - 60% with the work I did and
that could be because he indirectly wanted to understand everything I did
in detail, which he couldn't have asked in normal discussion due to time
constraint and hence gave it as a case.
2) Be ready with 2-3 good questions to ask at the end when you are given
the chance. A general suggestion would be to ask a question that will help
you as a consultant in taking a decision for your future.
3) Be calm and composed. Sometimes interviewer might show they are
least interested in what you are saying, but do not demotivate yourself by
thinking you are not doing well. They might be just testing you in a different
manner or it could be that they have already decided to take you. So just
keep thinking proactively and you will do well. All the Best!

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name P Pratham
Interviewing firm Boston Consulting Group
Slot 8:00
Interviewer Gaurav Jindal (Principal) - 1st Round & Partner - 2nd Round
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate NITK Surathkal
College
Branch Mechanical
Work Experience 12 months
Firm ZS Associates
Sector Pharma Consulting
Round 1
Interview Experience GTM
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Could you please tell me about yourself?
Candidate Took 1 minute to take him through the important things I'd done
Interviewer Let's do a quick case. An Indian luxury automobile manufacturer has
recently entered the hatchback segment and has reached out to you to
expand its reach. How would you go about it?
Candidate Asked a few preliminary questions to understand more about the client,
their current products, objective, etc.
Interviewer Go on.
Candidate Laid down the structure for the GTM case.
Interviewer What do you think is the reason behind low sales inspite of this being a
better car in terms of features with a lower price point and also having an
extensive service network?
Candidate Identified that sale of luxury cars are driven more by brand rather than
features and the client's brand wasn't strong (He was looking for this
answer)
Interviewer Provided a few numbers and asked me to calculate EBITDA for the brand.
Candidate Made a small mistake but was able to correct it immediately.
Interviewer Cool. Could you please wait for a few minutes?
Candidate Sure.
Coordinator You're doing good but we want to test your structuring a little more and
you'll have your next case in 2 mins.
Round 2
Interview Experience Growth - Slightly unconventional
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Could you please take me through your resume?
Candidate 1-2 minute introduction which was followed by a couple of questions on my
entrepreneurial stint which he was interested in.

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 Interviewer Let's get started with the case. Our client (tractor manufacturer) has
reached out to us to find out why their output is low (3000/ year) and wants
us to help them increase capacity to 5000/year to meet market demand.
Candidate Took a couple of minutes to lay down the structure starting from sourcing
of raw materials - in bound logistics - storage & handling - production

Interviewer Please list down all factors within each of the above factors that you
mentioned and take me through it?
Candidate Further listed down factors that could possibly slow down production and
suggested measures that could be taken to improve them.
Interviewer Thank you. Please wait here for a minute.
Coordinator You're selected.
DOs and Sounds clichéd but Important to be confident and take time/ask for help
DONTs/Important Tips when required.
A good start with personals can set the tone for the rest of the interview so
please don't neglect that.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Manan Ved

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Nilesh (Partner)
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate NM College
College
Branch B.Com
Work Experience 0 (36 months articleship)
Firm Deloitte
Sector Audit
ROUND 1
Interview Experience Unconventional
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Hello, Good morning. Sit down!
Candidate (Sitting down) Hello Sir!
Interviewer So Manan, I will introduce myself. I am partner based out of Chennai office
and have been practicing in IG. I have been to US for a year on a
secondment and now am back here. Why don't you introduce yourself?
Candidate I am Manan Ved, a Chartered Accountant. I have done my articleship in
Deloitte in Stat Audit for 3 years, post which I joined Joka.
Interviewer Okay, see how the process works is we have to do a case. So let’s do a case.
Candidate Sure, Sir.
Interviewer There is this factory in central India which manufactures tractors. Its
installed capacity is 5,000 units per month but it is currently producing
3,000 units per month. Find out reasons why it could happen. You can ask
me any data along the way, don't make assumptions.
Candidate Sure, Sir. Reiterated the problem and asked him is there any other objective
sir, apart from this?
Interviewer No, just find out the reasons why it could happen, nothing else.
Candidate Started asking preliminary questions. 1. Is it a company specific problem or
industry wide? 2. What is the demand in the market? 3. What is the Value
chain like? 4. No of factories?
Interviewer Answered them and told me to focus more on production side issues.
Candidate Okay, sir. So what is our production process like? Like what I mean is how
many assembly lines and the steps involved in manufacturing the tractor?
Interviewer Sure, so why don’t you give it a try?
Candidate So I will try to structure the problem into 3 main buckets: 1. Input
procurement 2. Processing and 3. Selling and Distribution
Interviewer Good, why don't you list down the factors on what could go wrong in each
one of them?

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 Candidate I will start with input procurement first. The problems can be due to 1.
Suppliers they can provide a. Bad/Low Quality material b. Lead time taken
for materials to get to factory. C. Low quantity
Interviewer Good, can you expand a bit more?
Candidate Sir, bad quality of raw materials can increase the time taken to make
finished products as a lot of inputs might get rejected. Also certain parts
might be so bad that they wouldn't fit in any component. Secondly lead
time might be very large/huge so the inputs might not come on time for the
production cycle. Thirdly, there can be suppliers who don't have the
requisite quantity needed for our production.
Interviewer Let's move onto the second part i.e. Processing
Candidate Sir, in processing there might be problems like: a. Breakdown of machines
b. Lack of trained staff (cut in between)
Interviewer What does break down of machines do?
Candidate Sir, due to break down of machines the assembly line will stop and hence
the production will not reach its full potential.
Interviewer Thank you, Manan. Can you summarize the case for me?
Candidate Summarized.
Interviewer Goes out and the campus coordinator comes in after like 5 long minutes to
inform me that I have made it to BCG!

DOs and You have to practice cases. Practicing different types of cases will help a lot.
DONTs/Important Tips In the final interview, they would see your approach and how well you can
flesh out your points and cover everything. Plus remain calm on the final
day. Have a good night's sleep and have good food. And most importantly
believe in yourself :)

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Shelley Singh

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 9am
Interviewer Rajiv Gupta for Round 2
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate BITS Pilani, Pilani campus
College
Branch Chemical Engineering
Work Experience 35 months
Firm Honeywell UOP, Resermine
Sector Oil and Gas Industry, Design ( User Interface and Experience)
Round 1
Interview Sales growth
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer You client is Apple store which wants to maximize its sales of phone's batteries
Candidate I'd like to start with some preliminary questions
Interviewer Yes
Candidate Which geography is the client operating in?
Interviewer Say a metro city, Delhi
Candidate Okay. Is this a single store or a chain of stores?
Interviewer Single store
Candidate What are the competitors? I am assuming local stores which sell duplicate
products and e-commerce platforms are two major ones
Interviewer Yes you are correct
Candidate Sales = number of units sold/customer*price per unit*number of customers
Interviewer Yes
Candidate To increase the number of units I would like to understand this from Demand
and Supply side
Interviewer Yes
Candidate From Supply side, do you have any constraints? Are we able to fulfill demand?
Interviewer Yes there is no problem from Supply side
Candidate Okay for assessing Demand side I would like to understand Accessibility,
Affordability, Awareness and Likeability of our batteries with respect to
competitors
Interviewer Go ahead
Candidate As far as affordability is concerned, we know original Apple products are way
costlier than their duplicate parts. If we know the paying capacity of our target
population, we can use pitch the products as giving value for money because
obviously the cheap products wouldn’t necessarily perform as good as original
ones
Interviewer Yes, what's next?

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 Candidate For accessibility, are our stores easily accessible? Where are they located
exactly in Delhi?
Interviewer Yes, they are well located in the marketplace
Candidate Okay, one more reason I can think of for customers preferring other batteries
is if the delivery of products takes too much time in original products.
Normally, if a customer goes to service center, the replacement takes a couple
of days to 2 weeks. Could we work on reducing this time?
Interviewer Yes, we could do that
Candidate Talking about Awareness, are the customers aware about the store and its
product catalogue?
Interviewer Yes how do you plan to increase that?
Candidate We could use some marketing strategies like advertising in that marketplace
about the store, being active on help forums for customers in that vicinity and
give them services at the store if needed.
Interviewer Yes
Candidate Coming to Likeability, if we talk about the features of the whole deal, we can
see that Likeability would depend on Product, convenience of use, price,
quality, services / deals. Quality is something which the customers would know
that it is the best in the market. Could we work on lowering the price a bit
keeping in mind the costs associated in doing so?
Interviewer Yes how would you suggest that?
Candidate I could analyze the entire value chain to see where we could cut costs for the
store.
Interviewer Let's not go there for now. What else in Likeability?
Candidate Most of the buyers want warrantee with their purchase if they are making a
big investment on a product. We could see if our existing plans are likeable
enough by conducting a survey or seeing how other products in premium
space work with warrantees.
Interviewer Yes, makes sense. Anything else?
Candidate I think this is it. Should I give my final recommendations?
Interviewer No that's not needed. I think we can close the case here.
Candidate Thank you.
Round 2
Interview Growth
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer There is a store selling home décor textile items like Curtains, cushions etc.
They want to set up an online store. How would you go about it?
Candidate I would first like to understand what type of customers is the shop selling?
Interviewer Let's say the target population is women in the age group 40-50 and the store
sells luxury items
Candidate Second clarifying question that I have is this target population digitally
literate?
Interviewer What do you mean by digital literacy?

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 Candidate That they can use the apps on their phone and are willing to try out something
new
Interviewer Yes. Let's say they all use their smartphones like an average person
Candidate So, with regards to store, I would first like to see what are the main customer
touch points which can be replicated in online and which cannot be
Interviewer Go ahead
Candidate Since this shop involves selling fabric, choice to buy is governed by factors like
touch, feel (texture) and overall look of the fabric
Interviewer Yes
Candidate So by drawing consumer journey as : Consumer decides to buy something ->
Looks for the best shop ( based on vicinity, previous experience of buying,
recommendations ->Goes to shop-> Selects items she wants to buy-> places an
order for immediate delivery or scheduled delivery
Interviewer Yes, correct
Candidate For digitizing there are two approaches. I will take you to both the approaches
one by one.
Interviewer Go ahead
Candidate One is Long term expansion wherein we use Virtual Reality to set up the store.
The reason behind this is that since we can’t replicate 'touch' part of the
buying process, we can give them a simulated environment where they can
see how their purchase would look like in their home. A lot of interior design
companies are making their way forward in Virtual reality space for showing
their designs to clients.
Interviewer -
Candidate Short term path would be to set up a website and set up online portals in the
store itself (let’s say at the billing counter so that customers can see more
variety not currently available in the store). We want to make them transition
from a brick and mortar store to an online e-commerce platform. Setting up
these portals could be a way to start it.
Interviewer Correct
Candidate In online websites we have two options - Setting up an independent website or
launching the products on Amazon/ Flipkart (existing platforms who sell these
items). If the store is pretty famous, the first option would be easier to gain
traction on the website. In the first option (own website), we need to look at
how the most important details about the item are clear, for eg.- color shown
on the website is sometimes different from the color on the actual product.
Better product photos, details about the make and fabric should be clearly
specified.
Interviewer And what about launching it on Amazon
Candidate Here we would launch if we are relatively new to the customers and need the
existing platform to drive our sales.
Interviewer How do you plan to drive revenues through Amazon let's say?
Candidate Sales = number of customers* number of units sold per customer* price per
unit.
Interviewer -

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 Candidate With the platform, we would also be able to gain new customers who are
already buying luxury items online.
Interviewer -
Candidate For increasing the number of units sold, we would need to enhance the
experience of buying by showing them product videos and pictures. They can
increase the number of products sold by providing package deals.
Interviewer Looks good. Let's close the case here.
DOs and 1. Try to include numbers in open ended cases. Here in Round 2 case, I tried to
DONTs/Important calculate revenues for sales on ecommerce platforms, showed the approach
Tips and assumptions.
2. Apart from these two cases, I had to guesstimate the number of flights flying
out of Delhi airport per day.
3. Prepare your personals well. This point can't be stressed enough. I used my
personals to talk about my motivation to do consulting and how what I had
done in my previous work experiences tied well with the role. Read about the
company projects and its core values.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Rajat Garg

Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 9:30 AM
Interviewer
Pre-College
profile
Undergraduate IIT Delhi
College
Branch Chemical Engineering
Work Experience 10 months
Firm Futures First
Sector Proprietary trading (Finance)
Round 1
Interview Guesstimate
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Tell me something not in your CV!! (had discussion on this question for some
time)
Interviewer Estimate no of golf balls that can be filled in the lakes of campus.
Candidate Balls should be assumed as floating or not? If the ball is floating, I'll use only area
for the calculation. If it'll sink, I would have to use volume
Interviewer Golf balls sink. So take volume
Candidate (wrote the formula) No of balls= Volume of lakes* No of lakes*packing
fraction/volume of each ball. No of lakes are 7.
Interviewer Do it for just 1 lake.
Candidate Specified the lake and took approximate dimensions. (20*10*5 m^3). Volume of
each ball: took diameter as 10 cm.
Interviewer Golf ball with diameter as 10cm?
Candidate I had assumed it to be same as a leather cricket ball. I have not seen a golf ball.
Interviewer It’s smaller. Approximate using a TT Ball.
Candidate Took diameter as 5cm. Packing efficiency: (explained different kinds of packing
fraction)
Interviewer No need to calculate further. We are done.
Mistakes I could have asked initial questions: No of lakes, packing efficiency and
floating/sinking ball: instead of starting off with the formula
Pros Packing fraction factor was something he was looking out for. I explained him
different packing types which went in my favour and immediately finished the
case.
Round 2
Interview Profit Margin
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Tell me about yourself and some related questions to undergrad college

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 Candidate Prepared answer
Interviewer Let’s do the case. There is a FMCG firm who has witnessed slower rate of growth
and wants to increase their profit margin. How will you go about it?
Candidate (Reiterated ques) Initial Ques: 1. Products? That of a typical FMCG 2. Geography:
Kolkata 3. Time Horizon: take a year 4. differentiated market or not: No
differentiation
You said slower growth rate. What parameter are we discussing to measure
growth?
Interviewer Profit margin growth
Candidate I am assuming Profit Margin= Profits/Revenue. Is it a fair assumption?
Interviewer Yes! Go on
Candidate Decline can be due to decline in profits or disproportionate increase in revenues
Interviewer Ok! So Can you list down how profits can decline
Candidate Profits= Revenue- costs
Interviewer We'll analyze revenues separately. Tell me about costs
Candidate For costs I would like to know the entire value chain of the company.
Interviewer (Interviewer explained distribution system of the firm! Sales person--> City
distribution---> Individual retailers)
Candidate Wrote down the costs involved and divided each into internal and external. (Lost
case structure as a bucket list was pondering in my mind: emergence of new
market players, change in fees, inventory costs)
Interviewer (Seemed satisfied!! He was looking if I had asked for value chain and analyzed it
and also consider macroeconomic factors)
There is an emergence of new player and thus, to incentivize we have to give
offers which has increased our costs. Anything else you would like to analyze?
Candidate We have seen so far that costs incurred in discounts and incentives have gone
up. This should have translated into increased revenues. I would like to analyze
revenues further.
Interviewer Sure, go ahead
Candidate Revenues= Price * Volume * No of stores
Interviewer Formula seems to be a bit inaccurate given the kind of market we are
considering.
Candidate Average Revenues= (Avg. Price * Avg Volume)per store * No of stores
Interviewer I would like you to tell me how we can increase margins as well.
Candidate To increase the margins proportionately, one of three should be increased. We
can't increase prices (not a differentiated product). Can we increase no of stores?
Interviewer Stores in the city are optimal
Candidate Ok. We can then increase the volumes sold.
Interviewer How will you aim to achieve that?
Candidate (Kind of stuck) (Thinking out loud: Can't change price, nor can increase average
volumes and nor increase stores, how can we increase revenues?)
Initial thought: To increase volumes- incentivize retailers: monetary and non
monetary

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 Interviewer We have already been incurring costs in incentivizing and can't afford more.
Retailers want to keep their spending constant. Look at the formula, may be the
average part
Candidate Revenues= (Price_a * Volume_a + Price_b* Volume_b +________________
+Price_n* Volume_n) *no of stores. Are the margins, we get from each product
same?
Interviewer No, they aren't
Candidate To increase margins, change the product mix for the retailers. Sell more of the
products with more margins to the retailers while keeping their spend same.
Interviewer That's right! Can you summarize
Candidate (Quick summary for about 15 sec)

DOs and 1. Feedback by the interviewer: Write more!! I spoke and then wrote while
DONTs/Importan interviewer suggested me to do the other way. 2. Thinking out loud: this helped
t Tips me as interviewer was able to connect with my thought process and help me
continuously. 3. Listen to interviewer carefully: there were 2-3 instances he
dropped subtle hints which helped me and that shows your attention to detail. 4.
It’s good to say that you don't know about something and ask information about
it rather than going forward with random assumptions (asked for golf ball in case
1 and asked for distribution system in case 2) (PS: tried to recreate the case, it
might not be exactly the same as I did in the interview)

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Subramaniam T
Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Madras
College
Branch Engineering Design
Work Experience 23 months
Firm Credit Suisse
Sector Finance
Round 1
Interview Market entry
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer I've not had a chance to look at your profile. Why don't you tell me about
yourself while I look at your CV?
Candidate Gave an introduction. Follow up questions on hobbies: investing and tv series
(favourite character in Game of Thrones)
Interviewer Let's do a case. Your client is a two wheeler manufacturer looking to expand
into another country.
Candidate Reclarified the question and asked a few preliminary questions on the reason
for expansion and whether there's any specific metric to look at?
Interviewer The company is looking for Geographi expanision and doesn't have any specific
metric in mind.
Candidate Asked preliminary questions about the company's product portfolio and the
value chain
Interviewer The company manufactures and sells one type of scooter.
Candidate Took a few seconds and laid out a structure that I will first look at the market
attractiveness/potential (demand * revenue - fixed cost - variable cost) and
if yes, then look at barriers to entry (govt. regulations, capital requirements,
competition etc) and then look at the means of entering the market
Interviewer The market is attractive and there are no barriers to entry. Currently, there is
only one significant player in the country
Candidate To understand how our product offering is differentiated from the existing
player, I'd like to list down the different aspects that a customer would look at
before buying a scooter and benchmark ourself against the competitor.
Interviewer Yes, go ahead
Candidate Clarified that the customer segment for scooters would mostly be in the middle
class/lower-middle class and across age ranges.
Interviewer Yes, that's a valid assumption
Candidate Listed down the aspects - Price, Brand, Aesthetics, Post purchase service, Annual
maintainance/service charge, Running expence (mileage)

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 Interviewer Our price is Rs. 70,000 while competitor's is Rs.40,000. Our annual maintainance
charges are roughly 50% cheaper than competitor and our mileage
is 50 km/litre while competitor's is around 30 km/lt. Assume that we are
equivalent to competitor in all other aspects. Do you think we should ener this
market?
Candidate Given the customer profiles, I believe they are generally price conscious when
they buy scooter and at first glance, our competior is significantly cheaper
than us. While tis may not seem attractive, but we should look at the life period
of the scooter, and compute the costs involved for running and
maintainace over this time and then make a comparison
Interviewer Could you compute that?
Candidate Assumed a life of 8 years, fuel price of Rs. 70 per litre and an average
consumption of certain kilometres per year/month. Validated the assumptions
with
the interviewer at each step. Computed the overall costs involved and it turned
out we were cheaper than the competitor. Made a conclusion that our product
will be more attractive and we should go ahead with the market entry
Interviewer How will you position our product?
Candidate Told that the focus should be on the mileage part and not just on price. The
sales and marketing should focus on the fact that the running cost per
month/year or per km is significantly cheaper for us compared to the other
existing players.
Interviewer Good, let's stop here.
Candidate
Interviewer Do you have any questions
Candidate Asked a couple of questions.

I only had one round of interview which was quite short (10-15 minutes). Stay
calm and confident. Prepare well on the personals as that starts the initial
conversation with the interviewer and also be prepared for a couple of
questions to ask post the case interview.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Naveen Kumar Reddy Pasham

Interviewing firm Bain & Co
Slot 9:30
Interviewer Principal(don't remember her name), Niranjana (Manager), Partner (don't
remember his name)
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Bhubaneswar
College
Branch Electrical Engineering
Work Experience 30 months
Firm Cognizant, Ocwen Financial Solutions
Sector Operational Excellence, Corp Finance
Round 1
Interview Experience Market Entry
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer You seem to have worked with 2 different companies, what have you done
there?
Candidate Talked about my stints at 2 different companies and the work that I had done
Interviewer You have done some cost cutting work already, you had talked to several BU
heads and BU COOs regarding their margin plans and downsizing, what were
the challenges that you faced?
Candidate Explained how I was made to feel like an amateur while working with such
experienced high level folks initially, but later on how I was confident enough
to drive the programs on my own and the role of mentoring I received from
seniors in my team, and about my preparation before every meeting.
Interviewer Let’s get into the case:
Your client is a telecom company in UK who want to enter India, can you pls
help them out?
Candidate So our client is a telecom company in UK who wants to enter India and we
need to help them whether to enter or not and if yes then how? Is there
anything else that I need to look at?
Interviewer No
Candidate Before getting into the case may I know what is the motive behind entry into
India and do we have any metric/goal against which we benchmark and
decide?
Interviewer They do not have any metric, they just want to make some profits by
expansion and increase their presence worldwide. Why do you think they
would want to enter India?
Candidate India is a high potential market for telecom companies, with unexplored rural
sector and increasing penetration of smartphones there is a huge
opportunity for them. But due to high competition, I'm sure our client must
be doing things cheaply or differently from existing players in India.
Interviewer OK, so what next?

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 Candidate I would like to know a little bit more about the firm. What kind of
services/products does the firm offer in UK? Are they planning to do the
same in India also?
Interviewer They offer several services in UK, but in India they want to provide mobile
network services like your regular Idea/Airtel etc. that comes with a simcard
Candidate If the services/products are similar it helps the client in developing synergies.
Proceeding further, I would begin with looking at Industry attractiveness, do
a competitor analysis, see if we have enough resources to succeed, do a
business evaluation (Revenue/Cost/Profits), Anticipate competitive reaction,
see how to make business sustainable over long period and decide on how to
enter.
Interviewer Can you explain me your different buckets?
Candidate Explained the factors I would consider in each bucket and also estimated the
market size of telecom sector in India
Interviewer Can you explain the competitive reaction bucket? How is that important?
Candidate It is not enough to analyze the competitors and their operations currently. It
is important to anticipate the competitor’s reaction to our entry and
operations. We should make sure we are ready to face the reaction, if not we
will not be able to make the business sustainable over long period.
Interviewer How do you think competitors would react?
Candidate First thing is simply copy us or change their product/service to be better than
us, reduce the price and enter into price war (like current scenario and threw
some examples), acquire/merge with existing competitor (explained about
Idea-Vodafone), increase their marketing/PR campaigns or hire our exec
management to weaken our leadership
Interviewer Then how would you see that we gain a sustainable competitive advantage?
Candidate We need to create additional entry barriers first to prevent new comers to
enter, then we need to lock our existing customers so that we protect our
market share.
Interviewer We can close here. Thank you
Round 2
Interview Experience This round was a lot of personals
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Can you pls tell me about yourself?
Candidate Took around 3 mins (I was prepared with 1 min, 2 min and 3-4 min pitch for
such a question)
Interviewer Why do you want to do consulting?
Candidate Started with my experience as internal consultant and then how different
learnings and people that worked with had influenced my decision
Round 3
Interview Experience Partner Case - Profitability
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer I can't go through your CV now, just walk me through it in a min
Candidate Walked him through
Interviewer So what is that margin improvement plan that you had mentioned?

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 Candidate It is improving margins through improvement of offshore leverage for true fix
bid projects
Interviewer Did you achieve the target savings that you planned for?
Candidate I left the organization during July, by then we had only achieved around 17%
of our target
Interviewer That is not even 25% of your target in 6 months? What do you think it had
failed?
Candidate I had good support and mentoring from my team while working on the plan
as well as while implementing it. But I think we failed to look at it from the
perspectives of BUs and clients who are actually on the ground working on it
because none of us were on the receiving end (BU's end). We realized this
and we tried to improvise the plan and set new targets for the year with the
help of internal operations teams of BUs
Interviewer I'm currently working with a firm that manufactures engine parts for some
automobile companies, they want to increase the profits can you help me
figure out how?
Candidate Sure, just to confirm is there anything else I need to look at apart from
recommending ways to improve profits?
Interviewer No that's it. Before that let me tell you, they just want to improve profits
from the existing products only and they haven't seen any decrease in
profits/profitability. Don't use any paper, let’s just discuss
Candidate So profits are a function of number of units sold, selling price and cost/unit.
By increasing no of units, SP/unit or by decreasing Cost/unit we can increase
profits.
Interviewer Demand cannot be changed, not in our hands and we can only supply what is
ordered.
Candidate So since number of units cannot be increased, we can increase SP/unit, but
we also need to see the price elasticity of the client and also see how
competitive the market is.
Interviewer Market is very competitive, we cannot play with price. Let’s look at cost, tell
me how would you proceed
Candidate I would begin by breaking the costs - COGS, Operating costs and Finance
costs first and see what is the scope of improvement in each. Would you like
me to see any particular category first?
Interviewer How would you reduce finance costs?
Candidate I would see if the current finance policy can be changed, if the interest costs
are very high we could look at refinancing debt etc.
Interviewer What can we do in COGS?
Candidate Since the products are engine parts, major costs would be incurred in raw
material and processing. If these are optimal already, we can see other minor
costs. But looking at our major costs first, we can see if cost of raw
material/unit can be decreased by using less material per unit (by doing
R&D)/use cheaper material or by changing our purchase policy to purchase at
a cheaper price. Processing costs can be reduced by automation, better
utilization of capacity and inventory management.

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 Interviewer (There were some follow up questions about automobile industry not related
to this case) I think that is fine. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate I had one question prepared for each firm that I might had to interview with,
I asked it.

DOs and Do's:

DONTs/Important Whether you are using paper or not, make sure you are MECE and not forget
Tips any factors (especially while discussing), I missed one or two factors in the
flow but the interviewer helped me as I mentioned them earlier before
drilling down further into each bucket
Make sure you keep communicating with partner/principal and keep it very
interactive
Personals are important too, be prepared with it
Don’ts:
Don't assume any numbers unless given or ask for confirmation
Tips:
It helps when you bring in your perspective with current examples while
walking through the structure and solving the case.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Akshay Srivastava

Interviewing firm Bain & Co.
Slot 8 AM Morning Slot
Interviewer Anoop Kacchara (CTL), Saurabh Trehan (Partner)
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Delhi
College
Branch Electrical
Work Experience 34 months
Firm Ola Cabs: Program Manager
Sector E-Commerce (Cab Aggregator)
Round 1
Interview Experience
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Hi Akshay, I have gone through your profile, however, why don’t you give
me a brief introduction about yourself
Candidate <About me, my college, my work at Ola: Focus on your strengths, areas you
would want to talk about, the interviewer is likely to pick on cues in the
intro and ask Questions>
Interviewer Cabs have really become an essential part of our daily lives. The cab drivers
are on strike in Mumbai right now and it became really difficult for us to
reach the airport. How do the drivers coordinate such strikes given this is
not a unionized industry?
Candidate The cab strikes are a frequent occurrence across cities, and their demands
are also pretty much always along similar lines. These strikes originate with
a couple of drivers initiating the strike and soon word spreads primarily
through social media platforms like Whatsapp. The drivers who continue to
ply under such situations are stopped and their vehicles are vandalized. This
way, majority of the drivers in a city join/are made to join the strikes.
Interviewer Alright. That sounds good! Let's do a quick case. Your client is a 2-wheeler
manufacturer, been in the market for over 60-70 years, who is now facing
sluggish growth in the market. You have been hired to consult the client and
suggest recommendations.
Candidate Sure Anoop. Before I begin, I would like to ask a few questions to get a
better understanding of the context. What do you mean by sluggish
growth? What kind of products does our client manufacture? Where do we
lie in the value chain- Are we just manufacturers? Who are our competitors
in the market?
Interviewer OK. By sluggish growth, I mean growth lower than the industry growth: You
can assume 10% growth for the client while the industry is growing at 18%.
Our client produces vehicles in the medium-segment range only- somewhat
like Activa/Deo in the Indian market. We assemble the spare parts and
manufacture the vehicles, which are then sold through authorized dealers.
There are 3-4 competitors in the market.

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 Candidate Anoop, I would like to understand the growth and revenue breakup across
segments for the industry. This will help me understand if we are growing
less because of lack of high-growth potential products in the market.
Interviewer Great Akshay! The market's segment wise growths are as follows: Small -
12%, Medium - 16%, Large (Premium) - 22%. Assume similar revenue share
of the segments in the market.
Candidate That sounds great Anoop: on the face of it, I can identify 2 broad problems
for our client: Our client does not have products in the fastest growing
Large (Premium) segment in the market. Secondly, even our medium range
segment is facing sluggish growth as compared to the industry's medium
segment. I would like to take a moment to structure my thoughts and
proceed with this.
Interviewer Alright Akshay. Take your time!
Candidate Anoop, I can start with new product launches in the small/large segments or
I can debug the reasons for sluggish growth in the medium segment. Do we
have any piece of information where I should start?
Interviewer We are open to anything and everything. Where do you recommend we
begin?
Candidate I think that launching new products will require extensive market research,
product design and manufacturing capabilities. Hence, this might be a
longer-term solution. I would first like to find out what issues our medium
segment might be facing in the market.
Interviewer Sounds great. Please proceed!
Candidate I would like to proceed via the product's value chain: from manufacturing to
delivering it to the end consumer, and find out where our products might
be lagging in the market wrt the competition. I would like to start with the
manufacturing itself
Interviewer <Interrupted> You can assume that there are no manufacturing advantages
that the competitors have in the market.
Candidate Alright. Since we have been present in the market for 60-70 years, I am
assuming that our brand is well known.
Interviewer That’s true. There are no issues on the marketing or availability front wrt
the competitors in the market.
Candidate Great. That suggests that the customers are not buying our products in the
market, despite good brand awareness and availability. I would like to deep-
dive into what drives customer preferences in the 2-wheeler industry: These
might be mileage, price, availability of financing, maintenance costs, after-
sales service
Interviewer <Interrupted> So another piece of information: the medium segment is
targeted at the younger generation in the market, which has frequently
changing needs.
Candidate This means we need to be frequently doing market research to identify new
trends and demands in the market. Failing this might result in relatively
outdated products in the market, which would not sell against an active
competitor.

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 Interviewer That’s correct! We have been unable to keep pace with these changing
needs in the market and hence unable to bring desirable products in the
market at a rapid pace. Is there anything else you want to add?
Candidate I would like to come back to the importance of working on the small/large
segments for our client. Any particular reason why our client does not
operate in these segments?
Interviewer No particular reason as such Akshay
Candidate These are fast growing segments in the market and our client needs to
rethink its product portfolio to include these segments to keep pace with
the industry growth numbers
Interviewer That’s sounds great. Let's do a quick mathematical calculation here.
Candidate Our authorized dealer sells x vehicles/month (at 5y Rs. /unit). The fixed and
variable costs of operation are F and V per month respectively. The profit
margin for the dealer if 20%. The dealer has to keep 2 months of inventory
in stock at any time. Find the dealer's ROI.
Interviewer <Calculated using total monthly profits, investment in the
showroom/inventory, Got a 2% monthly number>
Candidate Is there something you are missing?
Interviewer <After rechecking the calculations> The calculations appear OK Anoop, Do
you want me to relook at the procedure?
Candidate It’s OK. Just a small correction. ROI numbers are calculated on an annual
basis: Total Annual Profits/Investment i.e. 24%. How can you know this is
good or bad?
Interviewer Anoop, we can benchmark this ROI number with the ROI on government
bonds, Fixed Deposits which are safe bets for alternative use of cash against
usage here. Since those numbers are generally in the range of 5-8%, I
believe 24% is a good investment
Candidate Great Akshay. That will be all! Thank you so much.
Round 2
Interview Experience
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Hi Akshay, why don't you tell me about yourself?
Candidate <About me, my college, my work at Ola: Focus on your strengths, areas you
would want to talk about, the interviewer is likely to pick on cues in the
intro and ask Questions>
Interviewer Oh great, you have worked in Ola for 3 years. I have many batch mates in
Ola. Do you know Mr. X and Mr. Y? How was it like working with them?
Candidate Yeah Saurabh, I have briefly worked with both of them at some point in my
3 years at Ola. I found them to be great leaders and extremely passionate
towards the projects they were leading.
Interviewer Great. Who did you interview with in the 1st round Akshay?
Candidate I interviewed with Anoop in the 1st round
Interviewer Alright, let's do a quick guesstimate. I want you to estimate the total
number of dinner plates in Lucknow
Candidate <Took some time> I would like to breakdown the usage of dinner plates
into: Residential, Hotels, Canteens, Shops etc.

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 Interviewer Great. Let's start by estimating the residential plates
Candidate Saurabh, I would like to break down the Lucknow population by income
groups, because the household size is expected to vary by income levels,
also the daily plate usage will vary by income levels in households because
richer households will have different plates for different uses and for all
members in the house against the lower income levels.
Interviewer Makes sense!
Candidate <Came up with high level number of number of households, split by income
levels and then estimated daily plates for the individual income segments>
Interviewer OK, let’s quickly move to the restaurant sizing as well.
Candidate I would like to approach this from the demand side. I will segment the
Lucknow population by income levels. These segments will be "eating out"
at different frequencies basis income levels.
Interviewer OK. What next?
Candidate The daily demand will vary depending on the time of day.
Interviewer Will the number of restaurant visits be equal to the plates required? Please
take a moment to reconsider this.
Candidate <Took a moment> Saurabh, plates will be washed at some frequency as
well. Hence the same plate will be reused in a day multiple times.
Interviewer Great. So how will you proceed now?
Candidate I will find the maximum demand in an hour (Let's day evening peak hour 8-9
PM). Assuming washing happens after an hour, the restaurant must have
enough plates to cater to the total plate demand in the 8-9 PM hour
window. The rest of the hours will be catered by re-washing the plates by
the staff members.
Interviewer Great Akshay. That will be all. Give me a minute <Walks out of the room.
Came back in a minute and confirmed the offer :) >

DOs and Know your Resume in and out, focus on L1 personals as well: Have a strong
DONTs/Important Tips pitch on "Tell me about yourself". A strong start helps to break the ice and
make you comfortable in the entire process. During the interview, pay
attention to the interviewer's cues, the interviewer will most likely try to
guide you in the correct direction. Most importantly, try to stay calm during
the entire process, the interviewers will judge your performance under
pressure. Whenever stuck, ask the interviewer to give you a moment to
think.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Nantakumar R
Interviewing firm Bain
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Radhika Sridharan (Principal)
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Madras
College
Branch Metallurgical and Materials Engg.
Work Experience 11 Months
Firm Deutsche Bank
Sector Trading
Round 1
Interview Experience Friendly, Growth Strategy Case
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Welcome! Take a seat. How do you feel now?
Candidate I spoke about the Day Neg process and that I had rejected interview calls
from Finance firms and how little sleep we got the night due to preference
form being floated late night etc.
Interviewer She spoke about how things were different in her time and this concept of
Day Neg didn’t exist. We deliberated on whether the current system of Day
-1, Day 0, Day 1 slotting based on sectors is fair to the students with
different interests etc. Then we moved on the case.

Interviewer Your client is an online video content provider and they are looking for
advice from you on how to grow in India.
Candidate Ah, That's an interesting space currently. So basically I need to advice on
growth strategies for an online content provider like Amazon Prime to grow
in the Indian market. Am I right?
Interviewer Yes, that’s right
Candidate Thank you. I would like to explore the business dynamics first before we
move on to analyzing our client's case in detail. So I would like to analyze
the intrinsic factors i.e. Company and product and extrinsic factors, i.e.
competition and value chain
Interviewer Sure, So our client has a Video-On-Demand service with predominantly
English content and has a freemium model with free content utilized by
around 10 Million users and paying customers of around 0.5 million each
paying 200 per month. The free model has old but classic movies, TV shows
and the premium model has the latest movies and TV shows. There are a
few competitors but let's ignore them for now.
Candidate It's interesting to note that majority of our users are on the free platform
and haven't moved on to become paying customers.
Interviewer Yes, That's the issue facing our client mostly

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 Candidate That's interesting to note. Now analyzing our case in detail (Parallely
sketching the framework), growth for a firm can be obtained by two ways,
increasing revenue per customer or increase the number of customer
Interviewer Okay, Let us look at both ways in brief
Candidate Sure, Increasing revenue from customers can be through two ways,
increasing the volume sold per customer or increasing prices. Since we can't
more subscriptions to an already existing customer, we could only possibly
change the price. Can you please let me know the price elasticity of our
customers here?
Interviewer We lose 5 percent of our customer base with every 10 rupee increase and
vice versa.
Candidate Now I would like to move on to the other branch. We can increase
customers through two ways, by entering new markets or within our
existing market only
Interviewer We aren't looking to expand to new markets.
Candidate That helps narrow down to the existing market then. Now I would like to
look at the customer experience process through 1) Awareness (Promotion)
2) Likeability (Price, Product) 3) Accessibility (Placement)
Interviewer Great, Our client as we have discussed has a high portion of customers in
the free plan only whom they want to convert. So awareness and
accessibility is not a concern as of now
Candidate So the issue basically lies in the likeability i.e. we need to improve the
product or price the premium plan correctly, to make it attractive for the
customers
Interviewer Yes, exactly. Our premium content isn't good enough to persuade our
customers to switch over and we are unable to procure quality content due
to cash crunch. How do you propose we solve this issue?
Candidate Basically, We need better content in our premium platform which requires
money but to get our customers to pay, we need more quality content.
That's an interesting dilemma.
Interviewer (Chuckling a bit) Yes. Given the situation, How shall we advise our client
now?
Candidate I would like to divide the recommendations into a timeline of actions for our
client to pursue. In the short term, we can reduce the prices and build up
our customer base and effectively increase our revenue which would help
us to buy more quality content from content generators. This will solve our
issue of ensuring more customers start using the premium plan. In the
medium term, we should focus on reducing our costs of procuring these
'quality' content from outside sources. We could do that by getting into a
long term contract with the production houses or even start producing our
own in-house content which would be significantly cost efficient. Also since
now we have more control on the production, we could increase our focus
on Indian users and produce 'Desi' content which appeal to the youth. In
the long term, we should look to create an even stronger moat by
partnering with various other services like music, internet and bundling it
with our premium plans to become a more wholesome entertainment
platform through horizontal and vertical integration.

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 Interviewer Great! That was what I was looking for. Think we can close the case here.

DOs and 1) After gaining good traction in solving cases with your initial case group,
DONTs/Important Tips start solving with others to ensure you don't get too comfortable with
solving in a particular style alone.
2) Utilize your buddies to solve as many cases as possible, especially live
projects that they might be involved in. The cases on the interview day
would typically be similar to such cases.
3) At the risk of sounding clichéd, the most important thing to remember
for a consult interview is to maintain that smile and remain calm. Try to get
a rapport right from the start and be confident of your abilities.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Indira V
Interviewing firm Bain & Co.
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate College BITS Pilani
Branch EEE
Work Experience 23 months
Firm NVIDIA Graphics
Sector
Round 1
Interview Experience Market Entry
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Hi, let's start with a case straight away. Our client is Starbucks. Imagine
they want to open a store in Kolkata (assume there are no Starbucks stores
here). They want to either open in a mall or in Park Street. They want your
help deciding where to open
Candidate Sure. Let me clarify the problem. Starbucks wants to open its first store in
Kolkata and the options are either Park Street or in a mall. We have to help
Starbucks decide where to open. Have they already decided to enter, or do
we have to help them with that?
Interviewer They have already decided to enter. You only need to help them decide
where to open the store
Candidate What is the objective? Is it to maximize profits?
Interviewer Yes, the objective is to maximize profits. Where would you choose to open
the store and why?
Candidate I think a mall would be a better idea. When people go to a mall, they are
more likely to take a break and a coffee shop would be a great store for
that. Opening a standalone store might have bigger risks associated with it.
Interviewer Makes sense. How would you calculate the revenue generated in the
store?
Candidate Will the store offer take aways, or only dine-ins?
Interviewer They offer take aways along with dine-in
Candidate Revenue can be split up as number of customers multiplied with revenue
per customer.
Interviewer Okay. How will you calculate number of customers?
Candidate For that, I would like to consider the customer base. Given that Starbucks
is a premium product, I will first calculate the number of premium
customers in Kolkata.
Interviewer Don't you think you should consider from the capacity side?
Candidate Take away orders wouldn't be constrained by the seating capacity of the
shop
Interviewer Okay. Assume the store will not offer take aways.

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 Candidate Sure. Then, we can consider the capacity of the restaurant. There can be
different types of seating available in the restaurant. There can be high
seats and cushioned seats with tables.
Interviewer Assume all seats are same and the store can seat a maximum of 100
customers.
Candidate The demand in the store will depend on time of the day. There will be peak
traffic during lunch and dinner, compared to the rest of the day.
Interviewer Makes sense. Assume the store operates from 10 am to 10 pm. Lunch and
dinner (peak hours) last for 2 hours each and occupancy rate will be 100%.
During the rest of the day, occupancy rate will be 50%
Candidate Okay. Can I assume average spending per customer to be 100 rupees?
Interviewer Yes.
Candidate (I calculated the revenue per day, then for a month and for one year. This
was to check my calculations)
Interviewer Great! Let's say Starbucks comes to you and says they are making losses.
How would you go about it?
Candidate There are two options. We can either close down the store in the mall, or
we can try to offset the losses by generating revenue from elsewhere. But,
there can be a lease contract for the store in the mall. We can't close the
store till the lease expires. So, if a store in Park Street generates profits, we
can open the Park Street store and offset losses for sometime, till the lease
in the mall expires.
Interviewer That makes sense. Thanks, Indira.
Round 2
Interview Experience
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Your client manufactures diesel engines for automotive vehicles. You can
assume it to be the typical three wheeled autos and the some 4 wheeler
vehicles used by E-commerce giants for deliveries. What factors would you
consider to analyze it?
Candidate Let me clarify the problem statement. Our client manufactures diesel
engines typically for three wheelers and a few four wheelers. In which
country do they operate? How many competitors are in the market?
Interviewer Assume that the client operates only in India. Also, there are no
competitors. So, the client has a monopoly
Candidate So, the vehicles can be used for transporting people, or for transporting
cargo
Interviewer Yes, makes sense. Let's look at the vehicles used to transport cargo. They
represent majority of our business.
Candidate Okay. To analyze the demand of engines, we can analyze the demand of
vehicles which use the engine. Who use the vehicles to transport cargo? Is
it majorly the e-commerce companies? These vehicles can also be used to
transport appliances from the shop to people's homes.
Interviewer Correct. E-commerce companies are the major users of the vehicles. Let's
concentrate on them for now.

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 Candidate Okay, since e-commerce is a rapidly growing sector, there will be
increasing demand for the engines as the companies will need more
vehicles for transportation
Interviewer Okay. What do you think will be the challenges the company might face?
Candidate The engines run on diesel. Given that there is an increasing shift to cleaner
fuel and electric vehicles, this can pose a major threat to the client. The
government can also have regulations about the use of vehicles that run
on petrol/diesel once the electric vehicles come out.
Interviewer Yes, that is right. That's what I was looking for. Do you have any questions
for me?

DOs and Stay calm. Don't panic. Just identify and follow the clues that your
DONTs/Important Tips interviewer gives you.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Prerna Ajitsaria

Interviewing firm Bain & Co.
Slot 8am
Interviewer Niranjan
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate Ramjas College, DU
College
Branch BSc. (H) Statistics
Work Experience 10 months
Firm KPMG
Sector Strategy Consulting
Round 1
Interview Experience Business Situation
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer After a very short chat he directly started with the case. (No personals
asked). Our client is a doctor and her father is a real estate owner. She is
looking to open a yoga retreat center in Delhi and she has approached us to
make a business plan for her.
Candidate I repeated the case and asked a few preliminary questions on the type of
services, the size and capacity of the yoga center, the type of customers she
would want to target.
Interviewer Make whatever assumptions you want.
Candidate I knew about a yoga retreat center in Bangalore so I described it and
confirmed if we were on the same page. (I was confused and hence took my
time to think through)
Interviewer So basically you would be looking at calculating her annual revenues and
recommending a pricing strategy (very friendly).
Candidate This helped me think about a structure quickly. I said we need to do a
market sizing first. Age, Affordability and Consumer preferences would be
three major factors we need to look at.
Interviewer Ok. Go ahead.
Candidate Divided population of India into age groups.
Interviewer He asked me which geography I was targeting. (As he had asked me to make
all assumptions)
Candidate Discussed if it should be which - Delhi, India or international and why.
Interviewer Asked me to focus on age group 40-60.
Candidate I solved the guesstimate. (Applying age, income class, location as filters.
Applied a filter for customers from Delhi and outside Delhi). Did a
calculation error which he pointed out and corrected.
Interviewer Okay let's move to the next step.
Candidate I mentioned for calculating revenues we now need to price our product.
Mentioned three pricing techniques but was cut in between.

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 Interviewer Let's not get into the jargons. What do you think is the closest proxy for
prices?
Candidate We would look at the competitors pricing range.
Interviewer Good makes sense. He gave me the charges that competitors have.
Candidate I will move to calculating the revenues.
Interviewer That would be all. I think we are out of time. (He went out and came back).
Let's wait for your next interviewer and casually asked me how according to
me was the interview.
Candidate (Nervously, as I wasn't happy with my performance) I think it was decent.
He said I did good and asked me to relax. To avoid silence I asked him how
his flight to Kolkata was and got into a discussion about yoga, his current
projects and adventure trips. Saurabh Trehan entered the room after a
couple of minutes and offered me the internship.

DOs and The interviewer will drop enough cues in such open ended cases, it is
DONTs/Important Tips important to pick on those and proceed. They understand that it is a
stressful time for the students so they are very considerate and helpful
during the interview, so no need to worry. Just be yourself!

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Namrata Sharma

Interviewing firm Bain & Company
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Round 1- Mr. Achyut Sanjay, Case Team Leader, Bain Round 2- Ms.
Samyukkhta, Manager, Bain
Pre-College profile Dentist
Undergraduate King George's Medical College, Lucknow
College
Branch BDS
Work Experience None
Firm
Sector
Round 1
Interview Experience Market Share
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Hello, Namrata. How are you doing today? Are you nervous?
Candidate Hello. Yes, a little.
Interviewer Okay, first, I'm really intrigued about why you decided to pursue an MBA.
Candidate (Answered)
Interviewer Okay, without wasting much time, let's get started with the case. So, you're
the city Manager in Uber for Kolkata. Both Ola and Uber run in Kolkata. Ola
has a slightly higher market share of 60% than Uber, 40%. Uber wants to
increase its market share. How should they go about it?
Candidate Okay, sir. Can I know how long both these cab services have been in
operation in the city?
Interviewer Yes. Ola entered the market in 2012-13 and Uber entered in 2014.
Candidate Okay, please give me a minute to structure my thoughts down.
Interviewer Sure. (he asks me to show him my sheet while I write)
Candidate (After having jotted down the basic 3As and likeability framework which I
usually use for market share cases, we start discussing each point)
Interviewer So we now know the parameters how Ola is better than Uber or otherwise.
So the main problem is, accessibility and availability of vehicles. What
metric would you use to find out how to improve it?
Candidate I think I would go with Estimated time of Arrival (ETA) of cabs. Usually while
booking cabs, we tend to go with the service with the shorter ETA.
Interviewer How will you use this metric, say in Delhi? (I had told him I'm from Delhi, so
was he. So, for a reference he chose the city)
Candidate I would use both Ola and Uber apps at 1. the heart of the city, say, CP and at
outskirts, say, at Mahipalpur and then, 2. at rush hours, morning or evening
and at less busy hours, say the afternoon. This will help me know how our
ETA varies at different points in time and why costumers are preferring to
use Ola over Uber. ETA could be more either when the number of cabs is

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 less or the time spent in the cab per customer is higher, meaning the cabs
are more occupied.

Interviewer Good. Now, since you're a Manager at Uber you know the number of cabs
you know the number of cabs you have. How will you use ETA to find out
the number of OLA cabs?
Candidate (This is when I blanked out) Let me, maybe, make an equation to figure it
out. Can I have a minute?
Interviewer No, just tell me how will you go about it?
Candidate (Even though I did give some random arguments, I had no clue)
Interviewer Okay, leave the how. What recommendation would you give Uber?
Candidate I'd suggest, they increase the number of cabs they run to improve
availability of their cabs and reduce ETA. To reduce their costs, they could
source/rent the cabs only during rush hours.
Interviewer Okay. Would you like to summarize the case for me?
Candidate (Summarized)
Interviewer Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Yes. What was done in this case eventually?
Interviewer This is a case from Delhi. You were on the right track.
Candidate Thank you.
Round 2
Interview Experience Market Entry. This was a Skype interview.
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Hello, Namrata. Tell me something about yourself.
Candidate (Answered. And post that, she told me about herself.)
Interviewer Let's start with the case. Your client in an HBS graduate who wants to move
back to India and wishes to start a Radio station in Delhi for no apparent
reason. Capital is not an issue for him and if it doesn’t work out well for him
in the next 3-5 years, he'll move back. You're the consultant. How will you
help him?
Candidate Which part of the country is he looking to start the station at?
Interviewer New Delhi.
Candidate What is the client's motive? Is he looking for profits or is he looking to
expand by starting off in a city?
Interviewer He doesn't have any motive. He just wants to try his luck.
Candidate Okay. What kind of a radio station is he looking at, an International/national
station or a local, only Delhi based?
Interviewer Localized.
Candidate Can I know about the competitors?
Interviewer The usual stations you know.
Candidate Okay, can I please get a minute to jot down my thoughts? (I had not done a
case like this and was not sure which structure to follow. I used the basic
Internal-External framework for this case and further divided these into

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 more branches. We discussed each and she asked me to rank the 5 Internal
factors I had written.)

Interviewer So, Content is the most important parameter for you.

Candidate Right.
Interviewer What kind of content could a radio station have?
Candidate (I further classified content based on Language and types of shows and the
types of listeners at different times of the day)
Interviewer Okay. What recommendation would you give him?
Candidate (I can't recall the recommendation I gave, it seemed pretty random to me,
but I heard her say "Good" for the first time.)
Interviewer Thank you, Namrata.
Candidate Thank you.
DOs and Do not panic. I was stuck towards the end of my first case and felt like I had
DONTs/Important Tips bombed it, it wasn't so apparently. The Skype interview was specifically
tougher because of technical glitches and difficulty in hearing. Do more
cases over the phone to get accustomed to the idea of not having a face to
face interview on D-day.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Ashwin K Pandian

Interviewing firm Bain and Co.
Slot 8 a.m.
Interviewer Sudharshan Sundereraman
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate R V College Of Engineering
College
Branch Telecommunication Engineering
Work Experience 10 Months
Firm Cisco
Sector Security Solutions Consulting
Round 1
Interview Experience
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Hey, tell me about yourself
Candidate Rehearsed answer
Interviewer Started giving me a brief about himself, and moved into the case while
doing so. Started talking about how cement is a bulky product which
requires a strong distribution system: There are 3 types of cement which
can be produced at a cement facility, following which the cement is
packaged and transported in trucks towards market places which are
located all across India. There are three main production facilities located in
three regions of India. Your task is to design a distribution network for the
cement manufacturer while keeping in mind that there would be uniform
demand all across India for cement, however the demand for the type of
cement could be different.
Candidate Clarified the problem by first reiterating the three types of cement and how
they are made, following which I confirmed if my task is to design how to
distribute the cement to different market places from the 3 manufacturing
centers
Interviewer Well for now you can ignore the 3 types of cement, as that might add
complexity. Just roughly tell me how you would go about designing the
distribution network
Candidate (Took a moment to think) I would first segregate the markets into the
different types of cement that is demanded and then look at how each of
these demands could be met by the manufacturing centers.
Interviewer Well that’s good, but I want to know what parameters you will consider.
How would you decide which manufacturing unit caters to which market
Candidate If its parameters, then I would like to treat this like a networking problem,
where we are trying to send packets from a source to destination and there
is a cost involved for each route used. This cost will depend on a few factors
that I can list down.

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 Interviewer (Roughly scribbled a table with markets in columns and manufacturing units
in the rows) something similar to what you mentioned, could you pen it
down like this?
Candidate (I recognized that he had drawn something very similar to an OR problem)
well this looks like an optimization problem, where we have supply points
and demand points. TO solve it I will need to fill in the costs for each of the
cells, and accordingly find Vij's and Cij's for the problem to get an initial
optimal solution
Interviewer That’s good. What would be the function you are trying to optimize and the
constraints
Candidate I would be trying to minimize costs and the constraints would be the
capacities of the factories
Interviewer Yes, however you would be trying to maximize margins. This is how we
generally solve optimization problems on cases as well.
Candidate This is interesting because we just had the subject
Interviewer So, is there anything you would like to know about Bain?
Candidate *We broke out into some small talk after this*

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Atishay Agarwal

Interviewing firm Bain & Company
Slot Day 0M
Interviewer Manager, Partner
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate College NSIT, New Delhi
Branch ECE
Work Experience 35 Months
Firm ARM Embedded Technologies, Mentor Graphics

Sector Electronics & Semiconductors

Round 1
Interview Experience Market Entry
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Tell me about yourself while I go through your CV. What are you
passionate about and your hobbies?
Candidate I gave an intro and made sure that it was not more than 60-90 secs, then
she asked me to elaborate on my passion of Flying Aeroplanes.
Interviewer Ok good to hear. Let’s Start. A European Customer in Telecom business
wants to enter the Indian Market. Should they or should they not enter? If
yes then how?
Candidate Understood it is a market entry case so started to structure my thoughts
in the direction. Took a minute to properly understand the statement by
re iterating it and asking for their main aim: Profitability or Mkt share or
just to create awareness to expand their business in India. Then prepared
the set of preliminary questions about client and the existing business
Interviewer Ok so let us start with Profitability. Told that it is the first time the client is
expanding in other regions and has no constraint with investments or
with any barriers to enter.
Candidate Sounds good. So to start with cost benefit analysis I would like to
understand what is the current Market size and what share can our client
potentially capture. Do we have any numbers or should I estimate it?
Interviewer Let’s estimate the market first.
Candidate Would like to segment the entire population of 1.2 billion (for simplicity
asked if I could take it as 1 billion which he accepted) to 4 groups: 0 – 20,
20- 40, 40 – 60 and 60 – 80 assuming life expectancy of 80 years. 65% of
the population is < 40 years of age and according distributed. Then
divided 0 – 20 to two more parts 0-10 and 10-20. Took some assumptions
and gave the % of people in each group who are probably current users.
Finally came up with a number.
Interviewer Is this the current users or potential market size of India?

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 Candidate Got confused a little bit and then confirmed that it is the potential and if I
multiply it with current Telecom density (Sector Prep), we can get the
current market size.
Interviewer That seems a reasonable argument. Would you want to add something
else to this number?
Candidate Also 5 years down the line, new customer base would be from the
segment 0-20 mainly and a few from 20-40. But should also consider
people from 60-80 group going away. Accordingly came up with a new
corrected number.
Interviewer Good. What next?
Candidate Now consider this - if they would like to enter and start the business rite
from the scratch,
1. Huge capital
2. Getting hold of spectrum is very difficult and it would take really long
time as gov is involved.
3. Spectrum could be rented from existing player but not sure if this can
be possible as the counter party might or might not be ready to share the
spectrum, legality also should be considered.
4. Competition is very high and hence pricing should be given top most
priority.
Interviewer So for the European customer the number which you got is very high
when compared to what their customer base in their country is. Would
you recommend them to enter?
Candidate Yes the number might be attractive but considering the huge investment,
and the time it could take for gov to roll out spectrum auction and a few
other factors, I don’t think they should proceed. They can think of other
modes of entry such as JV or M&A. Would like me to analyze about each
of them?
Interviewer No. Thank you. That would be all. Could you wait outside for further
redirect?
Candidate Thank you. It was nice meeting you.
Interviewer Same here.
Round 2
Interview Experience Unconventional Market Entry. Majorly structure driven for both case and
(CASE - TYPE) guesstimate.
Interviewer How was your first round? What you think you could have done better?
Candidate Explained about the round and suggested some improvements I felt could
be made in mode of entry.
Interviewer Ok. So your client is a daughter of big business tycoon with large property
land in Delhi NCR. She would like to open 1 fitness resort with facilities
such as Yoga, Zumba, Aerobics and Spa. She hired you to plan out her
entry strategy?
Candidate Again Understood it is a market entry case so started to structure my
thoughts in the direction. Took a minute to properly understand the
statement by re iterating it and asking for their main aim: Profitability or
Market share or just to create awareness to expand their business in

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 India. Then prepared the set of preliminary questions about client and
clarified.

Interviewer She just want enter into this space so market share is her priority not
profitability right now.
Candidate Does she have any other metric to decide and would she like to use Delhi
NCR as location because of father’s property and potentially good
market?
Interviewer No other metric and Yes that is what she actually thought of. How would
you go ahead?
Candidate Ok Would like to analyze the potential market size. Do we have any
numbers or should I estimate?
Interviewer Yes before estimating could you list the certain factors that you will
consider for your guesstimate?
Candidate Yes Sure. Thought for a minute and listed awareness, accessibility,
affordability and likeability factors which I planned to incorporate in
guesstimate.
Interviewer Good. Now estimate the market.
Candidate Would like to segment the entire population of 25 million to Rural and
Urban. Then I divided it into income groups considering a certain %age
who would like to avail such services. Then divided it into 4 groups: 0 – 20,
20- 40, 40 – 60 and 60 – 80 assuming life expectancy of 80 years. 65% of
the population is < 40 years of age and according distributed. Took some
assumptions and gave the % of people in each group who are probably
current users. Finally came up with a number.
Interviewer Ok. So what would you recommend?
Candidate Thinking on I corrected my number asking that it would have been better
to break by households and not by age groups because children below
age 15 will go with parents which was not captured in above breakup.
Interviewer Seemed happy and Acknowledged my perspective in that direction.
Candidate Would you like me to now analyze other factors for decision making?
Interviewer No. It was great interviewing you. Thank you.
Candidate Thank you.

DOs and Ask the right questions. Presented my observations and suggestions in a
DONTs/Important Tips structured framework. Came off as little tensed in first round which might
happen. So, keep your nerves and stay calm. Stay foolish and sensible in
asking questions and try to pick up clues provided by interviewer. Practice
on noting down and presenting the case on paper.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Siddharth Srivastava

Interviewing firm Bain & Co
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Saurabh Trehan, Partner
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate Nirma University
College
Branch Civil Engineering
Work Experience 36 months
Firm Uber
Sector Operations & Strategy
Round 1
Interview Experience
(CASE-TYPE)
Interviewer Hi Siddharth, good morning. I am Saurabh, a partner at the Mumbai office. I
focus on financial services practice and I am happy to be interviewing you
today. Would you like to quickly introduce yourself?
Candidate Sure. I am Siddharth Srivastava ….. <60 secs intro>
Interviewer A question about work I was involved with at Uber
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Alright then, let's start off with a case. I want you to estimate the number of
dinner plates in Ahmedabad
Candidate Okay. When you say dinner plates, I should include glass plates, bone china
and stainless steel all types, is that correct?
Interviewer Yes
Candidate Sure. Give me a minute or so, I shall chalk out my approach for this
Interviewer Take your time
Candidate <Pause> To guesstimate the number of dinner plates in A'bad, I shall break
them down in to two parts - Plates in use, and existing inventory of plates in
the city. Plates in use would essentially be any and all places which employ
dinner plates, while inventory of plates would be unsold plates existing in
shops, etc.
Interviewer Let's focus on plates being used and ignore the inventory
Candidate Great. So within this I'd like to proceed by listing down the places which
employ dinner plates. They would be a) Households, b) Restaurants, c)
Hotels, d) College Canteens and Mess halls. Shall I focus on households first,
since they would be the biggest chunk amongst these?
Interviewer Yes
Candidate I want to break down Ahmedabad's population into segments based on
their income, and then associate some number of dinner plates across plate
types to each segment. Let's say A'bad's population split based on income
looks like 20 % Upper class, 50% middle class, 20% lower income group and

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 10% BPL segment. I shall divide each segment by 4 to arrive at the number
of households in each segment.

Interviewer Go ahead
Candidate Now I'd peg the number of dinner plate sets (set of 4) in a lower income
household to be 2, both of which would be stainless steel. I would peg the
number of dinner plate for a middle class household to be 4, with 2 stainless
steel sets, one glass set and one bone china set and number of dinner plate
sets for a upper class household to be again 4, with 1 glass set, 2 bone china
sets and one steel set. For BPL segment, I'd keep the number of dinner plate
sets as 0.25/household, which points towards how not everyone in that
segment would be getting square meals or own dinner plates.
Interviewer Sounds good. Let's move to restaurants now
Candidate For restaurants, I shall go about estimating the # of dinner plates by first
estimating the number of people eating out every day across lunch and
dinner hours, and then dividing it by number of times a plate gets used in a
day
Interviewer How will you go about estimating the # of people eating out per day?
Candidate I'd assume average household income, attribute a certain % of it to
expenditure on food, a portion of which accounts for eating out. I'd add a
city-specific nuance to it, which is how Ahmedabad's population would
spend a lot more eating out than the average city. This amount, I'll divide by
an average household meal cost, to arrive at dine out meals/month. This I
shall spread across weekends and weekdays, skewing it towards weekends
to arrive at number of meals taking place in restaurants in
Ahmedabad/weekend.
Interviewer Would this give a correct estimate?
Candidate <Pause> Allow me to go over this once again
Interviewer You need to extend what you did with the weekend-weekday split, just give
it a shot
Candidate Reiterated my approach, speaking out loud in order to clarify if initially
something went amiss
Interviewer Yes, you need to take into account peak hour traffic. When you maintain an
inventory of dinner plates, it will have to be designed as per peak demand
Candidate Yes. Keeping this in mind, I shall further break it down into dinner and lunch
hours, and find out the number of dinner plates required at 8 pm on a
weekend.
Interviewer Okay. Excuse me for a bit, I need to step out. *Steps out*
Candidate *Waiting*
Interviewer *Returns to the room* Okay Siddharth, we would like to extend an offer to
you. We are very excited to have you on board
DOs and 1) Be MECE to the maximum extent possible
DONTs/Important Tips 2) Communicate clearly and pro-actively
3) Get buy-in at every stage

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 4) Maintain composure and ask for assistance if stuck

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Tanishq Mehra

Interviewing firm AT Kearney
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Partner (via skype)
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate NIT Goa
College
Branch ECE
Work Experience None
Firm
Sector
Round 1
Interview
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer Your client is a mining firm, and they want to decide between buying drilling
rigs or leasing
Candidate I would like to start off by trying to understand a little more about the client,
what type of mining are they in and where do they operate?
Interviewer Your client is into Iron ore mining, and for simplicity assume they operate in
only one location in India
Candidate How long has the client been in this business?
Interviewer They have been in the business for about 25 years, and are well established
Candidate How have they been managing their equipment until now?
Interviewer They used to lease. They require around 8 rigs to cover operations
Candidate And is there any reason as to why they are considering buying this time
around?
Interviewer There is just on dependable contractor, and the client feels that it may be cost-
effective to buy their own equipment
Candidate So is it fair to assume that the only factor that differentiates the two is cost-
effectiveness? Is quality an issue?
Interviewer Cost is the only factor
Candidate I would like to perform a cost analysis to determine which option is more
beneficial. Is it okay if I start with the leasing option?
Interviewer Yes, go ahead
Candidate I would break down the costs involved here into the contract costs, additional
labour costs and maintenance costs.
Interviewer The lease includes labour charges and maintenance costs, so just consider the
lease cost which is $5 million per rig
Candidate How long does the agreement hold for?
Interviewer 10 years
Candidate Are there any additional operation or transportation costs that the client has
to incur?

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 Interviewer None
Candidate How does the transaction go down? Is everything paid upfront or over the
course of the agreement?
Interviewer For simplicity assume everything is paid upfront
Candidate So then this deal will cost the client $40 million. I would now want to analyze
the option of buying oil rigs. Are there multiple companies that the client can
buy from?
Interviewer Assume there is just one
Candidate Are there any issues regarding the time in which the rigs will be ready for
operation?
Interviewer No, they will be delivered in time
Candidate What will be the cost of buying an oil rig? Will there be any additional
transport charges or maintenance charges?
Interviewer The cost of one oil rig is $2.8 million. Assume transportation charges are
included and maintenance charges are $200k each year. All payments made
upfront
Candidate What about labour charges?
Interviewer Labour to operate such equipment is difficult to find, and charges are
estimated to be around $500k every year
Candidate What is the life of a rig?
Interviewer Assume 10 years
Candidate Are there any additional charges I am missing?
Interviewer No
Candidate So this deal will cost the client $28 million
Interviewer Yes, what is your recommendation
Candidate I would recommend the client to still stick with leasing at least a few rigs
(around 5-6), as buying the rigs will be completely out of their comfort zone.
Leasing will also ensure skilled labour is available, which is difficult to find.
Interviewer Good, this case was based on a real life problem we faced, and we made
similar recommendations even though buying was cheaper. I think we are
done here, thank you.
DOs and Always end with a summary of the case, something I forgot to do and my
DONTs/Important interviewer pointed it out. Apart from that, staying calm and communicating
Tips well always go a long way

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Parnil Singh

Interviewing firm AT Kearney
Slot 8 AM
Interviewer Two manager and One Partner Round
Pre-College
profile
Undergraduate IIT Delhi
College
Branch Chemical Engineering
Work Experience 20 months
Firm American Express, Essex Lake Group
Sector Finance and Analytics
Round 1
Interview Conventional
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Good Morning
Candidate Good Morning (It was a Skype Interview and I was extremely nervous. The
interviewer asked me to have a glass of water and relax)
Interviewer So let’s do a case. It will be a 20 minute case. So your client is a logistics firm. It
transports metal cables across the country. You have to optimize the
transportation costs
Candidate I was still a little nervous but I started asking preliminary questions. (Don't
remember them all exactly). SO why do we want to reduce costs exactly?
Interviewer So our client has higher costs as compared to competitors. So we want to reduce
them.
Candidate How does the transportation actually work?
-What regions do we operate in?
-Are there any particular regions we Are facing these problems?
Interviewer We operate pan India. We have been facing problem throughout the country.
Explained the transportation process.
Candidate Okay. (I drew the entire steps of transportation costs that could be incurred). I
started from truck loading to actual transportation to finally unloading
Interviewer This is fine but you are missing a crucial aspect
Candidate I got confused. I took all costs, fuel costs, maintenance costs, other
transportation related costs, driver costs. I kept going round in round in circles
Interviewer Okay. I think you are getting confused. You have covered a lot of costs. But the
issue lies in loading and unloading efficiency of the trucks. The competitors are
using more efficient automated system of unloading. (He mentioned a couple of
more things I can’t recall)
Round 2

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 Interview Unconventional & Conventional Mini Cases
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Hi. How are you doing? You look flushed.
Candidate I gave a warm smile and greeted her. (I was still a little nervous from the last
case, but this interviewer was smiling and I felt better)
Interviewer Ok let’s do an unconventional case.
Candidate Sure!
Interviewer So there is a naked man with a straw lying in the desert. His clothes are lying
around him. You have to ask me 20 Yes/No questions only, and try to find out
how he landed there.
Candidate (I felt my head spinning. The first case was a bust and then this!). So you shall
reply only in yes or no?
Interviewer Yes
Candidate I was clueless.
Interviewer You have 5 minutes go!
Candidate I was confused but I started shooting questions anyway:
1. Is the straw made of jute?
2. Are the clothes blood-stained?
3. Are the clothes wet?
4. Is there a vehicle nearby?
5. Is there any smell/stink?
6. Are there any dangerous animals (snakes etc.) to be spotted?
7. Are there clothes/traces of any other person nearby?
8. Is there any house/hut nearby?

Interviewer (After I had asked 10 odd questions). Let’s move on to another case
Candidate Yes (relieved!)
Interviewer Your client is an apparel store facing declining profits. Establish the cause.
Candidate Sure. I asked prelim questions:
Since when the profits are declining?
Where is client located?
Kind of customers catered to
How is the industry doing?
Interviewer (Answered)
Candidate Okay. So I will breakdown profits into revenues and costs
Interviewer Look at revenues
Candidate Sure. So I can segment revenues by geography or product line.
Interviewer No its uniform.
Candidate Okay. So I will break it into Price * #products sold.
Interviewer Price is fine.
Candidate The issue was that number of customers had declined. SO I broke it down into
supply side and demand side issue
Interviewer Look at demand side

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 Candidate In demand side, I went through the customer lifecycle.
1. Awareness
2. Accessibility
3. Likeability
3a. Pricing
3b. Product (Variety, Brand etc)
Interviewer Seems satisfied. Okay that will be all thank you
Candidate Thank you!
Round 3
Third Round It was a very chilled out interview
Partner
He grilled me a little on my CV, on a project where we had devised strategy for
digitization of Spanish Bank. He asked me to lay down all revenue and cost
drivers of bank. I had prepared this well, so was able to ace it.
I had spilled water on my shirt in nervousness and we had a laugh about that.
DOs and Be thorough with your structures, If you, try to sound enthusiastic and make an
DONTs/Important honest and sincere effort. In the end, it boils down to your likeability. So show
Tips enthusiasm. Practice cases, try to stay calm. Be thorough with your resume,
especially projects and work-ex

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Pranav Mohindroo

Interviewing firm AT Kearney
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Partner
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate NSIT
College
Branch Instrumentation and Control Engineering
Work Experience
Firm Boston Consulting Group
Sector Consulting
Round 1
Interview
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer Hi! How are you? You look a little tense.
Candidate I am good sir, just a little nervous for the interview.
Interviewer (Smiles) Don’t be because this is not a process you should place too much
importance on
Candidate Thank you sir, I am feeling much better
Interviewer Okay so Pranav why don’t you tell me something that you want to share
outside your professional domain.
Candidate (thought for a minute) Sir, I love playing tennis. I can share an experience from
one of the tournaments I won.
Interviewer Please carry on
Candidate (I explained that when I was in school how I was able to beat an opponent
who was older and stronger than me through grit and reading my opponent)
Interviewer Hmm.. I see a finisher's mentality. Pranav you seem to be the kind of hard nail
hitting Delhiite.
Candidate (I smile)
Interviewer Shall we do a case now Pranav
Candidate Sure sir
Interviewer Okay, so tell me how to estimate the market size of optical frames (for eyes)
in India. No need to use a pen and paper.
Candidate Sir, I am thinking whether to use a top down or bottom up approach. I think I
will use a top down. (and I explain the process)
Interviewer Okay another way you would use to calculate the same.
Candidate (This time I use bottom up)
Interviewer Okay another way
Candidate Hmm..sir we can estimate through number of eye clinics and extrapolate the
number for the entire country.
Interviewer Another way

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 Candidate (Give him one more method)
Interviewer One more method.
Candidate (Now I think hard but give him one more way to calculate)
Interviewer Okay Pranav, so would you accept the offer if I give you an internship
opportunity with the firm
Candidate (I smile) Definitely sir.
Interviewer (Shake hands) Thank you Pranav

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Ashrit Tandon

Interviewing firm AT Kearney
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer 3 rounds: 2 Principal rounds on Skype and 1 Partner round
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Bombay
College
Branch Dual Degree in Metallurgical Engineering & Materials Science
Work Experience 22 months
Firm Axis Bank
Sector Analytics - Banking
Round 1
Interview Experience Pricing Case
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Can you tell me something about yourself?
Candidate <My Answer goes here>
Interviewer So let's jump into a case. Our Client is a paint manufacturing company and
they have come up with a new paint. Which customers would you target
and what price will you set?
Candidate Asked about the paint, its features and how is it different from current
paints
Interviewer It is a paint which can be applied on the inner and outer surfaces of a
building and even metal surfaces. It has a better durability than other
conventional paints and a reapplication is required only in 10 years as
compared to other paints which require it after 3 years. Cost is same as
compared to the traditional paint.
Candidate OK. (Making a structure now). I think we can target customers based on
whether the application of the paints is going to be for the buildings or
metals. For buildings, it can be further broken down into households or
commercial. For households, we can target developers, co-op societies and
even standalone house. For commercials, we can target factories,
warehouses or even corporate offices. For the metals, we can target metal
making companies or even companies having structures made of metal or
involving high quantities of metal like bridges and ship building.
Interviewer That's good. Let us focus on the corporate houses that you talked about.
How will you price the paint?
Candidate For pricing, we can have 3 approaches: Cost based, competitor and value.
Since we know that cost for the new paint is equal to the traditional one,
we can skip that. Also, since we don’t have any competitor for this product,
we can also skip that. Now I would like to talk about the value based pricing.
Is that a good approach to follow?
Interviewer Yes, that would be good. Please go ahead.

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 Candidate Since, painting a corporate house would be different than painting a house,
I would like to know how that works. Do we have a contractor based system
and if yes what are the costs involved? Labour costs/ contract cost/ paint
costs etc.??
Interviewer Yeah, we have a contract based system. For every litre of traditional paint
applied, the same cost of labour is incurred. You can ignore other costs and
assume that the labour costs would remain the same.
Candidate Alright. Since, we know that the new paint is required a reapplication every
10 years as compared to 3 years for this paint, this new paint would save
labour cost of approx. 2 applications. So we can price a litre of the new
paint at (2*labour cost/application + 3*price/litre of traditional paint)
Interviewer That's good. But don't you think companies would be hesitant to pay such a
hefty amount? Can you tell me some good recommendations on how we
can sell this product? And make them believe in our product?
Candidate Takes a minute. I think what we can do is conduct lab experiments with
changing weather conditions which can simulate 10 years and prove that
our product is better in life.
Interviewer That is quite interesting. But let's say they are still not convinced. Now
what?
Candidate Maybe we can look into financing options. Something like an EMI which
would cost them the same over the 10 year period but help them get rid of
going through the hassle of hiring contractors again and again.
Interviewer That's good. We can close the case here. Any questions?
Candidate ….
Interviewer Next Round!
Round 2
Interview Experience 1 profitability & 1 unconventional
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer Conventional case first. Your client is a retail chain and they are facing
declining profits. Help them.
Candidate Can you tell me something more about the client, their business, what
location, since when are they facing such issue, industry wide issue etc.
Interviewer Sell clothes, pan India, problem since 2 years, company specific issue.
Candidate Divided profits into cost and revenue.
Interviewer Cost is fine, revenue stagnant.
Candidate Revenue is #stores * #customers/store * Avg revenue/store. What is
changing?
Interviewer #customers decreasing
Candidate Ok! So that means our customers are going to somewhere else and that
may be because of various reasons. Who are our competitors? Has there
been any new one in the market recently?
Interviewer There are many competitors. Gave some data. No new one
Candidate Ok. So I would like to think it through the customers angle, how does a
customer come to buy at the store etc. First, awareness about the store,
location, accessibility etc.

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 Interviewer Ok we can stop here. Next case. You can ask me 20 questions and I will
answer in yes/no
Candidate Ok! This seems interesting
Interviewer Ready? You are in a desert and you see a naked man lying dead there with a
straw in his hand. Tell me how he died. Start!
Candidate Are there any bruises on his body? Are his clothes nearby? Is there any
vehicle there? Can we know if he died from dehydration? Etc etc
Interviewer (After some 10 questions, she laughs) No problem. I think we are good.
Candidate Now tell me about your opinion on this ongoing NPA crisis
Interviewer Blah blah blah…..
Candidate Done. Next round!
Round 3
Interview Experience Partner round. Guesstimate and personals/resume
(CASE - TYPE)
Interviewer So you have a degree in classical vocals. Tell me more about it. Who is your
favorite classical vocalist/ what raagas you know etc etc.
Candidate Told him about what I had learnt and also some other stuff which he did not
ask about.
Interviewer Ok good. Why do you have a low CGPI in IIT?
Candidate Sir, 8+ is considered good there
Interviewer Oh come on. It’s low.
Candidate I studied and also gave importance to other activities like managing teams
and events. And was also a part of various bands and used to perform
regularly. I learned various things from these activities as well which would
not have been possible with traditional classroom teaching. That is the
reason why my CGPI is not that great.
Interviewer Ok. Estimate for me the used car market in India.
Candidate Gave him 3 approaches, not satisfied
Interviewer What all shortlists do you have?
Candidate Told him about them.
Interviewer Aren't you afraid that you won’t get selected and your friends are getting
offers?
Candidate (Kept my cool here) Told him about some general fundaes of life, this is not
the end etc etc.
Interviewer Seems convinced. Any questions?
Candidate (I am convinced that I have been kicked out) Sir can you tell me something
about yourself?
Interviewer (Laughs) ok sorry, I did not tell you. (His answer)
Candidate So what will you do if you don't get placed today?
Interviewer Nothing, give GDs. Many good companies on day1 too!
Candidate Ok. I will extend you the offer.
DOs and I was grilled a lot in the last round. It was basically a stress round and I kept
DONTs/Important Tips my cool, which is what they are looking for. Also, try to keep the
conversation interesting and smile :)

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`
 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Prateek Sachan

Interviewing firm Alvarez and Marsal
Slot Day 0M 8:00 A.M.
Interviewer Round 1,2 - 2 Directors and Round 3 - Managing Director
Pre-College profile
Undergraduate IIT Roorkee
College
Branch Civil Engineering
Work Experience 22 Months
Firm EXL Service
Sector Analytics Consulting
Round 1
Interview
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer Tell me about yourself.
Candidate Talked about the prepared answer for the question. Had cross questions
regarding the projects I did at work. This was a common feature in all the
rounds.
Interviewer Our client is a big retail chain and they want to decide whether to open a new
store in a tier 1 or a tier 2 city. Let's start with the number crunching for this.
Candidate (The case was calculation intensive and the interviewer helped me all along. He
was trying to judge how good I am with numbers instead of the strategy for
deciding the store location. There were a couple of mistakes from my side in
calculations but overall I managed to get the calculations right. It was
important to keep calm in the situation as the interview was only 15 min long
and pace at which numbers were given was quite swift)
Round 2
Interview
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer Tell me about yourself and follow up questions on the best project I did at
work.
Candidate Talked in detail of the best work I did at the time I was at the previous firm and
he seemed quite impressed with it.
Interviewer Our client wants to venture into the bottled water business and wants to
setup a plant in Bangalore. How will you decide the capacity of the plant?
Candidate Talked about how we can segment the city of Bangalore on the basis of
income levels and gender and tried to come up with a number who will be
buying a bottled water say on a Monday morning because the plant must have
a capacity to serve the peak demand periods. (The case was a classic
guesstimate but the interviewer liked the way I discerned the demand's

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 relation with the capacity and mentioned the fact that we should be
calculating for peak)

Round 3
Interview
Experience (CASE -
TYPE)
Interviewer How can you decide the demand for tires for cabs in Kolkata?
Candidate The guesstimate required me to calculate the number of cabs and from that
come up with the demand for tires. I assumed that there will be 4 tires per car.
Interviewer 4 tires per car??
Candidate I got puzzled for a bit thinking what he meant by that statement. Thankfully he
clarified that I missed the fact that there is a spare tire in every car.

DOs and 1. CV points should be prepared thoroughly. They focus quite relentlessly on
DONTs/Important the kind of work you have done.
Tips 2. Keeping your calm. There were 3 rounds of interview in a span of 40
minutes which made the whole process quite brisk. It is important to take your
time before answering the questions.
3. Ask questions about the firm. I did manage to come up with a few and in
each round the discussion about 3-4 min were devoted to them.

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 INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

Name Sushmita Haldar

Interviewing firm Accenture
Slot 0M
Interviewer
Pre-College
profile
Undergraduate NIT Bhopal
College
Branch Electronics and Communication
Work Experience
Firm Idea Cellular
Sector Telecom
Round 1
Interview
Experience (CASE
- TYPE)
Interviewer Your client is an electric motor manufacturer, part of a conglomerate, and has
been facing losses
Candidate Since when is the firm facing losses?
Interviewer Since the past two years
Candidate Could you tell me more about the product and who are they selling to?
Interviewer They manufacture motors required by automobile manufacturers, most of the
sales are to the conglomerate and a small fraction to other automobile
manufacturers across India
Candidate The firm could be facing losses either due to a decrease in revenue or increase in
cost, is there a particular side you want me to focus on?
Interviewer Briefly describe all components under both sides
Candidate Under decrease in revenues, the firm could be facing losses due a decrease in
price or decrease in quantity either due to reduction in market size or share
Interviewer The price hasn't decreased, and market size has been increasing, go to cost now
Candidate The cost could be increasing because of changes in raw material procurement,
transport and distribution costs or post purchase service costs
Interviewer Okay
Candidate Where are the firm's warehouses and factories?
Interviewer The firm has one in north of India and one in South
Candidate The firm must be using metal as raw material for the motors
Interviewer Yes, copper
Candidate Does the firm import copper or procure from India, where from India?
Interviewer The firm imports from Indonesia as well as procures almost the same quantity
from central India
Candidate Is the cost of both these procurements equal?
Interviewer Yes, anything else in raw material you think you could be missing?

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 Candidate Have procurement costs changed in the past two years?
Interviewer Yes, copper prices have increased, Suggest 5 measures to reduces losses due to
increase in price
Candidate Suggested 5 measures, most important one being about increasing price, since it
is an industry wide phenomenon and since a major customer is the
conglomerate, a price increase wouldn't strongly affect quantity sold
DOs and
DONTs/Importan
t Tips

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