IIMC Summer Interview Experiences - 57th Batch

57TH
BATCH
IIMC
SUMMER
INTERVIEW
EXPERIENCES
A collection of successful consulting interview experiences of the students
of the 57th Batch of IIM Calcutta
PUBLISHED BY : CONSULT CLUB, IIM CALCUTTA

Copyright © 2021
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 Consult Club, IIM Calcutta
Foreword
The Consult Club of IIM Calcutta is delighted to present this latest version of Consulting Interview
Experiences. Over 90 students of the 57th batch, having secured summer internships in firms such as
McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, Kearney, Accenture, Arthur D. Little,
MasterCard, PwC, Auctus Advisors and Synergy Consulting, have contributed around 50 interview
experiences, and we would like to thank them for their time and effort.
The motive of this booklet is to present the diversity of cases and personal questions that can be asked
during consulting 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. The trick is to be calm and execute those well-crafted intricate strategies that you have
been practicing throughout your preparation process.
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 in a range
of 30-40 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.
Also, this book is a must read before going to your interviews, as we have observed similar cases being
asked through the years. You never know, it just might be your lucky day and get a case quite similar.
We hope this will be a valuable resource for students preparing for similar interviews.
IIMC Summer Interview Experiences | 57th Batch Page | 2

Table of Contents
McKINSEY & COMPANY ............................................................................................................................ 5
Ananya Kumar ............................................................................................................................................ 6
Divyam Gupta............................................................................................................................................. 9
Jahnvi Singh.............................................................................................................................................. 11
Karthik Vignesh ........................................................................................................................................ 14
Lakshay Goel ............................................................................................................................................ 17
Lakshya Kumar ......................................................................................................................................... 20
Rituparna Das ........................................................................................................................................... 22
Rohan Daga .............................................................................................................................................. 25
Satyageet ................................................................................................................................................. 27
Saurabh Laddha ....................................................................................................................................... 31
Shreyaansh Gupta .................................................................................................................................... 34
Tanya Agarwal .......................................................................................................................................... 37
BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP................................................................................................................ 39
Akash Agarwal.......................................................................................................................................... 40
Aman Gupta ............................................................................................................................................. 44
Chinnala Nishith ....................................................................................................................................... 49
Priyanka Choudhary ................................................................................................................................. 51
Rahul Manglik .......................................................................................................................................... 56
Saachi Malik ............................................................................................................................................. 59
Saurabh Sinha .......................................................................................................................................... 63
BAIN & COMPANY ................................................................................................................................... 67
Abhinav Jha .............................................................................................................................................. 68
Dharmesh Dubey ..................................................................................................................................... 71
Digvijay Singh ........................................................................................................................................... 73
Khayati Mittal ........................................................................................................................................... 75
Mayank Jhunjhunwala ............................................................................................................................. 77
Shivani Kabra............................................................................................................................................ 80
KEARNEY .................................................................................................................................................. 83
Ayushi Priyam........................................................................................................................................... 84
Harshit Laddha ......................................................................................................................................... 87
Nishtha Jain .............................................................................................................................................. 90

Shikha Singh ............................................................................................................................................. 92
Siddharth Chhajed.................................................................................................................................... 95
Surabhi Rakhecha..................................................................................................................................... 99
ACCENTURE STRATEGY.......................................................................................................................... 101
Akshada Shetty ...................................................................................................................................... 102
Anshul Kataria ........................................................................................................................................ 104
Jasleen Kaur ........................................................................................................................................... 105
Krutika Shahare ...................................................................................................................................... 108
Shantanu Chate ...................................................................................................................................... 110
Shweta Rai.............................................................................................................................................. 113
Sweety.................................................................................................................................................... 115
ARTHUR D. LITTLE .................................................................................................................................. 117
Aayush Sahay ......................................................................................................................................... 118
Aditya Suresh ......................................................................................................................................... 120
Prachi Tosniwal ...................................................................................................................................... 122
Shishir Agrawal....................................................................................................................................... 125
MASTERCARD ........................................................................................................................................ 128
Akula Aditya ........................................................................................................................................... 129
Ayushi Chirania ...................................................................................................................................... 132
Czaee Shefali Kolekar ............................................................................................................................. 134
Prerna Raj ............................................................................................................................................... 136
PwC ........................................................................................................................................................ 138
Pooja Das ............................................................................................................................................... 139
Shikhar Nathani...................................................................................................................................... 140
AUCTUS ADVISORS ................................................................................................................................ 142
Vinayak Nadir ......................................................................................................................................... 143
SYNERGY CONSULTING ......................................................................................................................... 145
Shubham Chavan ................................................................................................................................... 146

McKINSEY & COMPANY

INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE
Profile Information
Name Ananya Kumar
Interviewing firm McKinsey & Company
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Mr. Alpesh Chaddha (Partner)
Undergraduate Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi
College
Branch B.A. (H) Economics
Work Experience Fresher
Firm NA
Sector NA
Round - 1 Unconventional/GTM Case
Interviewer Hi Ananya, good morning! How are you feeling today?
Candidate Good morning Sir, I'm feeling good, slightly nervous.
Interviewer No need to call me sir, you can just call me Alpesh. Also, don’t be
nervous- sit back, relax, be comfortable. How have your interactions with
your buddies been? Asked me something about what tips they gave me
for today.
Candidate Told him they’ve gone well, they helped me out a lot, gave me a lot of
time and guidance. Told me to just stay calm and do my best today.
Interviewer That's great! Let's just start off with getting to know you better. Asked me
to run him through my PoRs and extra-curriculars part of my CV.
Candidate Gave him a well-prepared answer covering all the points I'd mentioned in
a chronological order. For PoRs spoke about the work I did, how I led a
team to do the work effectively, and the impact we were able to create
as a result.
Interviewer Asked me about why I don’t have more recent points for squash in my CV
(all points were from my school years).
Candidate Explained that I stopped playing competitively after school, and gave the
reason behind it. Seemed convinced.
Interviewer Let's quickly move on to a short case. Gave a case about a financial
instrument similar to a gold bond- asked very specific questions he
wanted answered. Who would your customer segment be? What would
be the benefit that this provides to them? And how would be your
strategy to reach out to your customers?
Candidate Asked a few clarifying questions, how exactly does the instrument work
(assume it is redeemable as gold whenever you wish, tracks price of gold
exactly), what denominations would it be available in (figure out a good
strategy for this while you analyse the case), etc.
Interviewer Didn’t want me to spend too much time on preliminary questions,
realised that he wanted me to jump into the case solving fast. Mentioned
that you don’t need to solve the entire case, just try answering the three
questions given.

Candidate Said that I will first figure out the value propositions of the product, and
then based on those look at who our target customers could be.
Mentioned a few points like no carrying costs, risk of theft/misplacement,
denominations can be of smaller values.
Interviewer Cut me off and asked me to look at the target segments first, and then if
needed come back to the benefits.
Candidate Broke down how customers with different objectives could invest in the
asset (hedging, unable to buy gold because of availability of funds but
want to track price of gold etc.). Came up with a total of 3 such segments
based on different investing objectives.
Interviewer Great, club all of these together as investors and give more potential
customer segments.
Candidate Was a little taken aback here, had not been thinking of any other
segments till then. Took a few seconds and told him that another
segment would be people who want to buy gold in the future, but who
have the funds right now.
Interviewer Asked me who these people could be.
Candidate Gave a few examples, including parents who want to get their children
married in the future, and jewellers.
Interviewer Liked my example of parents. Asked me to elaborate on the jeweller
example. Told me to think out loud- wanted to see how I was structuring
my thoughts and coming up with the answers.
Candidate Mentioned the assumptions I was working with, which turned out to not
be very realistic. Based on discussion with him concluded that they would
not buy the asset for this purpose.
Interviewer Asked me to talk more about the parent’s example, how would they
benefit from the product?
Candidate Went to the value propositions, gave a few more points here. Seemed
happy with my response.
Interviewer How and where would you sell this asset- taking the parents as your
target group.
Candidate Stated that I would assume 10 years before marriage as the time during
which the parents invest. Went back to approx. age of the child then,
they would typically be in school or college during that time. Started
looking into where the parents might be investing during that time (was
running him through my entire thought process here, since he had
previously mentioned that he'd like me to think out loud).
Interviewer Cut me off and said that he was glad I didn’t say wedding planners, since
that would have been wrong. Had a small talk about why that would have
been wrong. Said I'll go and check if the next panel is ready for you or we
can keep talking for some more time. Left for 2 mins.
Candidate Was still making notes about additional points just in case we would
spend more time on the case.
Interviewer Came back and offered the role. Mentioned that he liked the process I
followed while thinking out loud.
Candidate Very surprised, thanked him, chatted for a couple of minutes and left.

DOs and Don'ts/ DOs: Try picking up on the hints that the interviewer is giving to you.
Important Tips Mine didn’t want me to spend much time on preliminary questions, and
didn't want long pauses where I was thinking of the answers. Also, don’t
get nervous when you're told to move in a direction different from what
you had initially thought of.
Don'ts: Don't get defensive if the interviewer doesn't agree with your
answer. Talk them through why you gave that answer, and be open to
their suggestions and inputs.

Profile Information
Name Divyam Gupta
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Kunwar Vijayant Singh
Undergraduate IIT Delhi
College
Branch Textile Technology
Work Experience 24 months
Firm PwC
Sector Consulting
Round - 1 Unconventional Case
Interviewer Since we are short on time, let’s start with the case only.
Candidate Sure
Interviewer The case is for Rubida (made up disease name) eradication. Your client,
Ministry of Health of an African country, has asked you to come up with a
plan to halt the transmission of disease in the country. This is a vaccine
preventable disease. Significant efforts have been done in other countries
to stop it and your country is only 1 out of 5 countries in the world to
have this disease. This disease affects children under 5 years of age and
spreads through water and poor hygiene conditions.
To prevent this disease, you need 5 units of vaccine to be given to
children under 5, with each dose having gap of 1 month at least. It is
administered orally and needs 4-8 degree C temp. for storage.
How will you help the client?
Candidate This is quite an interesting problem. I will like to highlight the major
points to ensure I captured all the things you told and will then like to ask
few clarifying questions to understand the situation. (Reiterated the
problem statement)
Interviewer This is the complete dataset you have; no other preliminary information
is there. Why don't you directly tell me the structure of how you will
approach the problem
Candidate (Since I couldn't ask any preliminary question and problem seemed quite
complicated at first, I asked for 2 minutes to gather my thoughts)
Case Solving: We can help the client in 2 ways - Preventing the spread of
disease through sanitary measures and other long-term measure and
secondly, through vaccination program
Interviewer Why don't you focus only on vaccination
Candidate For vaccination program, I will look into 3 major themes - 1. Procurement
by the central government / nodal agency, which will be a depend on
Quantity and Cost; 2. Logistics Costs Involved, first in getting the vaccine
in the country and then sending them to local cities / towns / villages;
and 3. Local Delivery, which will be depend on awareness programs,
mode of vaccination (oral / injection) and any major challenges

Interviewer This looks good. But don’t you think there are 2 things missing - How
many people are comfortable with getting vaccinated and any existing
programs of UN, World Bank etc.
Candidate Yes absolutely. The first thing is already covered in Local Delivery through
awareness and challenges, but I should have seen synergy with existing
programs
Interviewer No problem. This seems good. Solve one quick maths question and we
are good to go. Gave a very simple Qs on # of children under 5, how many
are fully vaccinated, how many had 1 dose and how many had 0 doses.
Calculate how many doses are needed within 1 year if you want to
vaccinate 90% of these kids
Candidate Calculated, gave answer
Interviewer That's good Divyam. I think we are done here. Wait for some time, we
will let you know the result
DOs and Don'ts/ It is very important to be confident and have faith in yourself. Also, be
Important Tips structured in whatever you tell. Consultants absolutely love 3 bullet
solutions.
My question was really complicated, and while I might not have given the
perfect solution, but whatever I told was in a very structured manner,
with a confident smile and probably that's what worked in my favour.
Listen to interviewer very keenly. For most of my question, partner kept
on emphasizing vaccine and that's where I knew, I will have to focus on
vaccination program. I started thinking about Polio vaccination program
in India (and surprisingly, Rubida was the made up name for Polio and
this was real life McKinsey case for polio eradication in an African
country)

Profile Information
Name Jahnvi Singh
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer 1 Partner
Undergraduate Delhi Technological University
College
Branch EEE
Firm JP Morgan
Sector Investment Banking
Interviewer Good morning! This is new for us as we are doing this online. Otherwise,
we used to travel every year to campus.
Candidate Good morning sir! I totally understand, extraordinary times call for
extraordinary measures.
Interviewer Do you have any questions for me? Else we can jump straight to the case.
Candidate We can start with the case sir. I will let you know in case of any questions.
Interviewer Great! Since lockdown is now being eased and demand is very high, a lot
of firms and people across the supply chain are producing more in an
optimistic wave and are stocking up more inventory, with the hope that
demand will continue to be high. You have to advise on whether this is
pent up demand and if this is sustainable. How would you go about it?
Candidate (A little blown away after hearing the question as it didn't fit into any
framework but calmed myself down and decided to solve the case using
first principles. Reiterated the question and decided to go to preliminary
questions straight away to get the hang of things.) I have a few
preliminary questions to understand the case a little better.
Interviewer Go ahead
Candidate Is there any particular industry and geography with respect to which we
are talking about?
Interviewer Yes! Let’s say we are concerned with India and are talking about
automotive industry - particularly the two-wheeler segment.
Candidate Okay. What time frame are looking at?
Interviewer Let’s say we are talking as of today (Nov 2020)
Candidate Spent some more time trying to understand the question.
Interviewer I think we have spent enough time scoping the problem statement. Why
don’t you walk me through your approach and then we can discuss
further?

Candidate Okay. I would like to go ahead by conducting a scenario analysis of 2
situations i.e., first, what the situation is at present and second, how it
would have been like in a without COVID world. I would like to proceed
through the value chain and at each step, I would compare both these
scenarios.
Interviewer Sounds good. You can go ahead.
Candidate Starting with the raw materials. Since the lockdown is being eased now, it
might be possible that raw material procurement had been difficult till
now and hence this part of the value chain is working at more than full
efficiency right now. Easing of restrictions on industrial and
transportation activities might have played a role in this.
Interviewer Indeed. Easing of restrictions on activities have some role to play in the
increased production but let’s say we have factored that into account and
want to look at more things.
Candidate Okay sir. I would want to move ahead to manufacturing in the value
chain. Here again, easing of restrictions for factory activities might be one
of the reasons why manufacturing is at a higher level than usual. Labour
which is another important factor of production might be one of the
reasons. Since we know that during initial lockdown stages migrant
labourers travelled back to their home which was one of the reasons for
production being halted.
Interviewer Yes, right. It has been seen that in states which are dependent a lot on
migrant labourers, this factor played a role in pumping up productivity.
What other things will you look at?
Candidate On the customer end, we could look at factors like inflated savings which
the customers are spending right now. We should also consider
seasonality factors like festive season.
Interviewer Okay. Can you think of few quantitative things that we can look at for this
analysis?
Candidate We could look at economic indicators like IIP, PMI etc. I am aware that
the economic indicators being at their highs is catching media attention
these days.
Interviewer Okay. But how would these indicators help you on a standalone basis?
They will just show inflated numbers as you mentioned.
Candidate Sir we could also look at the industrial productivity data from other
countries and compare it with India. Since Europe experienced peak
COVID wave ahead of India and now there are talks about a probable
second wave, we can look at Europe's data and do similar adjustments to
India's data to look at the effect of lockdown and its easing and then we
can figure out the proportion of demand that is pent up.
Interviewer Okay good! We can close the case now. Let's talk about you now. Can you
give me a quick introduction?
Candidate Recited a well-prepared answer.
Interviewer Can you tell me few interesting projects that you worked on during your
job?
Candidate Mentioned ESG financing and green bonds projects.

Interviewer What do you think is the scope of ESG financing in India and will Indian
corporates start ESG financing?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Can you mention three biggest learnings from your work experience?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Few cross questions on economic indicators and world economy since I
mentioned that my job made me more aware of world economic and
financial events.
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Few more personal questions on PORs and strengths / weakness.
Candidate Answered
Interviewer That would be all from my side. We would be happy to have you with us
as a summer associate and would like to extend you an offer!
Candidate Thank you sir!
DOs and Don'ts/ As much as your case prep is important, it’s very important to think on
Important Tips first principles. Don’t get blown away by seeing an unconventional case
and try to apply all the learnings from your previous cases. Don't go after
solving more number of cases. Rather, try to inculcate the learnings from
each case to become better at case solving. Keep calm and handle the
interview with confidence!

Profile Information
Name Karthik Vignesh
Slot
Interviewer Rajat Gupta (Senior Partner) and Jaidit Brar (Senior Partner)
Undergraduate IIT Bombay
College
Branch Chemical Engineering
Firm NA
Sector NA
Round - 1 Pricing Case
Interviewer (Asked for 2 minutes to go through my CV) Tell me something about your
family and background
Candidate Answered
Interviewer What type of a student were you at college? If I asked your batchmates
from college about you what would they say about you? Name one
positive feedback and a negative feedback they would give about you?
Candidate This really was an unconventional question and I would suggest not to
beat around the bush. He specifically wanted to know what others'
perception about me was rather than what I felt were my strengths and
weaknesses. Also answered some follow up questions
Interviewer What do you consider as your biggest achievement in the last 5 years?
How did it impact you?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Ok let us solve a case. You studied in Mumbai, so say going from Bandra
to Nariman Point takes 45 minutes via Train which costs Rs 40. A cab ride
takes 90 minutes costing Rs 500 but has AC and is convenient. Your client
wants to introduce AC hovercrafts that would reduce travel time to 20
minutes. How much would you charge for one trip?
Candidate Clarified the problem statement and asked the objective for the pricing
and seating capacity after which he interrupted...
Interviewer You go ahead with your approach. I will just be listening.
Candidate I wanted to ask more questions but I went ahead. I talked of the three
pricing approaches and since it was a novel product, we could look at
cost-based pricing and value-based pricing. In cost-based pricing, I will be
looking at R&D costs, fixed and variable costs. Is that okay?
Interviewer I don't know. I am just listening (smiling)
Candidate I smiled and went through the cost-based approach. He wanted to know
the structure rather than the computations. Since I had no data, I went
over the aspects to be considered in cost based and value-based
approaches. I went over R&D costs, Fixed Costs (cost of a hovercraft, fleet
size, salaries and rent) and variable costs mainly comprising of fuel costs
and cost of maintenance and repair. He also wanted me to briefly discuss
value-based pricing, which I did.

Interviewer You have done well. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked a question based on his vast experience in consulting and at
McKinsey
Interviewer Answered. He even suggested a book he was reading then. (Then we
concluded the call and I waited for my second round)
Round - 2 Growth Strategy Case
Interviewer Asked me to introduce myself.
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Good! Let us get into the case. The Airline industry has been badly
affected due to the pandemic. So, we would like to come up with a
framework for analysing the demand for the industry post-COVID.
Candidate Clarified the problem statement and took some time to ask clarifying
questions including if we are focusing on passenger airlines only
Interviewer Yes. Let us focus on Passenger Airlines and focus on the industry as a
whole and not a specific company say focus on Indian airline industry.
You need to look into the issues faced by the industry and how we can
revive it post pandemic.
Candidate Asked for a minute to come up with the framework. Divided air travel
into International and Domestic air travel. In International travel, divided
it into Government regulation, route plan of airlines and flight utilization.
In the domestic travel, again divided it into regulation, route plan and
utilization along with competition from land travel post pandemic.
Interviewer Okay let us focus on international travel. Elaborate on the points you
have mentioned.
Candidate Sure. I have classified the current challenges faced by the industry as
1) Government regulation which restricts travel to certain regions and
countries,
2) Route plan: Even with removed restrictions, the public may have
reservations to travel to certain locations which have had higher case
rates. So, this part is mainly perception of the public with regards to
certain locations,
3) Flight Utilization: This would mainly concern with how well the
industry can ensure utilization of the services post pandemic namely
through enhancing safety, experience and price.
Interviewer Okay. Now coming to domestic airlines how can we revive the industry in
this segment?
Candidate Asked for a minute. Segmented into government actions and specific
company decisions. In government actions, talked about giving subsidies
to airline companies, modifying travel regulations and expanding demand
for government employees via incentives for air travel. Under company
actions, I discussed optimizing the route plan and fleet assessing the
demand patterns, enforcing safety regulations without compromising
passenger experience, possible ticket fare reduction to spur demand and
promotion actions for communicating with the public.
Interviewer Good. Anything else?

Candidate Talked about reviving the tourism industry as it will have ramifications for
travel agencies and tour operators who are major customers for airlines.
There is also a huge pent-up demand for travel due to the lockdowns
which can be tapped into.
Interviewer Great we can wrap up the case now. You have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked a company specific question.
DOs and Don'ts/ 1) As trite as it may sound, keeping your cool during the interview is the
Important Tips best thing you can do for yourself. The placement day may be stressful
and unpredictable, but all it takes is one good interview to see you
through.
2) Note that my first round was very personals based. So, don't neglect
your personals and CV preparation. It may very well be the centre of your
interview. Also, the interviewers were very personable, so your personals
can give a positive direction to your interview by establishing a connect
with them.
3) Structuring your approach is essential. Keep an open mind and don't
force fit frameworks and come up with frameworks best suited to the
case. Keep clarifying from the interviewer about your approach.

Profile Information
Name Lakshay Goel
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Aditya Sharma and Harsh Chhaparia
College
Branch Electrical Engineering
Firm 1.5 year at QuantOne, 1.5 year at OfBusiness.com
Sector Hedge Fund, FinTech
Round - 1 Personals & Growth Strategy Case
Interviewer Tell me about a situation where you worked with a team of people,
changed their views & drives positive change?
Candidate It was “Basically Tell me a good story” question. Told a story, he seemed
happy to hear it.
Interviewer Let’s get to a case. We are short of time
Candidate Sure!!
Interviewer Client is India division of an OTT Platform, they have witnessed a 2x
growth during pandemic, now they would like to continue with this
growth for next 5 years.
Candidate Repeated the question, Clarified Objective and timeline
Interviewer Just assume it is Netflix.
Candidate Asked for 30 secs to come up with a framework (started to draw
customer journey)
Interviewer Sure!!
Candidate I drew customer journey as: discovery > Download > Trial > Conversion >
Retention. Asked if it looks fine.
Interviewer Sure, let’s get into each sector and you advise me 1 - 2 growth hacks
Candidate Gave 7 growth hacks
Interviewer Which ones of these are least useful?
Candidate Told nudging to have higher retention of less interested Users is least
useful as objective is 2x growth and this won’t help much + they won’t be
our sponsors & cheerleaders who will drive further traffic, hence should
focus less here.
Interviewer Tell me the most important 3 out of 6-7 you listed
Candidate Told, Advertisement for Brand Visibility, Content Engine for NPS &
Community Based viewer controls to drive word of mouth signups
Interviewer Good, lets wrap case here. Do you have a question?
Candidate Yes, Can I know which sector you work in?
Interviewer Financial Services
Candidate Oh! That’s a place I absolutely love, let’s hope we do a case together in
near future.

Interviewer Anything else
Candidate No, I think that’s is it. (PS: I got a little anxious as I had nothing to ask on
top of my head at moment)
Interviewer Best of luck!!
Candidate Thanks!!
Interviewer Hi Lakshay, let’s get into case
Candidate Sure
Interviewer So, the client is Pan India 2-Wheeler manufacturer & they are witnessing
3-4% sales growth while market is growing at 8-9%. How can they grow
faster than market?
Candidate Repeated question, asked meaning of growth & clarified timeline of
objective.
Interviewer Growth is sales in INR, Objective is to grow within 12 months at market
growth level
Candidate Asked Products of Company & where in Supply chain it is located
Interviewer Scooters + E-Rickshaw + Bikes (125cc) & Assume like TVS/ Bajaj
(Manufacturing + Distribution via dealership network)
Candidate Next, I want to understand Growth of each sector us vs market (industry)
Interviewer Scooters: 10% vs 25% + E-Rickshaw 1% vs 1% + Bikes (125cc) 5% v/s 5%
Candidate Oh, so scooters are growing slower than the Industry, hence we are
growing slower than industry. It appears it is a softer problem, just to rule
others out, I would like to know revenue split of three products
Interviewer Scooters: 25%+ E-Rickshaw 70% + Bikes (125cc) 5%
Candidate Oh, we have a huge exposure in E-Rickshaw which is not growing. So, I
will want to focus on two aspects: 1) To get us back to industry growth in
Scooters and 2) Explore beating market Growth in E-Rickshaws
Interviewer Let’s first look into e-Rickshaws
Candidate Sure, I want to know our market share in E-Rickshaws
Interviewer We have 75% market share
Candidate So, we are dominant player, but market is stagnant.
Interviewer Yes
Candidate Okay, then it seems without finding additional use case to expand market
size, it will be difficult to have sustainable strategy of growing this
segment
Interviewer Yes, let’s forget about it & go into scooters. How will you grow scooters,
give me 3 suggestions
Candidate First, I would like to look into customer journey, from: need, discovery,
sales, after sales
Interviewer Focus on Discovery.
Candidate Sure, we have two modes of discovery: Friends + Professional /
Structured. As far as friends go, we have to focus on product experience
to drive word of mouth. That will include, Specs + Performance + Design.
On Structured we have Online & Offline Modes

Interviewer Cut in, lets focus on two three aspects, first tell me how will you evaluate
customer segment of a user using data from Online aggregators, Say
BikeDekho
Candidate Can I take 30 secs to think through it
Interviewer Sure
Candidate I will break the specs as users who are interested in the product and then
once we have defined who is interested in the product, next is to get
common attributes across such interested users. Does it sound
reasonable
Interviewer Yes, go ahead
Candidate On the first aspect of identifying users who are interested in our
subsegment, we will group users who visit our product or similar product
and we will possibly give higher weights to users who on first search
looked for our segment as that is what they came in for. So, this gives me
a set of target users, Now I need to group them basis common
characteristics like Age, Gender, City etc. Which we can do using various
clustering & data mining tools
Interviewer Okay what about ways in which a customer can talk to experts on
understanding different products
Candidate We can have digital interactions on 1. Aggregators website (articles, blogs
etc.) 2. our website (chat) 3. Influencers 4. Car & Bike Shows on TV or we
can have among offline 1. visits to store, 2. Magazines & Print Media
Interviewer Let’s close here
Candidate Thank you, do you want me to summarise the case?
Interviewer No, not required. Best of Luck!!
Candidate Thanks!
Interviewer Do you have any questions
Candidate No sir, I have had extensive talk with Siddharta & Mayank + formal &
informal interactions, hence I do not have any further questions at this
time.
Interviewer Best of luck again.
Candidate Thank you.
DOs and Don'ts/ Just be yourself. The final interviews are smaller, much crisp, so your
Important Tips ability to navigate quickly and make assumptions. Stating them is key
differential here (v/s in buddy cases where you are required to focus on
traversing the entire framework.)

Profile Information
Name Lakshya Kumar
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Suvojoy Sengupta
Undergraduate Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies
College
Branch BMS (Finance)
Firm NA
Sector NA
Round - 1 Market Entry Case
Interviewer Hey Lakshya, I am Suvojoy (gave his intro). So, how has the experience
been at IIMC during this pandemic?
Candidate Answered about the online classes and problems attached to it but they
are the need of the hour.
Interviewer I see that you have intervened at NITI Aayog. How was experience? What
was your role?
Candidate Explained about the department within which I was working and my
individual role. Nudged towards a particular project that I wanted to talk
about.
Interviewer The project seems interesting, what was your work and what innovation
did you bring?
Candidate Answered about the work (I had already prepared this answer with a lot
of the answer points highlighting similarities to consulting)
Interviewer Alright, let's jump into the case. You are the advisor to Govt. of India.
How to develop hydrogen cell ecosystem in India.
Candidate This seems like an interesting problem. (took some time). What is the
objective of the government? (Gave a few possible ones, like lower
pollution)
Interviewer Objective is to switch the buses and trucks from diesel engines to
Hydrogen cells
Candidate What do you mean by hydrogen cell, is it an engine run by hydrogen as
input?
Interviewer Explained about conversion of hydrogen gas to energy in these engines.
Candidate Asked follow up questions regarding the process, asked about
substitutes.
Interviewer Answered. Focus on should we actually go ahead or not.
Candidate Explained the structure (Barriers to entry, economic feasibility,
operational feasibility, barriers to exit)
Interviewer Let's focus only on barriers to entry and talk about impact on every factor

Candidate Used PESTEL. Talked about Tech first. Then environment (Impact and
cost). Discussed a while about possible benefits to nation including
decrease balance of payment
Interviewer Let's quickly move on to barriers to adoption. Identify the stakeholders
and impact on them
Candidate Identified stakeholders (govt, regulatory body, manufacturers, drivers,
repair shops)
Interviewer Let's focus on Truckers
Candidate Spoke about how it would be difficult to get charging stations, repairmen
(which could earlier be found on any highway)
Interviewer Alright. That would be all from my side. I would like to offer you
internship at McKinsey for the summers.
Candidate Thanked him. Looking forward to learning at the firm.
DOs and Don'ts/ Apart from preparing case studies in groups, do reach out to other
Important Tips batchmates to discuss cases. The interviewer generally has in mind the
key points he is looking in the responses. Try to grasp these by reading his
voice and his face expressions.

Profile Information
Name Rituparna Das
Slot 12:00 PM
Interviewer
Undergraduate NIT Warangal
College
Branch ECE
Work Experience 2 years
Firm Fidelity Investments
Sector IT
Round - 1 Profitability/ Growth Case
Interviewer Hello Rituparna. How are you doing?
Candidate I'm doing good
Interviewer So, you're from Bhubaneswar. I have been there. It’s a nice place.
Candidate Discussed few things about the city for a minute
Interviewer Okay let's do a small case now
Candidate Sure
Interviewer Your client is a restaurant owner which is a medium to high end Indian
restaurant in a metro city. They are facing decline in profits and
profitability. Suggest some ways to address this problem.
Candidate Started with preliminary questions about the client, their services and
competitor’s performance.
Interviewer Cuts me off...I just want you to list down things which they can improve,
based on whatever you're assuming. No need to find the
root cause, just give your recommendations.
Candidate Alright. Can I take a moment to think? (Took 30 secs)
I have divided my approach to look at profits first and then profitability.
Since profits is difference of revenue and cost. Starting with Revenue
which is number of customers and revenue per customer. To increase
footfall, we can improve our service, food variety and then focus on
marketing to attract crowd even on off peak days. To earn more revenue
per customer, we can look at increasing price of popular items and try to
cross sell.
Interviewer Interrupted...Which items price are you exactly planning to increase?
Don’t you think increasing price will lead to drop in sales?
Candidate The items which are more in demand like best selling items. We can
increase their price may be during peak hours. This will increase our
profit margin
Interviewer Can you name them? You have the menu now in front of you, which item
do you think will sell more even you raise its price?
Candidate I took a pause and then I understood the hint. I immediately said the
alcoholic beverages.

Interviewer Okay good. Thanks Rituparna. Please wait while we update you about
further steps.
Candidate I was really nervous before the interview as I already had rejection from 2
firms and by this time, I was almost losing hope.
With this abrupt end I wasn't even sure if I will get another chance.
Interviewer Hello Rituparna. How are you and how’s the experience so far?
Candidate Hello I'm doing good and it's been a hectic day since morning. Faced
some technical issues with audio and video. But given the situation this is
the best that can be done.
Interviewer Yeah, I understand. Technology has its own share of problems.
(Introduced himself, about his journey as consultant) then asked me to
tell about myself.
Candidate Gave the well-prepared introduction.
Interviewer Asked me to explain about workex. You're an engineer and had a decent
workex background in IT then why consulting now?
Candidate I've realised that I like working on different aspects of project, executing
things end to end. Gave example of my POR as TEDx Cofounder.
Work like these have always excited me where I get to understand the
full picture and solve the issues with more decision-making power rather
than just restricting myself to technical things. Consulting exactly gives
that opportunity with an added advantage of working with some best
people in industries.
Interviewer Sure, I agree with that. (We discussed few more points) Okay let's do a
case and if you've any questions we can take that up at the end.
Candidate Sure, we can.
Interviewer Your client is an apparel manufacturer of a very old established company
with current growth rate of 10%. They have onboarded a new
CEO and they want him to increase growth rate to 15%. CEO has reached
out to you for help.
Candidate I took a moment and asked preliminary questions. What is the objective
behind increasing growth rate? Where is our client based out of? Where
are they placed in the value chain? What do they sell exactly and through
what mediums? Who are their main customers? What about
competitor’s strategy?
Interviewer Main goal is to increase the stagnant growth rate. Client is operating Pan
India serving mostly domestic market with few export businesses. They
manufacture apparel and sell it through their own outlets or other
retailers. Sell pants and jeans for all gender and age groups. It's a
fragmented industry and other Competitors have also similar price range
and stable growth rate.
Candidate Thank you. That was informative. I will take a minute to think on the
strategy and will get back to you.
Interviewer Yes sure

Candidate After few seconds…. I would like to analyse it with respect to two aspects,
first the existing market and then look into new market. Is that
a good approach?
Interviewer Okay sounds good. You may look into existing market first.
Candidate To increase growth rate in existing market, (Applied 4Ps) we can look at
four factors of product, price, place and promotion.
Interviewer Alright, go ahead and elaborate on these.
Candidate First with product, variety in terms of price range, quality & other apparel
types to attract different customer segments. Next for place we have to
see if we are reachable to all potential customer through online and
offline mode. What are the pain points in availability and try to eliminate
the same. For price we have to analyse the price sensitivity of different
customer segments and try to come up with product pricing to suit their
needs. Lastly promotion plays a bigger role too. We can do it promoting
in TV ads, make celebrities endorse our brand, online through social
media campaigns, hashtags and other offers and discounts.
Interviewer Fine. Would you like to add anything?
Candidate I think that’s about it in existing market. I would like to explore some new
market opportunities.
Interviewer Okay go ahead
Candidate In this there are three possible choices i.e., explore new geographies like
international market where more market research will be
needed to manufacture apparel matching local demand. Second option is
to diversify product categories and services. They can either do these
organically or acquire or merge with other small firms.
Interviewer Okay let's close the case here. We will get back to you with further
update.
Candidate Waited in that zoom link staring at the screen. I wasn't sure how the
interview went however this time I answered more
confidently. After 5 mins got a call from company representative that I
have been selected :)
DOs and Don'ts/ 1) Practise cases from different sectors to have an idea about their
Important Tips revenue, cost and growth factors
2) No matter how bad the previous interviews went, stay confident helps
a lot to think clearly and to impress the interviewers

Profile Information
Name Rohan Daga
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Harsh and Aditya
Undergraduate St. Xavier's College (B.Com)
College
Branch Accounting and Finance
Firm JP Morgan Chase & Co
Sector Financial Services
Round - 1 Growth Case
Interviewer Since you already remember me from the formal interaction, let's start
directly with the case
Candidate Sure, just give me a moment to get my pen
Interviewer Our client is a two-wheeler automobile manufacturer in India and they
have been seeing that their growth rate in less than the industry growth
rate for last 3-4 years
Candidate Okay, just give me some time to gather my thoughts and get back to you
with some clarifying questions
Interviewer Sure
Candidate Asked about data on growth rates, competitors, product variants offered
by us and competitors and growth rate for each segment as well
Interviewer Answered and asked me to proceed ahead
Candidate Drilled down using the normal growth framework to find that reason is
product mix and that our client is selling more of scooters rather than
Economic motorcycles where all the growth is and all our competitors are
focusing more on Economic motorcycle
Interviewer Asked me if I can try to find reason for the same, as to why it is
happening
Candidate Looked at it from demand side and supply side
Interviewer Proceed with demand side
Candidate Used customer journey to find out reasons that even after having a
greater number of dealerships, our footfall per dealership is less than
competitors
Interviewer Can you suggest how by using Data Analytics, we can increase the footfall
at our dealership stores for Economic Motorcycles
Candidate Listed down ways to use past data and digital footprints and tie ups with
corporate
Interviewer We will end the case here. I have another question for you. At McKinsey,
you would have to work in teams a lot of times and take the team
together forward, do you think you will be able to manage that?

Candidate Gave instances as to how I have always worked in team in my undergrad
for organising so many events and even in my work experience how a
new team was set up so I had to coordinate things from very start and
even set up team dynamics
Interviewer Thank you, do you have any question for me
Candidate Asked a pre-planned question
Interviewer Answered and said you may go back to the virtual lobby
Round - 2 Growth Case & Guesstimates
Interviewer So how are you doing? How was your first round?
Candidate Decent, thank you
Interviewer So, tell me, what are the things you have been doing in this pandemic at
home
Candidate Answered
Interviewer What about OTT platforms? Binge watched that?
Candidate Yes, that has been part of the routine even before the pandemic hit
Interviewer Well, let's try this than. This year all OTT platforms have grown by 2x due
to COVID, can you tell few ideas using which they can grow by 2x in next
3-4 years to come
Candidate Asked a few clarifying questions and if I should just restrict myself to
Organic growth or even consider inorganic?
Interviewer Anything under the sun
Candidate Tried to structure and give a framework but he asked to directly get to
ideas. Gave 5-6 ideas which he liked and tried to push for more
Interviewer I like your creativity; can you think of a blockbuster idea
Candidate Tried my best and gave a very big idea but might not be feasible
Interviewer Alright, let's move on. Can you try to find a guesstimate as to how many
credit cards are there in the market by 5-6 approaches? Let's focus on
just structure for now, will go to numbers if required
Candidate Gave a way to find it using demographic, banks, transactions, reward
points and a few overlapping techniques
Interviewer Well, Rohan I must say you do have a good creative side, that will really
help you on the job.
Candidate Thank you, means a lot.
DOs and Don'ts/ 1) Be confident about your answers and make sure you communicate
Important Tips your thoughts properly to the interviewer
2) Have a smiling and a happy face to show you are eager to work at their
firm
3) Interviewers have been through this and know what it feels like so they
always try to help and guide you, so always listen to what they have to
say and pick cues from the same

Profile Information
Name Satyageet
Slot 10:30 AM
Interviewer Sr. Partner, Partner
College
Branch Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology
Firm NA
Sector NA
Interviewer Hi Satyageet, where are you based out of?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Tell me about yourself.
Candidate Answered
Interviewer How's the virtual experience been? How are the classes? How do you
guys bond with each other?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Let's start with the case. I want you to structure an approach to estimate
the demand of air travel in the next 5-7 years.
Candidate Sure, I'll take a few moments to understand the case.
Interviewer Go ahead. Take your time.
Candidate Are we considering domestic travel or international or both? Are we
talking about a specific airline or the sector as a whole? Are we
considering the current COVID scenario as a reference or should I
consider normal times?
Interviewer Let's consider domestic travel. We're considering the sector as a whole.
Let's assume COVID is long gone. I want you to design an approach,
define some metrics to estimate the demand. Don't go into numbers
Candidate Sure. I think I've a fair understanding of the case. I'll take 30 seconds to
gather my thoughts and start the analysis
Interviewer I want you to think out loud. No one can predict the correct air travel
demand. I want to see how you're thinking. Just speak out whatever
you're thinking
Candidate Sure. I'm thinking in terms of a) Dividing the customer segments into
business travellers and non-business travellers, non-business can further
with classified as tourists and people travelling for family meetings etc. b)
I'll analyse the demand of each of these segments considering
Accessibility, Availability and Affordability of Air travel
Interviewer Sounds good. What do you mean by Accessibility and availability of air
travel?

Candidate Accessibility will mean accessibility to airports. More airports will open up
in the next 5-7 years, the government is pushing for it. That'd certainly
increase the air travel demand. Availability means whether flights are
available for the destination the traveller wants to go to. Airlines operate
by hub and spoke model, and there are currently minimal Tier-2 to Tier-2
city flights. This might change in the upcoming years with more demand
for Tier-2 to Tier-2 travel
Interviewer Great. Let's start the analysis for business travellers
Candidate Sure. Business travellers travel between Tier-1 to Tier-1 cities mostly and
their clients/companies pay for their travel, so the 3As are not a problem.
However, since COVID has made virtual meetings the new normal, the
travel might decrease for, say, consultants.
Interviewer Right, this might be the case. What metrics will you consider to
determine whether a partner should travel for a meeting or not?
Candidate Importance of meeting will be the key factor. Importance can be in terms
of a) Revenue, and b) Relationship with client. Time available with the
partner can also be a factor other than importance.
Interviewer Alright. Let's move to the non-business travellers.
Candidate I'll analyse the tourists first. Tourist destinations in India can be classified
into three major categories - Mountains, beaches, and Others, which
would consist of monuments etc. Talking about Accessibility and
Availability, beaches and others are situated in plains and southern India,
and are well-connected by air. So, affordability will be the governing
factor. For mountains, accessibility and availability is a problem as of
now. People travel to Delhi or Chandigarh and then take buses to reach
the Himalyan regions. More airports are expected to come up here,
hence demand will increase.
Interviewer You mentioned affordability will be a governing factor. Can you explain
that?
Candidate (Realized that I'd missed that while concluding this segment) The
earnings of the Indian population is expected to increase, and with the
increasing focus on taking vacations and hectic schedules, the willingness
to pay for a fast and safe travel mode, i.e., air travel would increase.
Thus, demand will increase.
Interviewer Let's move to the final segment of family trips. Let's not spend more than
2 minutes on it.
Candidate The trend here will also revolve around affordability mainly. The incomes
are rising, and the working class is now preferring air travel to railways or
roadways. Hence, the demand is expected to increase.
Interviewer You did well with the case. Let’s talk about you. What leadership
positions did you hold at college?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer What were your major learnings from them?
Candidate Answered (Didn't expect this question, was nervous, but eventually
talked in a candid manner, and he appreciated that later)
Interviewer Alright. That'd be all from my side. Any questions for me?
Candidate Asked a prepared question about the firm

Interviewer Thank you Satyageet, It's nice interacting with you.
Candidate Thank you, same here.
Interviewer Hi Satyageet, let's keep this short and start with a case directly.
Candidate Sure.
Interviewer Your client is a bank, and they want to launch a gold-linked investment
product. How will you segment the potential customers? What will be the
product features that should be defined before launching it?
Candidate Sure, I'd like to reiterate the problem statement and ask a few clarifying
questions.
Interviewer (Interrupted me) I know you've prepped well. No need to do all the
formalities. Let's just talk about the case. Don't use pen and paper.
Candidate Ah. Alright. I'm not sure what you mean by a gold-linked product.
Interviewer Let's say you invest $100 in this product today, 1 year down the line,
you'll get $100*(Return on gold in the market). Basically, the returns on
your deposits are linked to the performance of gold in the market.
Candidate Interesting. I'd start by discussing the customer segments. I'm thinking in
terms of people who invest in gold otherwise.
Interviewer That's the right approach. Who are these people?
Candidate I'd say there are two broad categories - one who buy physical gold, and
the others who trade in gold as a commodity (futures etc.)
Interviewer Don't go into all that. Let's stick to the ones buying physical gold.
Candidate Sure. This can further be two categories - People buying gold ornaments
for wearing - jewellery, and People buying gold coins/ornaments as
savings.
Interviewer Right. Who do you think would be interested in the product?
Candidate The latter ones - who buy gold for savings.
Interviewer Right. Who are these people?
Candidate Mostly middle-class people across the country.
Interviewer Why do they buy gold for savings?
Candidate (Confused)
Interviewer Look around you. Why would your parents buy gold as an investment?
Candidate To save for their children's marriage or for any monetary emergency in
the family.
Interviewer Exactly. Why would they be interested in our product?
Candidate Safety - They don't need to worry about thefts etc. and can avoid the
bank locker costs, maintain same returns at the same time.
Interviewer Yes. Let's talk about the product now. How will you define it?
Candidate Talked about the bank's perspective - how will the bank generate profit
from this and how can that be used to define the product.
Interviewer No, no. I want something much simpler.
Candidate (After 10 seconds) The minimum amount and minimum duration for the
investment.
Interviewer Yes. Exactly.

Candidate Sure, now we can discuss about how the scheme will work end-to-end in
terms of the process and the bank's profits
Interviewer No, let's close the case here.
Candidate Sure
Interviewer You've done well. The feedback from your previous interview is also
good. I'm happy to offer you the internship. Welcome to McKinsey
Candidate Thank you. Thanks a lot!
DOs and Don'ts/ 1) Keep calm and take cues from the interviewer. They've a solution in
Important Tips mind will guide you towards it.
2) Prepare well for personals as well. You'll be asked questions around
them sooner or later.
3) Get a brief idea about all sectors - it'll come handy during the
interviews. You can give a lot of insights about the industry.
4) Practice cases without pen and paper as well. It'll help you be
structured without noting down things.
5) Interviews consist of unconventional cases mostly. Don't panic, just
approach them using first principles. Try to keep the structure MECE up
to at least Level-3. You'll ace it. All the best!

Profile Information
Name Saurabh Laddha
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Rajat Gupta
Undergraduate IIT Madras
College
Firm NA
Sector NA
Round - 1 GTM Strategy Case
Interviewer Why don’t you introduce yourself?
Candidate Gave well-prepared answer
Interviewer Why don’t you talk about something not on your CV?
Candidate Mentioned one of my failures which later became a stepping stone to an
achievement
Interviewer Asked about my summer internship and key takeaways
Candidate Mentioned how I approached the problems faced and came up with
solutions
Interviewer Asked about a VC intern I did in the lockdown
Candidate Mentioned about the work in sourcing, valuation and key takeaways from
the experience
Interviewer Given your stint in VC, why consulting? Why not IB or PE/VC?
Interviewer That’s a prepared answer.
Candidate Smiled in agreement
Interviewer A good one, nonetheless. Shows the effort you put. So, let’s get started
on the case. Your client is a hovercraft manufacturing company that
wants to start a to-and-fro ferry service from Nariman Point to BKC in
Bombay. They want you to help them with the GTM strategy.
Candidate Asked about the hovercraft and its features, company’s business model
and competitors.
Interviewer The Hovercraft works on diesel and has a capacity of 100 people. It has
inbuilt AC and takes 20 min for one ride. The company is a pioneer in this
business and is willing to operate at least 70% occupancy. There are 2
major competitors – train and AC taxi that take 45 and 90 min and charge
₹45 and ₹500 respectively.
Candidate Alright. What is the price that the company is looking to charge per
person per ride?
Interviewer They’d like you to help out with that too.

Candidate Sure. Apart from pricing, market sizing and operational issues based on
which we can decide whether or not to go ahead, is there anything else
our client is looking for?
Interviewer No, that’s about it. Why don’t you start with the pricing?
Candidate Okay. So, we have 3 types of pricing – Cost, Competitor and Value based.
Since the product seems novel, I’d like to start with Cost based and use it
as a minimum threshold after which I can shift to Value based to
determine the upper cap. At the end, I’ll compare it with competitors to
check economic feasibility.
Interviewer Sounds good. So, based on fuel cost and driver’s salary, it costs about
₹950 per person per ride to the company.
Candidate Okay. In terms of value given to the customer, it is mainly the time saved
and the comfort in the journey vis-à-vis the other commutation options.
Given that the cost itself far exceeds the price of the most expensive
option, we can only conclude that we would need to charge north of
₹950. Is there any specific profit margin our client is looking at?
Interviewer Not exactly. Why don’t you start with the market sizing?
Candidate Sure. Our target customers are white collar job employees working in
BKC. Since they would be commuting to work for about 20 days a month,
they would spend approximately ₹19000 on travel. Most of them would
be unwilling to spend more than 5% of their salary on work commutation
so they would be earning more than ₹4 lakhs a month. The number of
these working professionals would be really small. Hence, I’d recommend
the client not to go ahead with the business.
Interviewer Okay. This is from unit economics. What about operational issues?
Candidate All of our target customers may not reside near Nariman Point so that
would mean they’d need to take a taxi/cab to the ferry point. They might
also need a taxi/cab from the drop point to their office buildings. If the
taxi/cab has high waiting time, it defeats the purpose of using the ferry
service as they’d still take similar time to reach their office/home. Getting
license permit from the government might be an issue. Moreover, given
the violent rains in Mumbai, it would be tough to operate in Monsoon.
Interviewer Alright. We can close the case here. So, let’s get back to personals now.
What are your strengths?
Interviewer Okay. What are some things you need to work upon?
Candidate Gave well-prepared answer about my weaknesses and my effort towards
improving them
Interviewer How will you ensure that these don’t prove to be a hindrance while
working in teams?
Candidate Talked about my high self-monitoring ability and mentioned an example
of working in teams
Interviewer Okay. What would your friends talk about you, specifically your
character?
Candidate Talked about my passionate nature, my courage to call spade a spade and
ability to go out of my way to help out my juniors. Substantiated each
trait with an example.

Interviewer Alright. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked a couple of previously prepared questions and another one about
his practice areas mentioned by him in his introduction.
DOs and Don'ts/ 1) Prepare your personals well, especially for McKinsey.
Important Tips 2) Prepare at least 2 questions to ask the interviewer and pick up some
interesting stuff to ask about from his introduction.
3) The cases on the D-Day will be somewhat smaller, sped up by the
interviewer and would require you to jump from one point to another.
Make sure you clarify anything that seems unclear.

Profile Information
Name Shreyaansh Gupta
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Prasad (Partner), Kunwar (Partner)
Undergraduate IIT Kanpur
College
Branch Mathematics & Scientific Computing (BS)
Firm NA
Sector NA
Interviewer Gave a brief introduction about himself and asked me to do the same.
Candidate Gave a well-prepared answer
Interviewer Asked about differences between online poker and offline (had
mentioned poker as a hobby)
Candidate Shared about my experience of offline poker in tournaments & with
friends and how my method of playing online poker has changed.
Interviewer What was the biggest challenge or setback you faced in life (academic,
personal, or professional)?
Candidate Gave a well-prepared answer
Interviewer Okay let’s start with a case. The client is a Road Construction company
that has to bid for the Delhi-Jaipur Roadway construction project given by
the Govt. How would you recommend the bid price for this project?
Candidate Asked some preliminary questions about the project, bidding process,
company’s current capabilities, and the competitors involved.
Interviewer 5-6 competitors but not significant for your analysis. He suggested just
look into the project and follow the build-operate-transfer model.
Candidate To set the bid price, divided the costs for the entire project into 3
headers: Construction costs, operating costs of collecting tolls, and then
finally the legal / transfer costs that may be incurred. Proposed to look
into the costs structure individually to figure out the bid price.
Interviewer Asked me to look into my entire thought process and suggest something I
might have missed out.
(Was not happy with my approach and I got the hint to shift towards the
Revenue component)
Candidate Proposed a Revenue structure as No. of Vehicles per day* Poll amount for
the next 10-15 years for which we will be operating on the
highway. Also suggested advertising as another source of revenue for the
client. Told about the increase in vehicle numbers and asked should I get
into the numbers for the same.
Interviewer Asked me what type of vehicles would be used on the new highways and
told me to focus on the price that we could charge for the tolls.

Candidate Suggested that private vehicles might look for faster routes and we
consider the time saved in order to charge them accordingly.
Interviewer Told me to look only into commercial vehicles and think of how to price
the toll for only them.
Candidate Initially asked about the current road conditions for the Old road and
then suggested 2 ways the commercial vehicles would benefit: Fuel
efficiency & Time Saved, both of which could be priced.
Interviewer Gave the data for the fuel efficiencies for both routes and the toll cap for
Rs 250 set by Govt.
Candidate Based on the numbers provided (fuel efficiency per route and total
distance), costs saved were more than Rs 1000 just through fuel
efficiencies, and factoring in the time saved costs to increase the number
of deliveries, a commercial vehicle would be easily saving more than
₹1000+ per trip so gave my final recommendation to charge complete
₹250 limit set up by the Government.
Interviewer Closed the case there and asked whether I had any questions for him.
Candidate Asked a prepared question
Round - 2 Structure testing
Interviewer Due to shortage of time, let us directly start the case.
Candidate Sure
Interviewer Gave a huge case statement which has been summarized as follows: X is
an African country that is suffering from the infectious disease of the
Zubida virus. It affects children under 5 leading to muscular paralysis etc.
etc. It is a water-borne disease and due to unsanitary conditions in the
country is still prevalent due to sewage drinking water. Globally progress
has been made and a vaccine exists but is currently not present in the
country. Only 5 countries remain that suffer from this disease and the
rest of the world has recovered from this virus. The vaccine doesn’t give
full immunity. The vaccine has to be administered orally (5 doses for a
month) and has to be stored between 4-8 degrees Celsius. You are
meeting with the Ministry of Health tomorrow so what are the questions
that you would ask them and how would give any recommendations to
them in order to reduce the number of cases to 0 as soon as possible.
Candidate Started asking few questions regarding virus, history etc.
Interviewer (cut me off in between) I am only testing your structure so you should
just propose your structure based on the information provided.

Candidate (Proposed the entire structure in a monologue) Divided the entire
structure into 3 broad components:
1) Current Infrastructure and capabilities: Discussed current access to
vaccines, storage facilities, global relations with countries/ companies
producing these vaccines, govt’s current response (treatment/ isolation/
hot zones) against the number of cases, and steps it has taken towards
sanitation
2) Operations: Divided into Short-Term and Long-term
In the short-term, mentioned how to bring awareness among people (if
not yet achieved) and then methods to bring vaccines & medical teams to
handle their distribution and storage and how to schedule with other
vaccines.
For Long-term, mentioned about long-period projects to bring changes in
cleanliness systems, drainage facilities, sewage treatment that were
currently present to prevent any future outbreak.
3) Financial constraints: Discussed current financial capital and how loans
could be taken from foreign countries, banks to fund the operations.
Interviewer (was happy with the structure & asked 1-2 follow-up questions). Let's
close the case here and said Welcome to McKinsey.
DOs and Don'ts/ 1) I made a huge blunder during the first few minutes but was able to
Important Tips improve as the case went on. So, stay motivated and focused even if you
have committed a huge mistake.
2) Ask for few data-points/ numbers if you don't see any further direction
towards the analysis or structure you have proposed. The partner may be
holding onto some data values that he wants to provide but you taking
the first initiative always helps.

Profile Information
Name Tanya Agarwal
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies
College
Branch Finance
Firm NA
Sector NA
Round - 1 Growth, Profitability Case
Interviewer Gave his introduction and asked for mine
Candidate Gave already prepared answer
Interviewer Asked multiple personal questions: Tell me about yourself, why did you
choose to go for an MBA, Why IIM Calcutta, one time you initiated
something that faced a lot of resistance, one time you convinced people
for a crazy idea, what are 3 things you don't like about McKinsey, Why
McKinsey?
Candidate Gave the answers
Interviewer (Case) A car company in India has seen a slowdown in revenue growth. Its
top line has been growing at a 5% CAGR compared to industry's growth
of 10% CAGR. We are meeting the promoter of the company and we
need to think of the possibilities to increase their revenue in order to
discuss the same with him
Candidate Started with a few clarifying questions and laid out a basic structure.
Talked about increasing revenue in existing and new markets and gave
multiple strategies
Interviewer How can we increase revenue in India (Existing market)?
Candidate Made a new structure and explained newer strategies
Interviewer What are the factors you will consider while expanding in India
Candidate Explained the whole process of analysing the opportunity
Interviewer Said that sounded good and gave another case. Asked me to just talk
about the structure the way I did in the previous example. (Case) A
pharma company has been growing rapidly in terms of its topline but its
profitability has been decreasing since the last two years. As a consultant,
what would you do about it?
Candidate Again, started with a few clarifying questions and laid out a basic
structure. Explained how the situation meant that the costs were
increasing at a greater rate than revenues
Interviewer Asked some questions on accountancy (profitability, topline, bottomline
and a few more)

Candidate Answered and moved forward to solving the case. Laid down the value
chain to figure out where the costs could have gone up
Interviewer Interrupted in between and asked to think more creatively
Candidate Started looking at the product cycle, R&D and any changes in the product
mix
Interviewer Said why I was looking at these factors
Candidate Explained the nature of a pharmaceutical business
Interviewer Was satisfied. Asked me to continue on the product mix
Candidate Started looking at the existing and new products that the company was
selling
Interviewer Interrupted in between and said we should close the case now; we are
not going ahead. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked about his experience in different designations he held throughout
his McKinsey career and why he chose Automobile as a sector when he
became a partner
Interviewer Answered and asked me to wait in the lounge
DOs and Don'ts/ Stay confident, be honest, have a good reasoning behind everything you
Important Tips say and take proper care of MECE structures. The buddy program is very
helpful, use it to its fullest

BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP
BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP

Profile Information
Name Akash Agarwal
Interviewing firm BCG
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate St. Xavier's College, Kolkata
College
Branch B.Com (Honours), CA, CS
Firm Price Waterhouse & Co LLP
Sector Indirect Tax Consultant
Round - 1 Profitability/ Unconventional Case
Interviewer Hi Akash, how are you?
Candidate Good Morning Mam, I am fine.
Interviewer (Introduced herself). Let us also know about you
Candidate Gave an introduction about myself covering my academics, work
experience, interest areas and my journey at IIMC
Interviewer Great to hear that. Let us move to the case
Candidate Sure mam
Interviewer Your client is an aluminium manufacturer and is the only one in the
country to own captive mines. The CEO of the Company during one of its
meetings with their consultant was pondering on whether there is any
scope of improvement of their profitability. You are one of the
consultants present in the meeting. You need to advice the client for the
same.
Candidate Confirmed the problem statement. Then requested for some time to
come up with preliminary questions
Interviewer Sure, please take your time
Candidate (after taking 1 minute approx.) So, I would like to ask few clarificatory
questions to understand the case better. The questions would be
primarily focused on four aspects - issue, product, company and market
Candidate Starting with issue related questions, is our objective in the instant case is
just to increase profitability or any other point is to be kept in mind. Are
there any constraints which I should take care of
Interviewer The objective is just to find scope for increase of profitability. One of the
factors which should be kept in mind is that the Company does not want
to spend substantial cost for this purpose and the objective should be
achieved in a short period.
Candidate Okay. Now I would also like to know a bit about the product. In what
forms, do we sell our products? What is the key customer segment to
which our company caters?

Interviewer We sell aluminium in the form of rolls and sheets. The key customer
segment to which the Company caters are transmission lines (70%
business), consumer goods (20%) and automobiles (10%).
Candidate Are the profitability in case of all customer segments similar for the
Company?
Interviewer The company has the highest profitability from automobile sector,
followed by consumer goods segment and transmission lines segment in
the said order
Candidate About the company, is the company a large player in the market? How is
the geographical spread of the company? How is the distribution process
designed to let the goods reach the final customers
Interviewer The company is the largest aluminium manufacturer in the country,
owning a market share of roughly 30%. It is the only company to have its
own captive mines. As far as distribution chain is concerned, the products
of the company are sold in bulk to the distributors, who then sell it off in
small quantities to various small modifiers. These modifiers purchase
goods from distributors depending upon the specific requirements of the
customers, shape and blend the aluminium sheets and rolls as per the
specific requirements of the customers and then sell it to the end
customers.
Candidate Okay, that's insightful. What about the market scenario? Is the market
competitive? Are there any foreign players as well?
Interviewer The market is quite competitive with around 4-5 domestic players and
also few international players. The same distributors are responsible for
selling the goods of all the players.
Candidate Great. That gives me a rough idea about the case. May I take few minutes
to quickly gather all the pointers, analyse and come up with a structure to
approach the case.
Interviewer Sure. Go Ahead.
Candidate (After around 1 min, ensuring that is there is no complete silence in
between and explained him the structure of the case) So as I see the
case, the profitability, which happens to be a function of (revenue-cost)
per unit, can be increased only by reducing the cost per unit of the
product or increasing the revenue per unit keeping cost constant. Would
you like me to take a specific path for my analysis?
Interviewer Sure, let us look into the revenue side first.
Candidate Sure. Revenue per unit can be increased by increasing the price per unit
or making necessary changes to the supply chain for reducing the cost
across the supply chain. Any specific area which you would like me to
focus upon.
Interviewer Let us first look into the pricing part first. Is there something which we
can we do there?
Candidate Okay. Since the market is competitive, I believe that we cannot increase
the price because that would lead to heavy decrease in demand. Hence,
that may not be advisable. Am I correct in making this assumption?
Interviewer Yes. Is there any other way we can increase the profitability through the
pricing route?

Candidate Yes Sir. I understand that the automobile segment is giving us the highest
profit margin although its contribution to product mix is least. We can
look for arenas to increase the proportion of supply to automobile
customers in our current product mix. This would lead to increase in
average profitability of the company since the average profit margin
would increase.
Interviewer Great. This is a good suggestion. That can be implemented. Any
improvement measures which you may suggest on the cost side?
Candidate Sure sir. For this, I would like to go through the supply chain of the entire
Company starting from procurement of raw material till supply to the
final customers and look for areas of improvement there. Would you like
me to take this approach?
Candidate As far as material procurement is concerned, since we are getting the
ores from our own captive mines, I assume that we are already saving on
the raw material procurement front. This would be followed by inbound
transportation, storage of raw materials, aluminium manufacturing
process, storage of final goods, outbound logistics, distribution process
and after sales services. Is there any specific area which you would like
me to focus upon or should I discuss about each of these steps?
Interviewer Please look into the distribution channel for savings. The current
distribution channel was already briefed to you. In the same, the
importance of distributors is that they are very well connected to the
large number of modifiers spread across the country. Further they also
offer huge credits to the modifiers who are small enough to bear the cost
of products until the revenue is received from the final customers
Candidate Is the profit margin of distributors and modifiers intact or it can be
negotiated?
Interviewer The current industry situation gives power to the distributors and
modifiers to keep their profit margin intact because the market of
manufacturers is very competitive.
Candidate So, I understand that the profit margin across the distribution chain
cannot be reduced. Further, the selling price cannot be increased as well
since the market is competitive. Furthermore, since the increase in
profitability has to come from distribution chain only, the only way to
increase profitability is to remove one of the players from the distribution
chain.
Now, modifiers play an important role in the distribution chain because
they are amending the products as per the specific requirements of the
customers. Taking that process to ourself would call for huge capital
investment. Therefore, we may look into removing the distributors from
the supply chain. Am I right in assuming that?
Interviewer How do you deal with the importance of the distributors?

Candidate So, the distributors are important in the supply chain for two reasons:
1) Financing to the modifiers, and
2) Connect with the widely spread modifiers.
We have only one office and hence connecting with these modifiers
directly individually might be difficult. The only alternative left to this is to
develop an online portal where we would be listing the goods directly for
the access of the modifiers so that they can directly place their orders to
the Company. Further, for the financing part, we may get into connect
with financial institutions who may be ready to provide loans to these
modifiers under the credit guarantee of the Company. With this, the
importance of the distributors would end and the profit margin earned
can be shared between the modifiers and the Company.
Interviewer That’s a great idea. This would also not entail huge cost and can be
implemented in a very short time. Can you quickly summarize the case?
Candidate Summarized the case
Interviewer Thank you. It was great solving the case. Any questions from your side?
Candidate Asked about her experience at BCG till date and various industries which
she has worked for.
DOs and Don’t panic. Keep your calm. Follow the structure even if you know the
Don'ts/Important Tips answer. Keep your preliminary questions structured and bucketed.

Profile Information
Name Aman Gupta
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Vishal Jalan (Principal) and Vikash Jain (Managing Director and Partner)
Undergraduate IIT Roorkee
College
Branch Mechanical Engineering
Firm American Express
Sector Analytics, Data Science
Interviewer Good morning Aman, how are you doing?
Candidate I'm doing good sir.
Interviewer Don't call me sir, call me Vishal
Candidate Sure sir, sorry, Vishal!
Interviewer Tell me about yourself
Candidate Gave prepared answer
Interviewer So, you worked in Gurgaon (American Express), how did you like the city?
Candidate It was a mixed experience. On one hand, Gurgaon has some of the best
facilities in terms of shopping, entertainment and restaurants across
India. On the other hand, the city is haphazardly developed with little
public infrastructure, with development mostly privatized. There's a great
room for improvement in public transport and civic utilities
Interviewer Let's do a case. Our client is a handset manufacturer that makes
smartphones. In India, digital businesses like Flipkart, Zomato etc are
getting big. Our client thinks that people nowadays buy phones more for
such services and less for the phone itself. Few years down the line, they
think that this might be a threat to them. So, I need you to determine, is
there a threat? If it is, what should they do about it?
Candidate (Reiterated the problem to be safe). I'd like to first ask a few clarifying
questions. Firstly, how exactly is the client defining the threat?
Interviewer The client thinks that such businesses offer highly differentiated value
propositions. Their customer retention and profitability might get hurt
Candidate Asked clarification on product lines, value chains customers, geographies
Interviewer They just manufacture smartphones of all ranges, from basic to premium,
they also make their own OS. They're an Indian player
Candidate (Taking some time to structure my thoughts) Differentiated products are
possible when there's data for each customer's usage. As we make our
own OS, I suppose we should have the necessary user data. Will it be fair
to think so?
Interviewer Yes
Candidate Also, we'd need Big Data analytics, ML, AI and skilled workforce to
process and build use cases from such data, can I assume we have these?

Interviewer Yes, also, let's just say the threat is there. What to do about it?
Candidate So, when I look at my own phone, Mi, there are a lot of inbuilt apps
provided by the manufacturer, like Mi Fit, Mi store, Mi pay etc. If we
perceive a threat from such digital businesses, I believe we should enter
these as well, considering we have the capability to do so. Can I take
some time to structure the best way this can be done?
Interviewer Sure
Candidate (Came up with a growth structure with new products or
acquiring/merging with players, presented the structure). I think of some
potential sectors where new products can be launched, like e-commerce,
food, fitness
Interviewer Can you think of more?
Candidate Grocery, payments
Interviewer So, grocery goes under food and fitness is niche, evaluate among e-
commerce, food, payments. Also, what data do you need from me to
analyse these?
Candidate Market size and growth would be crucial, along with fit with capability
Interviewer Let's say we have the capabilities. Now take e-commerce to be $40B and
10% growth, food to be $10B and higher growth. Also, let’s say payments
is also big with decent growth. How do you evaluate payments space?
Candidate In payments, the issue would be of low margin, as the cut on each
transaction is just 1-2%.
Interviewer But aren't you confusing margins with revenue?
Candidate Actually, what I meant was that along with small cuts, there's a high cost
of merchant acquisition as there are so many across the nation. Also, for
other sectors we should also look into the hurdles like competition,
threat of new entrants.
Interviewer That's ok, its 8:30 now, we can close the case
Candidate Do you want me to summarize the case?
Interviewer No, thank you. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Yes, I'd like to know more about pro-bono consulting and what BCG is
doing in the space
Interviewer Gave details
Candidate Thank you Vishal
Interviewer Thank you Aman, hope to see you again!
Candidate Left breakout room, recruiting team in main meeting asked me to go back
and wait. Waited 10 minutes, called for help. Was told that I'd be having
my MDP round next but MDPs are occupied at the moment. Waited for
another 20 minutes
Interviewer Hello Aman, how are you doing? Are you at Joka?
Candidate Good morning Vikash, I'm doing good. No not yet, I'm at my hometown. I
suppose you're a Jokar?
Interviewer Yes yes…so sell yourself to BCG
Candidate Gave a mix of why consult + tell me about yourself
Interviewer (goes through my CV). So, you climbed Fuji?! Did you see the sunrise?

Candidate Yes, during my summer internship (during undergrad). We purposefully
climbed overnight so as to witness it
Interviewer When in Japan, everyone must do it. Blogging and Filmmaking I see?!
Candidate Yes, I love to follow and write on geopolitics and defence (related it with
my Civil Services prep experience and aim of joining Indian Foreign
Service back then)
Interviewer Great, so US vs China, give me 3 points
Candidate Any particular kind of points which you'd like to know?
Interviewer No, it’s totally up to you
Candidate So, I'd analyse on Political, Economic and Technological. On the political
and military front, US has the strategy of pivot to Asia and has renamed
Asia-Pacific as Indo-Pacific. It is trying to contain China through regional
allies like the Quad grouping, recently Malabar exercise happened. China
has greatly enhanced its military with investments in 5G AI and is a
leading arms exporter now
Interviewer Do they have their own strong capabilities or are they still reverse
engineering?
Candidate They are no longer reverse engineering, which gave them a good
background by copying Soviet Blueprints back in 60s. But now, their
hardware surpasses Russia and they have a thriving military industrial
complex of their own now
Interviewer What about the rest dimensions?
Candidate On the economic front, there was trade war. We'd have to see the
election outcome. With the Biden administration the trade tensions
should go down a bit. On the technological front, China is investing
heavily in 5G and AI. We had the Huawei controversy and detention of
Meng Wanzhou. So, there's competition on all fronts
Interviewer Do you like numbers?
Candidate I'd say from my CAT score that verbal ability is my strongest suit, having
secured 99.99%ile, but as an engineer, I can't ignore numbers
Interviewer Ok, so our client is a telecom player. Imagine this to be an older time with
a 10-player market in India. The top 3 players make money, 4th one
barely breaks even and after that, condition is worse. Our client is the 6th
or 7th player. The chairman of the business has come up with these
numbers (shows a 3*5 grid). Take down these and recommend what
should I do about the business. First, do some crunching and tell me, is
the company healthy?
Candidate (took some time to decipher the numbers, it had 3 business lines in rows
i.e., fixed line, mobile and B2B communication and had 5 columns i.e.
share of revenue, market growth, company growth, EBITDA percentages
and market share ranks) Is the EBITDA percentage calculated over sales?
Interviewer Yes, also, let’s say sales are Rs 10000 crores
Candidate (Multiplied share of revenue for each business line with EBITDA to get
total EBITDA which came out to be positive). By EBITDA of 1050 crore,
company looks healthy.
Interviewer What next?
Candidate I'd need the information on Interest expenses

Interviewer So, the company has a total debt of 20000 crore. Figure it out
Candidate Do we have the interest rate?
Interviewer Why don't you tell me an appropriate one?
Candidate I'd say that this is a 10-year-old scenario, when India's economy was
booming at 10% GDP growth rate. So, I'd assume interest rates to be
close to the same
Interviewer Very good assumption, take it to be 10% then
Candidate In that case, our earnings go into negative i.e., loss of 950 crores
Interviewer What next?
Candidate I'd need information on depreciation/amortization and tax expenses
Interviewer Depreciation is non cash. Why would I pay tax if there are losses?! Also,
how do you think our cash flows might compare with others? (Gave me
numbers of EBITDA and revenue for larger players)
Candidate (Realized my goof up and said sorry!) As the bigger players have higher
EBITDA, I'd expect them to have higher cash flows.
Interviewer What's your hypothesis behind bigger players having higher cash flows?
What differentiates a capital-intensive industry from others?
Candidate (Thinking)…
Interviewer If 2 players, big and small share a tower, what's happening?
Candidate (Economies of scale clicked in brain! Eureka!) Economies of scale would
kick in, as the bigger player has higher customers, the cost of operating
the tower would be the same as the smaller player. So, margins would be
higher for the bigger player.
Interviewer Great. So now I'm only burning cash. How do I keep my busines going?
Candidate I can raise Debt or Equity
Interviewer I already have 20000 crore liability, why would I get more loans. Also, if
the future profitability is poor, why would anyone buy my shares? Now
give me 3 options on what to do with the business
Candidate (Took a while to structure) There are three options: Rationalization (exit
some business lines and focus on profitable ones), Monetization of Assets
and Divestment
Interviewer Evaluate each of these and give me your rank ordering
Candidate (went to the numbers grid) I'd first put rationalization, as we have a high
growth rate in B2B market and are among top 3. So, it can be focused
upon. Landline and Mobility can be exited due to negative growth and
poor market leadership respectively. Then, 2nd I'd think of asset
monetization, we might have towers etc for sale, lastly, divestment and
exit from market if none of these works out.
Interviewer So, the problem is, my B2B business depends on these assets. Also, many
of these towers are shared among players.
Candidate In that case, there might be regions where I'm the market leader and
tower sharing isn't there, with only my presence.
Interviewer Suppose that's not the case, then?
Candidate My rank ordering will remain the same.
Interviewer Is putting divestment at the last an emotive answer?

Candidate No, as I'd try to exit the business only after exhausting all other options. I
may not know the potential gain of the alternative
Interviewer In such cases, often it’s difficult for the founders to make a rational
choice and there are no right answers. Anyways, thanks Aman
Candidate Can I ask a question?
Candidate Why are consulting firms structured as partnerships?
Interviewer Gave answer on line of needed autonomy to cater to business, region
specific needs etc
Candidate Thank you, that was insightful. Stayed in breakout for another minute
and a recruiting guy comes up. Asks how was it. I said could have done
better. He asked why, didn't it go well? I said there's always room for
improvement. He then said we are raising you an offer and congratulated
me!
DOs and Don'ts/ DOs: Never lose confidence even if you get something totally out of the
Important Tips blue. Even if no framework seems to fit, as is the case often with
unconventional cases, sound business logic and staying confident will
help you sail through, which I guess was the case with me. Also, do
practice number heavy cases.
Don'ts: Never stick to just conventional cases during practice, solve at
least 10-15 unconventional ones during mock interviews, either with
MBA2s or your buddies. Even if you have MBB shortlists, never ignore
other consult buddies as they'd offer better practice cases than any
MBA2 or MBA1. MasterCard buddy gave me number heavy cases which
was helpful in this interview. Do not get complacent after getting a hotlist
or spoil relations with any other firm. Make sure you've a good 2nd slot
offered by as many firms as possible.

Profile Information
Name Chinnala Nishith
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer NA
Undergraduate IIT BHU
College
Branch Electrical
Firm Flipkart
Sector Software Development
Round - 1 Unconventional (Demand Supply Analysis) Case
Interviewer You have a great profile man. Let’s dive into the case quickly. Your Client
is Steel Manufacturer and has huge capital. He requires your advice to
decide on where to invest
Candidate Asked some brief question in order to understand the client better which
revolved around the industry understanding, competitors and client
products
Interviewer Answered all the questions. Figure out the products/industries where
steel is being used
Candidate Came up with a list of 5 potential industries. Give me 1min to figure out
the structure
Interviewer Ya go ahead
Candidate Came up with the standard growth structure and started explaining the
stance
Interviewer (He was listening but he was interested only in the increase in the
capacity part)
Candidate I picked up the capacity improvement part.
Interviewer (Then he asked can you estimate the potential target market share
Candidate Gave the idea of estimating it based on the industries market growth rate
and the part of the market share that is currently occupied by imports
Interviewer Can you calculate the current growth rate of the industry
Candidate Came up with potential growth rate for the 5 products/industries that
use steel and took the average growth rate of the 5 industries
Interviewer Oh, you took the average? Do you want to rethink
Candidate Came up with idea of weighted average.
Interviewer Yes Nishith, lets end the case here. Do you have any questions
Candidate Asked some questions related to steel industry & consulting
Interviewer All the Best. Someone will be in with the results.
Interviewer Your Client is a toffee manufacturer and is looking to expand. You need to
advise him on how to go about it

Candidate Started with basic questions to understand the client and the industry,
pricing of the product, current geography of operation
Interviewer Gave details related to the same and provided the detailed numbers
related to the current operations in East and North India; Gave the details
of current players in West and South India
Candidate Calculated the expected Cashflows (NPV) by expanding in the current
business in East and North and Expansion into new geographies that is
north and south
Interviewer We are running out of time. Someone will be here soon for further steps.
All the best
Round - 3 Profitability Case
Interviewer Hi, I just wanted to check the structure of the case and no calculation and
solution. Take your time and come up with the good structure.
Candidate Sure sir
Interviewer Your Client is a Steel tubes manufacturer and facing a decline in the
profit. You need to analyse the root cause for the same.
Candidate Came up with the standard profitability structure.
Interviewer Okay Nishith. All the best someone will be in the room with the results.
DOs and Don'ts/ The most tip would be confident and show enthusiasm to the solve the
Important Tips case. Other than that, just practice case. Having company overview of
various sectors can help you in a lot of ways. Don’t jump to conclusions
and practice a good mix of both qualitative and quantitative cases. That
will be really helpful.

Profile Information
Name Priyanka Choudhary
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Round 1: Principal and Round 2: Anirudh Tara (Managing Director &
Partner)
Undergraduate NIT Rourkela
College
Firm EXL Service
Sector Analytics
Interviewer Hi Priyanka. How are you?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer So, let’s do a case. Your client is an airline catering company and they
provide food packets to the flights. They have a very simple setup in the
airport itself with a kitchen, where they cook and they have 30 trucks to
supply the food packets to the flight. Their ingredient cost per packet is
15% higher than the competitors. Why?
Candidate (Asked for a minute to come up with some preliminary questions) What
dishes are served in each packet by the client and their competitor?
Interviewer Let’s assume that they are serving only one type of dish and that is
cooked rice. The competitor and the client both are serving at the same
airport
Candidate Where on the value chain does our client lie?
Interviewer We buy from the supplier, cook it and then send it to the flights
Candidate Okay. So, I would want to take this up by looking at the whole process
from the point we buy the rice to the point where it is delivered on the
flight and then benchmark it against our competitors. I will write down all
the intermediate steps. (Takes a minute)
Starting from supplier, are the suppliers different for our client and our
competitors?
Interviewer No. We buy from a single supplier. It is regulated and there is a rate card.
Candidate Next, we transport the rice to the airport and bring it to the kitchen.
Interviewer There is a single path between supplier and the kitchen. Everyone follows
the same. So, there is no difference in cost here.
Candidate I assume that we store the rice at some place before cooking it. There are
costs incurred here as well.
Interviewer How can it differ for the client and the competitor?
Candidate There can be reasons like per square feet we store less rice and hence
warehouse cost per kg rice is more for us. There can be pilferage or rice
getting bad due to moisture or rodents in the warehouse.

Interviewer Well, rice does not go bad due to moisture. But no, there is no such cost
for us.
Candidate Very well. Then we come to the part where we take the rice from the
store to the kitchen.
Interviewer Ignore the fuel costs and the labour cost. Concentrate only on the
ingredient cost.
Candidate Okay. So, talking about the price of rice, since everyone is buying from
the same supplier there cannot be any difference there. Can I have a
minute to list down a few factors that affect the price of rice we serve
Interviewer Sure!
Candidate There are three factors that I can think of – one, the quality of rice that
we use might be different
Interviewer Yes, that explains 5% of the additional costs. We use a grade higher
Candidate Right! The second factor is the price per unit, which we ascertained gives
5% difference and the third is the quantity of rice that we provide as
compared to our competitors
Interviewer Yes. That infect is the issue. We provide 10% more rice per packet. Now
let’s say that our client has business in other airports as well where there
are 150 flights a day, and one truck serves 1 flight. It takes half an hour
for the to and fro journey by the truck. Assume that loading and
unloading take zero time. Here, our client is able to serve only 85% of the
flights, while in the previous airport he was able to meet 100% of the
demand.
Candidate (Takes a minute to list factors) There are three factors that can affect the
efficiency of our client. One, the route that it takes is jammed due to
other vehicles. Two, the trucks are not available and frequently undergo
maintenance. Three, the drivers or loaders/ unloaders are not available
all the time.
Interviewer The routes are free and are fixed. The trucks don’t undergo maintenance
and the drivers are available all the time. Ca you calculate how many
flights we can serve.
Candidate Sure. We have 30 trucks and it takes half an hour for one serve. So in one
hour, one truck serves 2 flights. Therefore, in an hour we can serve 60
flights.
Interviewer And there are 150 flights/day
Candidate Yes. But what if all the flights leave within a few hours. If there are more
than 60 flights taking off in an hour maybe because there are many
runways, then we shall not be able to deliver to all those flights.
Interviewer Let’s say that is the issue. How do we solve this?
Candidate There are three ways. We can increase the number of trucks or we can
increase the quantity per truck so that one truck can serve more than one
flight or reduce the time taken to serve a flight.
Interviewer How can you reduce the time taken?
Candidate Time is dependent on speed and distance. Speed would be regulated by
the airport authority, so we cannot change it. Therefore, we should look
at the distance. If food is delivered from point A to point B, we need to
change either or both of them.

Interviewer Can you suggest how?
Candidate We can deliver the food packets midway, maybe before the flights park
near the aerobridges. (Interviewer looked puzzled) I mean somewhere
between the hangars and the point where passengers board
Interviewer That cannot be done. (Candidate lost). Is there no other way to change
the two points?
Candidate Yes. There is. We can stock the packets at an intermediate location in the
non-peak hours. And then from there deliver to the flights so that time to
serve per flight is reduced and we can serve more flights per hour
Interviewer Alright. That’s the case. Do you have any questions?
Candidate Did you work in the airline industry? Is this a case related to it?
Interviewer (Smiling) No. It’s just a case that I saw elsewhere
Round - 2 Growth + Profitability Case
Interviewer Hi Priyanka. How are you? (Candidate answered) So tell me something
about yourself
Candidate (Gave the usual introduction of about a minute)
Interviewer Alright, let’s start with a case. Your client is a steel tube manufacturer.
They are the largest in the business. They have been in business for more
than 50 years and have a good brand name. They want to make more
money. There are no comparable peers in the market
Candidate Can you tell me what you mean when you say there are no comparable
peers? Is it a fragmented market with small or local competitors?
Interviewer Yes
Candidate (Asked for a minute) I would want to understand more about our client
and the market scenario. Can you tell me what product SKUs our client
manufactures?
Interviewer There are three kinds of tubes that our client manufactures – one is fluid,
used in plumbing, chemical industries and irrigation work. Second is Load
bearing tube that is used in construction. The third is automobile, which
is used in the body of 2 and 3-wheelers
Candidate What is the geography that our client serves? Is there international
presence as well?
Interviewer The serve Pan-India and do some opportunistic export as well
Candidate Where does our client lie on the value chain?
Interviewer We buy HR coils from Tata, JSW and do our own distribution and
retailing. We supply to other industries directly as well
Candidate Alright. We have presence in both B2B and B2C market. You mentioned
that our client is the largest in business. What is our market share and
what is the market share of our competitors?
Interviewer Our market share is around 25-30%. The nest competitor is 15% and then
5% and so on.
Candidate I am assuming that our client is growing with the market growth
Interviewer Yes. But for the last 10 years we have been making 2-3% profits and it
hasn’t changed much.
Candidate Alright. Does the client also have a timeline and a number for the growth
that he is looking for?

Interviewer No. We are still exploring what all ways are there
Candidate Right. So, I would start by dividing the problem into two. One is growth
with acquisition and the other is without acquisition. Since out client is
largest in the business and are earning profits, I am assuming that they
are financially stable and can afford to acquire. The second is growth
without acquisition, where we can look at growth in the existing business
or growth in the new market
Interviewer What are the factors that you would consider when going for an
acquisition?
Candidate I would look at four factors – Size of the acquired firm, own financial
condition, willingness of the acquired firm and integration between the 2
firms
Interviewer What would you get from acquisition?
Candidate More customers, possibility to lower price and hence increase demand
and cost integration leading to greater profits
Interviewer Okay. What are the ways to grow without acquisition?
Candidate We could look at existing business and increase either the number of
customers or increase the price. Or we can look at new businesses like
opening a plant in a new geography or introducing a new product
Interviewer We cannot increase the price; we are selling at a 15% premium.
Candidate If we can lower the price, can we snatch customers from our
competitors? Or is the business relationship based?
Interviewer We can take customers from the competitors
Candidate Then we can perhaps introduce a new product under a new brand name
of lesser quality that we can sell to our competitor’s customers
Interviewer What are the advantages of acquiring a player vs building own plant?
Candidate There are 4 differences – Labour, Machine, distribution and premium
product selling. We get labour machine and distribution when acquiring.
But if the integration is not proper, we might end up losing money
Interviewer Is there any other way to increase profitability?
Candidate Yes. We can look at the value chain and see where we can reduce costs.
(Drawing the value chain)
Interviewer How would you do it?
Candidate We can reduce costs of raw materials by changing suppliers or while their
transportation. Or we can cut costs at manufacturing.
Interviewer How do we lower transportation costs?
Candidate We can see the mode of transportation and the routes we undertake.
The costs can we written as, let's say, number of trucks multiplied by how
much the trucks are carrying in one go and the cost per truck and the
number of trips made by each truck. So, we can maybe increase the load
in one go
Interviewer Right. Since raw materials constitute 60% of our costs, let's concentrate
there.
Candidate Alright. We can change suppliers, or negotiate with existing ones. We can
buy in bulk to reduce cost. We can also pay our suppliers early to get
some discounts on the payment.

Interviewer What do you mean by discounts?
Candidate If we pay our suppliers, we can ask for some discounts because we are
supplying them the cash early
Interviewer Okay. Is there any other way?
Candidate Yes. We can also import raw materials if they are cheaper. One last thing
that I can think of is that we can trade the steel scrap that we generate
with our suppliers. This can lower their raw material costs as well and
hence we can get discounts
Interviewer Okay. Thank you. Do you have any questions?
Candidate No. Thank you
Interviewer You can go back to the main room.
DOs and Don'ts/ Don't lose your calm, be confident and smiling. That can take you a long
Important Tips way. Take hints from the interviewer. He/she will point you in the right
direction.

Profile Information
Name Rahul Manglik
Slot 10:00 AM
Interviewer Anirudh and Gaurav
Undergraduate IIT Bombay
College
Branch Mechanical
Firm NA
Sector NA
Interviewer Hi Rahul (while going through the resume)
Candidate Hey, how are you?
Interviewer Great, how many interviews have you had
Candidate Two
Interviewer And what did they ask
Candidate Multiple cases
Interviewer Ok so you should not worry about those now. This is a new interview.
Let’s do a case
Candidate Yes sure
Interviewer Your client is a steel tubes manufacturer who has been in the industry for
50+ years. He is in the organised sector while his other competitors are
all unorganised as all you need is a mill and you can make it. His current
margin is 2-3% he wants to improve it. We cannot compare it to
competition as we have no data
Candidate Repeated the question and asked for time for prelim questions. Asked
about why this sudden ask for increase in profit margin, SKUs, market
share, customers, Geography, number of plants, raw materials
Interviewer Generic answers to all, in SKUs,3 types Fluid(F), Structural(S) and
Automotive(A). F, S, A have 50, 30, 20 percent of share from our plant
Candidate Asked time to structure. Gave structure included internal as well as
growth options.
Interviewer Let’s look at the revenue part
Candidate Number x Average price, Average price would be dependent on product
mix. Gave the mathematic expression of profits
Interviewer Ok. So what all factors do we need to consider in this
Candidate Price of sale, cost of production, market share size, production limits
Interviewer Sure, so the contribution of F, S, A is 5000,4000 and 2000 respectively.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume a max production of 100 tons.
What would be your understanding with this data and what all more do
you need to take an informed decision
Candidate Could you explain contribution?

Interviewer Revenues - variable cost per ton
Candidate Based on this we should produce only F as it gives us max profit per ton.
However, we will need the market size and the max market share we can
capture, cost of capturing additional market share and any expansion we
can do and at what cost
Interviewer Ok so we have 25%, 40% and 10% market share in F, S, A. Will that
change your decision
Candidate So, in F we see the market size is 200 tons while we give 50 tons, we can
expand in this to increase margins
Interviewer Any other information you need
Candidate As I said, the cost of acquiring new market and the costs of changing our
production to just F
Interviewer Will Growth in the sectors of -10, +25, +10% affect your analysis
Candidate Yes, it will play a part. A high negative growth will make us not want to
enter the sector once the market size shrinks. Here a 10 % rate looks ok
as even at full capacity we will be able to serve for more than 10 years
Interviewer What are the risks in your strategy
Candidate Here, I made a lot of assumptions like we can capture the market when
we want, we can switch production from one to other at no cost, also
when the market for F comes down, we will be able to recapture the
market we had and also switch the tube types. New entrants will also
come in if we leave markets S and A.
Interviewer Great, Thank You
Candidate Thank You
Interviewer You did great, and will be having another interview. Please stay in this
breakout room
Candidate Sure, Thank you
Interviewer Hi Rahul
Candidate Hey, how are you?
Interviewer Great, could you quickly tell me a bit about yourself.
Candidate Gave the prepared answer.
Interviewer and why do you want to do consulting?
Candidate Had the answer ready.
Interviewer Ok, let’s do a case. The client is a bike manufacturer in India, Sri Lanka,
Nepal and Vietnam. He wants to enter South Africa. Tell me if he should
enter.
Candidate Repeated the question and asked for time for prelim questions. Asked
about why they want to enter, why South Africa specifically, value chain
position, type of bike, manufacturing plant, customer segment,
competitor in India and in SA.
Interviewer Company wants to increase profits, no reason for South Africa
specifically, value chain - manufactures and has distributer bases, plants
in India, 3 main competitors in SA 2 local and 1 India who have 50,30,20%
share respectively.

Candidate Ok I’ll take a moment here. So, I want to look at financial feasibility,
operational viability, legal aspects and if this looks like a good idea then
we can look at ways of entering the market
Interviewer Ok
Candidate I'll start with financial feasibility. For this we will need the market size and
the market share we can capture and the profits we can make on selling
these bikes
Interviewer Could you figure out the market size? The population is 26 crores, selling
price is 50k and 15% profits are there
Candidate Sure, we can look at market size as total sales/year x price x margin. For
sales per year, we can look at the total bikes in the market and the
turnover rate
Interviewer Right
Candidate For total bike in market, we can split it in Household and commercial. This
can be further divided in transporting goods and delivering food within
cities
Interviewer Anything else?
Candidate Took some time and gave a few answers
Interviewer Let’s look at a car, what will you add
Candidate For cars, we can have humans and goods, the variety of goods vary or you
can even attach a trailer at the back
Interviewer Right, so in Africa Bike Taxis are common, what will we need to consider
to enter the market
Candidate Use as taxis will be a bit different than private vehicles. The usage like
having more than 3 people might be common and we will have to ensure
the bike is capable of being used like this.
Interviewer Thank You, lets end the case here
Candidate Thank you
Interviewer Someone will convey the final decision here
DOs and Don'ts/ If the interview is online, do ask about the interviewer's name and a brief
Important Tips from the employees who are there in the common room. Generally,
interviewers want you to think quicker than the mocks where the
buddy/friend listens through your reasoning

Profile Information
Name Saachi Malik
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Principal and Partner
Undergraduate Hansraj College, University of Delhi
College
Branch B.Com.(Hons)
Firm NA
Sector NA
Round - 1 Guesstimate
Interviewer Introduced Himself. Asked me to do the same.
Candidate Told.
Interviewer Asked me about the small-scale charitable initiative I have co-founded.
Candidate Discussed about it.
Interviewer Let's move to the case. Axis Bank and Jet Airways are planning to launch a
credit card jointly in the Market. Estimate the Market Size for such a card.
Candidate Reiterated the Problem Statement. Asked some preliminary questions on
how the business model will work, the objective for launching such a
card, current cards in the market etc.
Interviewer Forget the numbers for now. Let's first focus on the structure and what
factors you would consider? What would your starting point be?
Candidate Said that a potential starting point could be to look at the total frequent
flyers who may potentially use such a card. A possible next step can be to
divide the total frequent flyers into current customers of Jet and other
airlines and then branch further on the basis of purpose of travelling
(Business/Leisure), Gender etc.
Interviewer That can be possible. But let's take a step back. How would you find the
total number of frequent flyers?
Candidate Said we could consider taking data from VISA/Mastercard as well as
payment gateways who possess the transaction data of customers and
then estimate this number.
Interviewer This may be possible. But we do not have any such data available and
Let's say we can't arrange it. How would you estimate the market size
then?
Candidate Said we can then go on considering the entire population and segment it
on the basis of income, region, occupation, age etc. to arrive at
percentage of population eligible for credit cards and who travel
frequently.
Interviewer Yes. That can be a way to go about it. Let's start estimating with numbers.
Candidate Ran through some numbers forming a structure on the basis of above
factors. Arrived at a potential market size for the credit card.
Interviewer That seems about right. Do you think it’s a fair market size for launching
the credit card?

Candidate Said that it seemed fair on the first glance. To know better we can see the
average expenditure per card to estimate our revenue and weigh it
against general costs as well as special privileges such as lounge access on
airports etc.
Interviewer That would be all Saachi. Thank You. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked him about his experience of working in multiple consulting firms
and why he shifted to BCG
Interviewer Hi Saachi! This is a short follow up to your first round. So, before we start
with a case briefly tell me about yourself.
Candidate Told.
Interviewer Great! Let's get onto the case. Your client is a smart phone manufacturer
in India. The player is looking to venture into new arenas and wants to
diversify. Could you think about potential areas where they can enter into
and why?
Candidate Restated the problem. Asked about why the player wanted to venture
into different areas, whether they were operating pan India, if they were
looking at International expansion also or only wanted to look at new
businesses etc.
Interviewer Said that the smart phone market was near maturity and hence they're
looking at new avenues. They are not looking at geographical expansion
and want to diversify horizontally into new products.
Candidate Sure. So, to see which markets are lucrative we can look at the market
size and the potential growth rate of different products. Next, we can
look at the revenue and cost synergies with current manufacturing
process. We can then look at the Investment and Capital required and the
potential ROI.
Interviewer That is fine. But I only want you to look at the potential products that the
company can make. What are some products that you think they can
consider and why did they come to your mind?
Candidate Said that they could diversify into smartwatches, laptops, TV sets etc. and
gave some real-life examples of other players doing the same. It will
minimise the cost as the products will require similar technology and they
will not cannibalise the market share of current products. Current
Supplier relations can also prove advantageous for the company. They
can take advantage of the current brand and launch the products under
the same family name. It can help provide Economies of Scale and Boost
Profitability. Was trying to come up with more products but was cut off.
Interviewer This is good enough and this was supposed to be only a short round.
Thank You Saachi.
Interviewer Walk me through your CV.
Candidate Did.

Interviewer So, Let's do a quick case. Your client is an International Tool Manufacturer
and entered the Indian Market 3 years ago. However, they have not been
able to capture a large market share although they are in the top 3
players in all other countries. What are the potential reasons for this
failure and suggest some ways in which the company can be successful in
India?
Candidate Asked about the distribution channels, current market share of the client
and the competitors, kind of tools that the client manufactures.
Interviewer Explained the competitive scenario. Three major players who held most
of the market share. Remaining was fragmented and divided among small
players including our client. The market share for the client is only 5% and
had remained similar for other players over the years. All these players
were homegrown. They manufacture regular small tools used by say
carpenters and are present across the value chain. Asked me to lay out
where the potential lapses could be.
Candidate Said pricing, quality of the tools, promotion and marketing of the tools,
brand loyalty and stickiness to existing brands, distribution channels can
pe potential factors that can be studied.
Interviewer Asked me to describe what I meant by each of these.
Candidate Explained what I meant by each factor.
Interviewer Said that the price was lower than that of the competitors and the quality
was in fact better. Promotional efforts have also been up to the mark.
Candidate Said that it is possible that carpenters, mechanics etc. who use these
tools have loyalty towards the previously existing homegrown brands and
are hence sticky and not willing to change.
Interviewer This is the case. They prefer Indian Brands and trust them more. The
client wants to move fast to the top 3 or else exit the market. What
strategy should they adopt?
Candidate Said they can acquire/merge with another player in the market if they
have the requisite capital to do so. They should potentially look at
acquiring a large player that can help them to develop trust in the
shortest possible time. Acquiring a small player will not lend much
benefit to them. However, this strategy will work only if one of the 3
players is willing to accept our offer.
Interviewer That seems fair. What if they can't acquire one of the large players?
Should they withdraw from the market then?
Candidate I would then like to look at the current distribution chain and whether
they are available across small retailers in India. If they already have well
established networks not much can be done and withdrawing may be a
better option. If they are not well connected to retailers pan India, then
we can look at expanding and strengthening our distribution networks.
But this will be time consuming and may not give quick results as the
client hopes to get.
Interviewer Fair Enough. Thank You Saachi.

DOs and Don'ts/ Always stay confident and trust yourself. Practice different type of cases
Important Tips and don't force fit frameworks into a case. Also study a little about
different types of industries. It may help while solving cases. Clarify
anything that you may not know about the industry or business and don't
make assumptions. Pick up any hints given by the interviewer during the
case. They're mostly very helpful. Try to engage your interviewer in the
case and ask for their opinion. Also Don't neglect your personals, you
never know which direction your interview will steer into.

Profile Information
Name Saurabh Sinha
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Bitan Dutta (Managing Director and Partner) and Neetu Vasanta
(Managing Director and Partner)
College
Branch Mechanical
Firm NA
Sector NA
Interviewer Greeted me and asked me to run him through my profile
Candidate Talked about the highlights of my resume. Made an assumption that he
had my resume at the time which I shouldn't have.
Interviewer Let's quickly move on to the case now. Your client is a global tools
manufacturing company, specifically into non powered hand tools. It
entered India 3 years back and had invested in building a sales force and
dealerships. Its market share right now is only 1.5%. It wants to be among
the top 3 players in the next 18 months or exit. What will your
recommendation to them be?
Candidate Reiterated the question and asked what about the market share that we
needed to capture to be among the top 3 players.
Interviewer Gave me the market shares of the top 3 players, the lowest one being
10%.
Candidate Asked about the geography of the client and if they were importing
products as the client had only invested in distribution in India.
Interviewer Yes, the client is based in North America and is sourcing the products
from there.
Candidate Asked general questions about the customers and the products. Laid out
a few possible segments myself, B2B & B2C, and asked if the B2C
customers were skilled people into such professions or the general
public.
Interviewer Told me to focus on tradesmen. Also mentioned that there are many
tools that the client sells.
Candidate Questioned a bit more about the competition.
Interviewer Told me that there are about 40 players in total. All the top ones are
home grown players who had been in the market for 30-40 years.
Candidate So, will I be right in concluding that brand plays a big role while
purchasing a product?
Interviewer Yes, that seems fair.

Candidate Okay. Can you brief me about how the customers buy the products? Do
they go to stores which can be generic or specifically for tools? Do these
stores sell our competitors’ products too? Is there any warranty or any
other service provided by us or our competitors?
Interviewer The customers go to specific stores for tools which sell many different
brands. There is no service provided after the sale by any brand.
Candidate Asked for some time to identify factors which would be affecting the
market share. Came up with brand, price, quality, packaging and
distribution and started going through each of them one by one.
Interviewer The price of the client's product is 10% higher and price as a factor is
important to the tradesmen. The quality of our product is slightly better
but the difference is not perceived. In case of distribution, we are present
in all the locations but only in 1/3rd of the stores in those locations. This
is because our sales in terms of number of products are a tiny fraction of
what the big competitors sell.
Candidate Wasn't sure if I should pursue distribution further or just move ahead.
Spent some time trying to gauge how not being in all the stores, as an
independent factor, would affect the market share.
Interviewer Told me to move ahead after a while and that it wasn't so important.
Candidate Okay. So, there are 2 big reasons why our market share is low. Brand and
Price. There is not much we can do about the brand in the next 18
months other than marketing. This may not be enough to capture market
share from the home growth players who have been in the market for 30-
40 years.
Interviewer Yes, that's right.
Candidate About the price, since both the brand and price are important, do you
think lowering the price would be able to counter the brand issue?
Interviewer Hmm, is there anything else that you can do?
Candidate If not, I will look into acquisition or partnerships with a pre-existing firm
with a good brand name which we can use.
Interviewer How do you think the client should go about that?
Candidate The client can acquire a player with a sufficiently large market share
which will instantly solve the problem. The client might still want to sell
its own product which it will have to do with a sub-brand under the
acquired brand. It can also combine both the brand names like Maruti
Suzuki or Hero Honda.
Interviewer Okay. So, can you select the best method according to you and quickly
summarize the case.
Candidate Summarized with the acquiring and sub-branding option.
Interviewer So, Saurabh, tell me something about yourself.
Candidate Gave a prepared answer.
Interviewer Asked me about the places I have travelled to as I mentioned travelling in
my intro.
Candidate We talked a bit about one of my trips.

Interviewer Ok. Let’s do a case now. Are you more comfortable with 2 wheelers or 4
wheelers?
Candidate 4 wheelers work fine.
Interviewer Your client is a 4-wheeler manufacturer. It wants to increase the revenue
from its spare parts. What would your suggestions be?
Candidate Asked a few preliminary questions about the types of cars sold and the
operations.
Interviewer The client operates PAN India and sells cars in many price ranges. People
can buy spare parts through the company's branded showrooms and
through other repair shops.
Candidate The repair shops would also be selling other alternatives too, right? Can
you tell me about our competitors?
Interviewer Yes, that’s right. There are some Chinese players in the market which
provides spare parts that our customers can use.
Candidate Asked for some time.
Interviewer Sure.
Candidate We can look at increasing our revenues in the same market or we can
look at new markets. New markets will include new geographies and also
venturing into other revenue sources.
Interviewer The client wants to remain in the same market.
Candidate Our revenue would then be No. of units * Average revenue per unit
across different spare parts.
Interviewer Let’s focus on increasing No. of units.
Candidate Okay. The sales of spare parts are driven by the number of cars that we
sell and the life of the parts. We wouldn't want to decrease the life of the
spare parts that we sell and hence we must focus on capturing a higher
market share.
Interviewer Okay.
Candidate We can capture a higher market share if more customers come to our
branded showrooms or if more customers choose our spare parts when
they go to the repair shops.
Interviewer How can you increase our share of sales in the repair shop?
Candidate Well, once a customer reaches the shop, he or she would have an enquiry
with the mechanic and make a decision. Can I have some time to think
about the factors that would affect this decision?
Interviewer Sure.
Candidate Came up with price, brand, quality, mechanic's recommendation and
availability. Mentioned that visibility of product in store may not come
into play in case of spare sparts.
Interviewer Okay. You mentioned about the life of spare parts at one point right. Can
you give me a mathematical formula for the average life?
Candidate Do you want me to write down a formula which shows how different
factors will affect the average life?
Interviewer Yes. What do you think those factors will be?

Candidate So, the life will depend on the model of the car, the average life of our
and our competitors' spare parts and we might also have to adjust for
replacement parts in case of accidents.
Interviewer Yes. It will also depend on the age of the car.
Candidate Oh yes, I missed that. Do you want me to jot down a formula for the
average life?
Interviewer No. Let's close the case here.

BAIN & COMPANY

Profile Information
Name Abhinav Jha
Interviewing firm Bain & Company
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Round 1 - Manager, Round 2 - Partner
Undergraduate B. Tech (IIT Kharagpur)
College
Branch Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture
Firm Flipkart
Sector E-Commerce
Interviewer Introduced himself. Asked me to describe my work experience and
hobbies.
Candidate Gave a prepared answer (2-3 mins)
Interviewer Started with a small case. Our client is a medical devices manufacturer
who wants to enter the Indian market, and wants to evaluate whether or
not it is a good idea. Describe your approach on how would you go about
evaluating the same?
Candidate Started out with all the basic questions in terms of -
1) Objective
2) Mode of Operation (product lines, revenue stream etc.)
3) Value Chain (present and proposed)
4) Market Scenario
Interviewer Answered the questions and said that the company primarily wants to
expand into new markets and the they are basing this decision on profits.
Candidate I would like to approach the problem in this manner. Firstly, I would like
to look at the attractiveness of the industry and barriers to entry,
followed by which I would look at the financial feasibility. Post this, I
would look at the operational feasibility. If it's a green signal, I would look
into the mode of entry. Does this approach sound fine by you?
Interviewer Yes, sounds great. You may begin with industry attractiveness. What are
you looking for?
Candidate I would like to look at the barriers we have for our entry into the market.
The things that come to mind are regulatory barriers, high fixed cost
barriers if we plan on opening a manufacturing unit in India and
competitive barriers which may depend on the market structure.
Interviewer There are no regulatory barriers and we don’t plan on opening a
manufacturing unit in India, so you can exclude any fixed cost barriers. I
think we have industry attractiveness covered. You may proceed further
with your analysis.
Candidate For the financial feasibility, I would first begin by asking if the company
has any particular profits value which it wants to reach in a specific time
frame, after which I would calculate the profits made by the company,
which would be a function of the market share, market size, our margin
per unit and the fixed costs we may bear in our venture.

Interviewer The company doesn’t have any specific profit targets in mind. How would
you go about estimating revenues?
Candidate Okay, I would then like to estimate the market size for this product.
(Proceeded by taking a lot of inputs from the interviewer regarding
the different data points, considered parameters such as age, occupation,
area, income, etc)
Interviewer Seems fair. Could you summarise the case till now
Candidate Took a moment and summarised the case
Interviewer That would be all. Good work. Thank you! (Interviewer seemed to be in a
hurry)
Interviewer Introduced himself. Asked me to introduce myself
Interviewer Picked up something from my work experience and asked me to describe
how did I go about implementing it and the challenges I encountered
Candidate Described the project
Interviewer Seemed satisfied with the answer then proceeded to the case.
Your client is an airline which operates in South East Asia and it has been
facing a steep rise in costs. Figure out why?
Candidate Started with basic questions about -
1) Timeline of steep rise in costs
2) Mode of operations (location, value chain, revenue streams, assets etc)
3) Market Scenario (competition health etc)
Interviewer Responded by saying that our client is a premium carrier which owns its
fleet, the market had been growing since the past few years and the cost
rise had coincided with it however, they had seen an increase spike in
costs in the past one year
Candidate Listed down various cost heads and then proceeded to eliminate the non-
relevant ones. Found that their slot costs had increased substantially over
the past few years.
Interviewer Asked me to figure out why is the increase in slot prices is affecting us
more than the other airlines operating there.
Candidate Since our client was a premium carrier, their passenger base comprised
of corporate travellers and hence our client always had to have
primetime slots which came with a premium whereas most of the
competition operated on LCC model hence they could choose to operate
in non-prime slots
Interviewer Seemed satisfied with the answer and asked me to look at next cost head
creating a spike in the past one year.
Candidate Narrowed it down to increase in financing costs over the past year. Asked
him from where had our client secured credit to finance his fleet?
Interviewer Replied saying the client had taken loans from Banks in States.
Candidate Figured that change in currency valuation compared to the dollar could
have resulted in an increase in effective interest payment costs
Interviewer Agreed with the reason I gave and asked me to synthesis the case in 45
seconds

Candidate Took a moment then synthesised the case along following lines -
1) Client Situation
2) Approach to the problem
3) Possible Solutions for the problem
Interviewer Seemed happy with the synthesis then said he would be happy to see me
in summers.
Candidate Said Thank You and was given the formal offer in the bridge virtual room.
DOs and 1) Spend some time on your CV and be thorough with every point.
DONTs/Important Tips Prepare for 'tell me about yourself' question.
2) Portray confidence throughout the interview and keep a smile on your
face even during stress interview
3) Interviewers keep dropping hints- be on a lookout for them and be
dynamic with your approach. Take a step back, analyse the problem and
make amends in your approach if need be

Profile Information
Name Dharmesh Dubey
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Yajur Kapoor
Undergraduate IIT BHU, Varanasi
College
Firm ZS Associates
Sector Consulting
Interviewer In the interest of time, let’s get started with the case study directly. You
are dealing with the Board of Directors of a US based Manufacturing firm.
The firm is undergoing a cost optimization exercise. You are working on
the issue of their usage of corporate jets. Lease is up for renewal. What is
the cost optimization needed here?
Candidate Reiterated question. What does the company manufacture and what is
their target of cost optimization?
Interviewer They manufacture auto components from steel. Overall, they are looking
for a target of around 20%, but for specific issues they are interested in as
much as they can get.
Candidate How many such jets do they have and what is the purpose of this jet. I am
assuming it is being used by senior management to travel around.
Interviewer They have 1 jet. Yes, it is used by CEO and CXO team to travel for business
purposes.
Candidate I am looking at the major cost heads. It will consist of the lease cost,
maintenance cost, fuel cost, wages/salaries and cost of operating on
airports like hanger cost etc. I plan to look at each of these costs and see
where we can optimize it.
Interviewer What do you think will be the major costs?
Candidate I think lease will be one major cost and maintenance and operating costs
could also be high.
Interviewer Last year the company spent a total of 2M of which 1.5M was for lease
and among the rest were costs for maintenance, crew and other
miscellaneous costs. So, you can focus on the lease cost first.
Candidate The factors on which the lease cost will depend on are primarily – type of
jet, usage frequency of jet, duration of lease and some other terms and
conditions that might be involved regarding usage. For optimization I
would first look at these factors of the current deal and then try to see if
we can optimize the costs. For that, I would first like to understand the
usage pattern i.e., number of trips the company had using the jets and
the number of people travelling each time.

Interviewer The company had 200 trips last year. 20% of the times there were 1-3
passengers, 60% of the time there were 4-6 passengers and the rest 20%
time there were 7+ passengers.
Candidate And what is the capacity of the jet that we are using?
Interviewer It has a maximum capacity of 12 passengers.
Candidate Okay, so in the first look it seems that our capacity is largely
underutilized. For at least 80% of the time, we are using only half the
capacity. I would like to know what are the options we have for jets when
we are looking for the renewal?
Interviewer So, there’s a Type 1 jet, which we are using currently- which has a max
capacity of 12 and lease cost of 1.5M. Type 2 has a max capacity of 8 and
lease cost of 1M, Type 3 has a maximum capacity of 4 and lease cost of
0.5M.
Candidate Looking at these numbers it seems like Type 2 would serve the purpose
of the company better as it would be fulfilling the needs of the company
for at least 80% of the trips and would also save .5M in lease cost.
Interviewer If you have to give your recommendation on the information you have till
now, what will you suggest?
Candidate I will suggest them to go ahead with Type 2 jet for the lease. Apart from
the lease cost, the rest 0.5M will not change significantly based on the jet
choice. Type 1 is underutilized most of the time whereas Type 2 will serve
the purpose at least 80% of the time. Type 3 does not seem appropriate
because it will not be able to serve the purpose of having a jet.
Interviewer Okay, thank you. We can close the meeting.

Profile Information
Name Digvijay Singh
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Partner
Undergraduate BITS Pilani
College
Branch Mechanical
Firm Axis Bank Pvt Ltd
Sector BFSI
Round - 1 GTM Case
Interviewer He introduced himself. Should we start the case?
Candidate Sure.
Interviewer Your client is a Medical device manufacturer with HQ in China; they are
looking to expand internationally, specifically India. They want your
advice on whether they should enter India or not?
Candidate Okay, so the client is a medical device manufacturer, and they want to
enter India.
Interviewer Yes, that's right
Candidate I would first like to understand what type of medical devices does the
client manufacture?
Interviewer That would be orthopaedic implants: i.e., Artificial joints, Trauma
implants, i.e., plates/screws, and Spine implants.
Candidate Okay, and what part of the value chain does the client operates in?
Interviewer The client manufactures, brand, and sell the product through their
distribution channel.
Candidate I would decide on whether to enter the market based on three factors:
Market economics, i.e., potential revenue, Market attractiveness, and
Barriers to entry/risks.
Is there a particular threshold that the client wants to assess as per their
go/no go strategy?
Interviewer This looks good to me, why don't you start with potential revenue first
Candidate Should I estimate market for all three variants collectively?
Interviewer Let's only look at artificial knees
Candidate Target patients would be those having arthritis, which is common in
people above 60 years of age. Assuming the population of the country is
100 crores for easy calculation, and 10% of the population is above 60,
and 20% of that suffers from arthritis. This would give us potential
customers base. Now we can add affordability and propensity as a factor
to estimate the actual demand. And assuming that this population would
roll over in 10 years, to get a year's potential demand we divide this by 10
Interviewer Sure, looks good

Candidate So, we can further divide the target population into Urban and Rural with
a split of 70:30 and can have three income levels with split (10-40-50 in
Rural and 20-30-50 in Urban) to gauge affordability. To look at
propensity, the Urban-high income group would have close to 100%
propensity to buy, and the Rural-high income and Urban mid-income
would have a 50% propensity to buy. For income groups below that, we
can ignore any substantial demand
Interviewer If we have a total market of more than 1 lacs units per year, then our
margins would be healthy enough and we would enter the market
Candidate The total demand is around 2.8 lacs which is greater than client's
threshold.
Interviewer Yes, let's wrap the case. Quickly tell me what all other factors you would
look at before making a decision
Candidate I would look at, competition in the market, market growth and margins
Interviewer Okay
Candidate In terms of barrier to entry and risks, I would look at the capital
requirement, import duties, regulations, FDI, and Currency risk
Interviewer Okay, that's great. Let's wrap the case here.
Round - 2 Personals
Interviewer Asked to give a short intro and some questions on projects done at Axis
Bank.
DOs and Don'ts/ Always think out loud, whenever asking for additional information be
Important Tips sure how it'll help you.

Profile Information
Name Khayati Mittal
Slot 9:00 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate IIT (BHU) Varanasi
College
Branch Electronics Engineering
Firm Texas Instruments
Sector Semiconductor Industry
Round - 1 Cost Reduction Case
Interviewer Let's jump into the case for sake of the time.
Candidate Sure.
Interviewer So, this is a BPO Company with the revenue of $10 billion. They are
looking to cut down their costs by 10%.
Candidate Sure, Can I take few seconds to jot down some of the preliminary
questions?
Interviewer Sure. But I would like you to focus on the costs only.
Candidate Asked few preliminary questions about geography, any particular reason
for cost reduction, time frame to reduce costs, is it pre COVID-19 or post
COVID-19 case etc. etc
Interviewer Major revenue and costs are related to their call centre services (No
major data point. Answered my preliminary questions)
Candidate Broke down the costs into 4 major parts - Human Costs,
Software/Hardware Costs, Maintenance/Utility Costs, Rental/Lease Costs.
Am I missing something here (thinking out loud in interest of time)
Interviewer No, that would work. Help me associate numbers with each of the cost’s
subheads.
Candidate Human Costs will be one of the major costs incurred by the BPO
Company
Interviewer Can you come up with the percentage associated with Human Costs
among others?
Candidate Since, it is the major one. It will be around 50%
Interviewer Yes, it is 60 percent. How can you help us reduce human costs?
Candidate I would like to divide my analysis into 3 major components: Organization
Structure (Hierarchy), Number of Employees and Average Salary by each
employee.
Interviewer Go ahead. But since we are a reputed firm. We cannot fire employees or
cut down the salaries of employees
Candidate To start with, I would like to understand the organization structure of the
firm.

Interviewer It's a typically a flat organization with total of 2 lakh call centre workers
and each 100 call canter employees are headed by a senior manager.
That's it.
Candidate Since it is majorly a flat organization, I would like to focus on the call
centre employees since it forms major part of the human costs. The
analysis could be divided into two parts- inflow and outflow of the
employees. Before that I would like to understand the Salary structure of
the employees- Are they hired on contractual basis or are they
permanent employees.
Interviewer They are the permanent employees.
Candidate How does their salary structure look like in terms of variable and fixed
component?
Interviewer The 80% of the salary is fixed and 20% is variable based on the number of
calls they make.
Candidate I have a fair understanding of the salary structure. So, I would like to
focus on the outflow of the employees apart from firing people such as
retirement plans and also turn my attention to the incoming new
employees, understanding what is the rate of hiring and understanding
the present utilisation of the employees.
Interviewer In interest of time, I would like you to list down the ideas to reduce the
human costs.
Candidate As per my analysis, would like to control the number of employees based
on the inflow and outflow understanding the utilisation. Next, I would
also like to focus on the Average Salary of the employees. We cannot
reduce the salary but can focus on changing the cost structure between
the fixed and permanent. Also, understand some other benefits provided
to the employees that can see the cost cutting.
Interviewer Thank you, that would be all. Kindly report to the CoVol.
DOs and Don'ts/ It was more of a conversation with the interviewee. Stay calm and be
Important Tips confident. No matter what think in a structured way. Due to a virtual
interview, the time was crunched and interviews were really fast paced.

Profile Information
Name Mayank Jhunjhunwala
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer 2 partner rounds
Undergraduate NM College (Mumbai), ICAI, ICSI
College
Branch B.Com, CA, CS, CMA (Inter)
Firm Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.
Sector Corporate Strategy (Oil & Gas)
Round - 1 Profitability (Cost Reduction) Case
Interviewer Introduced himself and asked me to introduce myself.
Candidate Gave a semi-rehearsed answer with a mix of CV and non-CV points
(Education, workex, hobbies and interests)
Interviewer Let's do a case now. Your client is a BPO company operating in India and
providing customer support for US based clients. Its annual revenue is $2
bn and it is the largest company in this segment in India. It is expected to
grow at 10-12% in line with the industry over the next few years. It is
looking to save around $100 mn in costs for financing the growth. Identify
the areas for cost reduction.
Candidate I would like to summarise the problem statement to make sure that I
have understood it correctly. (Summarised it). Then proceeded to ask few
preliminary questions on profit margin, type of contracts, competition
and the timeline to achieve cost reduction (one at a time).
Interviewer The profit margin is 10% EBITDA. Contracts are mostly broad based for
banks, retailers, telecom etc. There are two global companies in the
Indian market. Your client is looking to achieve cost reduction on a
sustainable basis to continuously finance growth.
Candidate Okay. So, we are looking at a cost savings of around $100 mn on a base of
$1.8 bn, roughly ~5.5%. I would like to analyse the cost across the entire
value of BPO: operations setup, customer acquisition, CRM and service
delivery.
Interviewer Can you list down the three major cost components for a BPO along with
their approximate percentage share in total cost.
Candidate Since, it is a service industry driven by manpower, employee cost would
be the most major component (~60%). The next big piece would be the
overall admin cost (~15%) to run the BPO offices. The remaining 25%
would encompass various fixed and variable cost heads. Initially, we can
look for at least $60 mn cost reduction from employee cost.
Interviewer Yes. Please analyse employee cost in detail.
Candidate The employee cost can be analysed from monetary and non-monetary
perspective. Monetary would include the salary outgo. On the non-
monetary side, we can look at increasing the efficiency of staff so that the
same workload can be handled with a lesser number of manpower.

Interviewer Well, we cannot fire any of the employees. We also cannot increase their
working hours. Can you look more into the monetary aspect?
Candidate The salary of the staff would include various fixed and variable
components. (Listed them) We can look into restructuring the salary.
Interviewer Yes, the salary needs to be restructured. So how can the client go about
it?
Candidate The client can try to increase the in-hand component of employees by
changing salary structure from tax perspective. But since it’s a BPO, I
think the salary of the staff will not be very high and consequently, it may
not yield much savings.
Interviewer It is a bottom-heavy organisation with majority of employees having
salary under ₹5 lacs. How can the salary be restructured otherwise?
Candidate The variable component can be increased and fixed component can be
reduced with an overall increase in potential maximum salary. This will
motivate staff to work for a higher salary. More effective workers can get
slightly more than the current salary but less effective ones can have a
much larger decrease.
Interviewer The client cannot decrease the fixed component even if it increases the
variable component by a higher percentage. So, what the client did over
here was it increased the variable component more than fixed during
promotions and increments. This resulted in an overall cost reduction in
employee cost on account of fixed salary. That's it from my side. Any
questions?
Candidate Asked a question on one of the points mentioned in his introduction.
Interviewer Hi Mayank. Please walk me through your CV and tell something beyond it
as well.
Candidate Gave a semi-rehearsed answer with a mix of CV and non-CV points.
Interviewer Let's proceed with a case. Your client is a speciality chemicals company
operating in B2B segment. It has 4 product segments - plastic, paint,
textiles and leather with sales of ₹60 crs, ₹50 crs, ₹40 crs and ₹20 crs
respectively. The company has over 400 SKUs of products. Identify two
levers to increase the profitability in two weeks’ time.
Candidate Summarised the problem statement. Also, my understanding is by
profitability, we mean the profit percentage here and not the absolute
amount. Then proceeded to ask few preliminary questions on segment
wise profitability percentage and no. of products/SKUs within each
segment.
Interviewer Told the profitability percentage for each of the segments and the SKUs.
Also explained a bit about speciality chemicals.
Candidate The profitability percentage can be increased by increasing the revenue
or by decreasing the cost or a combination of both.
Interviewer Apart from revenue and cost, there is another factor that affects the
profitability equation.

Candidate Since there are multiple segments, this would be the product mix. We
can look into increasing sales of high margin products to improve overall
profitability.
Interviewer Yes. This is one of the two levers. What other lever should we look at?
Candidate Since we have only two weeks' time to achieve higher profitability, it may
not be feasible to reduce costs in such a short span. We can focus on
increasing the revenues.
Interviewer Yes. Apart from product mix, how can we increase the revenues?
Candidate There are multiple SKUs for products. So, we can evaluate the pricing
methodology in detail for the products to avoid a linear pricing, if its
followed currently.
Interviewer That's exactly the answer I was looking for. I would like to extend you an
offer. Welcome to Bain. Any questions for me?
Candidate Thank you so much. I asked a question on one of the points mentioned in
his introduction. Then, we had a small talk on my intro as well.
DOs and Don'ts/ 1) Make your introduction look more natural instead of giving a
Important Tips straightaway rehearsed answer
2) Take cues from the conversation with the interviewer.
3) In case you don't understand any aspect of case, clarify it upfront
instead of making own assumptions
4) Practice cases from different types of industries. A case in a known
industry on the interview day really boosts up the confidence.
5) Discuss the problem statement and approach of buddy cases with your
batchmates.

Profile Information
Name Shivani Kabra
Slot 9:30 AM
Interviewer Arunava Dalal and Yajur Kapoor
Undergraduate NIT Surat
College
Firm EXL Service Ltd.
Sector Consulting
Interviewer Client is a B-2-B speciality chemical. It needs to improve its profits by
₹160 crores in 2 weeks’ time.
Candidate Asked some basic questions around the client business; customers;
product mix and the competitive scenario in the industry; the distribution
channels and our presence in the same. Also asked about the client’s
annual turnover and the growth rate of the market
Interviewer Client operates Pan India and the customers are high end distributors.
The products are Plastics; Paints; Textiles and Leather. There are as many
as 400 SKUs in total. The Industry is dominated by 5 major players with
equal share. The client only operates through offline mode of distribution
channel. The annual turnover of the client was ₹1800 crores and the
growth rate of the market is 5%.
Candidate Okay. So, I would like to investigate if the problem has occurred across all
the products category or any specific product item? Also, if it is an
industry wide issue or it’s a client specific issue? And the likely
distribution of the available SKUs in that category of product.
Interviewer Okay, good. So, the profits have taken a hit for the Paints. There are 3
variants of Paint boxes we sell. 10gm;20gm and 30gm. This is a Client
Specific issue.
Candidate Okay. So now I have a fair understanding of the specific product issue
here. Please give me a minute to structure my thoughts around the same.
Candidate The decline in profits occur due to decline in net revenues or an increase
in the costs and due to both factors in tandem. Would you like me to
explore any particular segment first?
Interviewer The costs have been constant. The revenues have decline. So, you can
focus on Revenues.
Candidate Okay. So, revenues are a function of the No. of Customers*No. of
products/Customer*Avg. Price of the basket. I would like to understand if
there is an issue with either of these segments or should I explore more
factors?

Interviewer The equation seems fair. There is an issue with the No. of products being
sold per unit customer. Can you jot down some reason for the same?
Candidate Sure. There can be two issues here. One from the Demand side and the
other from Supply side. If the Supply side has been affected. Issues may
be around the Value Chain of the Client’s business and if there is a
Demand side issue, we can further look into the customer journey and
value chain analysis.
Interviewer The client is facing an issue from the demand side. Why don’t you think
about some specific issues with the SKUs?
Candidate Sure Sir. The demand may have declined across either of the available
sizes. 10gm, 20gm, 30gm. After some cross discussion. The problem
bottled down to decrease in demand for 30gm paint. I suggested that to
increase the revenues. We should package the paint in smaller sized
containers only as they are demanded more by the customers. This will
help us use the same facility without any added cost. It will also help us to
reduce the cost if packaging for large size containers.
To promote the available SKUs: We should offer attractive discounts,
upsell or cross sell by offering bundled package.
Interviewer Good Job! Wait for your next interview.
Round-2 Cost Reduction Case
Interviewer Client is a consultancy firm. Its board of members in US use a corporate
jet for traveling. The jet’s lease is now up for renewal. Suggest measures
to optimize the cost.
Candidate Asked preliminary questions – Where exactly is the HQ in the US?
Questions about the customers and the locations of these customers.
Some questions about the Jet: What purposes does the jet solve? What is
the seating capacity of the jet? Breakup of the Cost incurred on the jet in
terms of the lease, cost of maintenance, the crew, airport charges, fuel
charges etc.?
Interviewer The HQ is in Boston and the clients manufacturing and operations are
based in US itself. But the board travels to customer locations:
Philadelphia, New York and Cleveland. The jet is only used by the board
to travel to customer locations for meetings. The seating capacity of the
jet is 12. The cost incurred on jet is around $2Mn currently. 75% is due to
lease cost; 10% maintenance; 10% crew; and 5% Airport parking charges.
Candidate Broke down the costs into different parts: (the above mentioned by the
interviewer) and asked if any specific cost to look into first, like the lease
cost that has the highest contribution and has direct implications from
the problem statement.
Interviewer Yes. How would you go about the lease cost?
Candidate Asked about how it is obtained, one or many suppliers, if the lease is
charged monthly or yearly etc. Broke the lease cost into 2-Deals: Existing
lease contract renewal and New contract on lease formulation.
Interviewer There is only one vendor with whom we have dealt with. The lease is
charged on a yearly basis and yes, I would like you to focus more on the
new lease contract here. What factors are you going to consider to
negotiate a deal?

Candidate Discussed the size of the jet as an important factor and the maintenance
charges incurred. Further the number of trips that are made in a year and
the number of people travelling.
Interviewer Good. So, there are 3 types of jet call them A, B, C with 12,8, and 4 as
seating capacity resp. And the fixed charges as $1.5 Mn, 1 Mn and 0.5Mn
respectively. The number of trips made is 200 and can be proportionally
divided on the basis of number of people traveling. So, a group of 1-3
persons makes 20% of the total trips, 4-6 makes 60% and 7+ group makes
20% of the trips.
Candidate I did some number crunching and gave him the approx. figures of the
costs that could be reduced by using the medium sized (8 sitter jet). The
trade-off costs would have to be balanced across usage of fuel for
multiple trips in case of a meeting that requires 7+ members of the
board. Also talked about the relative reduction in the crew members and
how the company could cut down on the fixed costs.
Interviewer Good, thank you!
(The offer was announced while I was still discussing the case with the
interviewer)
DOs and Focus on the structure and be concise and confident with the numbers.
DONTs/Important Don't be nervous, be calm!

KEARNEY
KEARNEY
KEARNEY

Profile Information
Name Ayushi Priyam
Interviewing firm Kearney
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer 1st – Partner and 2nd - Principal
Undergraduate IIT Patna
College
Firm Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL)
Sector Oil & Gas Industry
Interviewer Your client is an e-commerce player and they provide Goods and Services
to Government entities such as PSUs (you can take IOCL as an example).
The market has GMV of ₹400 crores but currently we are only capturing
₹10 crores. We want to double our share of GMV. Suggest some ways to
do it. (This turned out to be a qualitative case)
Candidate Briefly repeated the problem statement. Asked initial questions about the
types of Goods and Services, all types of Govt. clients and whether we are
serving to them.
Interviewer The client currently serves only to Central Govt. entities and there is
scope for increasing the products.
Candidate Asked about competitors.
Interviewer Offline fragmented market. Ours is a B2G model. Other famous e-
commerce players not serving to Government.
Candidate Asked about the client’s operation - VCA - inbound logistics, process,
outbound logistics
Interviewer Connected with suppliers, have a govt. logistic partner.
Candidate Asked more about the product on board and the varieties available.
Interviewer Gave some examples of goods needed by MoHFW (Covid items), example
of services needed by Ministry of Shipping (transportation services), etc.
Candidate Took time to structure my thoughts - came up with growth strategy

structure (ANSOFFS Matrix). Clearly communicated the framework and its
levels.
Interviewer Asked me to explain each level/bucket with examples.
Candidate Largely talked about extending the client base to Miniratna PSUs and
State Government entities. While I was explaining my 3rd bucket of
providing new services to old clients, he interrupted as asked me:
Interviewer How would you know what the clients might order next? How would you
keep it ready for delivery beforehand?

Candidate Talked about feedbacks, the client's budget, drop-shipping and
warehouse models, use of data analytics depending on the type of
goods/services.
Interviewer Himself summarized the 4th bucket and asked me to provide "enablers"
in each bucket.
Candidate Clarified if he wanted me to come up with supply side constraints.
Interviewer Yes.
Candidate Took some time again and gave one constraint in each level/bifurcation.
Also talked about "customers".
Interviewer End of case discussion. Synthesize the case.
Candidate He was happy with my structure, but provided just one feedback that he
would have been happier had I come up with "supply side enablers" on
my own.
Round - 2 Unconventional - Operation Optimization Case
Interviewer Tell me something about yourself.
Candidate Answered.
Interviewer Why consulting?
Candidate Answered.
Interviewer Let's do a short case. Your client is in the business of biscuits with stable
profits. They are looking to increase their profits. How would you go
about it?
Candidate Initial questions - VCA, object behind moving from stable to more profits,
geography, product mix, competitive scenario.
Interviewer VCA - present in manufacturing to retail, Objective - Costs are increasing
from past 2 years, hence want to balance it against more profits.
(Answers to other questions were not relevant to the case)
Candidate Why not look for reducing costs?
Interviewer You can do that as well.
Candidate Took time and tried to fit the case in profitability structure - focussed
more on cost side by VCA based cost drivers. Explained the structure to
him.
Interviewer Begin from revenue side!
Candidate Explored buckets. Price couldn't be tweaked, hence gave suggestions on
increasing quantity.
Interviewer What are biscuits made of?
Candidate Provided ingredients for all kinds of biscuits quickly - normal, cream,
filled, cookies-type, flavoured.
Interviewer Okay! Move to the cost side of your framework.
Candidate Inbound logistics (suppliers) - Optimal, Manufacturing processes (PESTLE)
- Optimal, Outbound logistics - Not Optimal, Retailers relationships and
Advertisement costs - Optimal.
Interviewer What are the cost drivers for outbound logistics?

Candidate Made a few buckets, no cost optimization possible there. I wanted to
focus on fuel cost, but he asked me to combine the fuel cost with
transportation lump sum cost. This part took a lot of time as I wanted to
get one cost driver that could be improvised upon.
Interviewer What all costs can be determined on "per km" basis?
Candidate I tried to bring the equation for fuel cost again, but could have directly
said that the route might not be optimized (the client was taking longer
routes to deliver to retailers, hence more distance, more fuel
consumption, more costs)
Interviewer End of case. (Did not ask me to synthesize the case)
Candidate Quickly provided next steps for our client to reduce transportation costs
by looking for new routes having shorter distances. Also, by catering to
more retailers in the vicinity of manufacturing units. Provided a closing
sentence covering the problem statement.
Interviewer Do you have any questions for us?
Candidate Asked.
Interviewer Answered.
Candidate Asked a follow up on the same.
Interviewer Answered.
DOs and Don'ts/ 1) Always remember the supply side constraints. Only increasing demand
Important Tips won’t work if supply is not ready!
2) Value Chain Analysis for Cost side is far better than fixed cost and
variable cost analysis.
3) Both my cases had a tinge of my background. So, you might want to
practice a few cases from your respective backgrounds. Have a thorough
understanding of the industry/sector.

Profile Information
Name Harshit Laddha
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Anshuman Sinha, Partner
Undergraduate IIT(ISM) Dhanbad
College
Branch Electronics and Communication Engineering
Firm ZS
Sector Consulting
Round - 1 Growth Strategy/Unconventional Case
Interviewer Where are you currently? At campus or at home?
Candidate Told
Interviewer How's online MBA going? How are you connecting with people?
Candidate Told
Interviewer Since you worked in a consulting firm can you tell me what used to be the
aha moment for you while you used to work on a project.
Candidate Explained it using one of my projects I did as an example
Interviewer Let's start with the case. Your client is an Air Cargo Terminal and they are
facing flattening growth rate. Help them in increasing the growth rate.
Candidate Just to reiterate so that I have understood the problem correctly, our
client is an air cargo terminal and they are facing flattening growth rate
and we have to help them in increasing the growth rate
Interviewer Yes. That's correct.
Candidate Sure. Before I go any further, I want to understand when we say growth
rate is it the growth of top line or bottom line.
Interviewer We are looking at the top line growth.
Candidate Can I have a minute to think about a few questions before I go any
further in the analysis?
Interviewer Sure.
Candidate (I had no idea how an air cargo terminal would work just a rough idea by
the term that it would be something related to freight services) How does
an air cargo terminal works? Is it a B2B company or is also involved in
B2C?
Interviewer Air Cargo terminal basically connects shippers (e.g. DTDC, Bluedart etc) to
airlines. It facilitates the movement of goods on the airport. It is having
contracts with shippers and airlines and our client operates in the B2B
space.

Candidate (I went ahead with the typical growth framework questions) What is the
current growth rate and how much are we targeting and what is the
timeline of achieving the target? Where are we located? How many
competitors are there? What is the current position of our client in the
market? Are we performing at par with the market?
Interviewer The current growth rate is around 8% and the client is looking for a
growth rate of 12-13% in 2 years. The client is located in just one airport
in India. There are 2 other terminals present apart from us. At present all
the terminals are enjoying equal market share. Our growth rate is at par
with the market.
Candidate (I went ahead with the growth framework). I will be looking at the
problem from two lenses where I will first evaluate if there are any
inorganic ways to increase the growth and then I will look into the
organic ways. For inorganic growth I will look into merger/acquisition
Interviewer Since there is a bidding process to get access to a cargo terminal at any
airport, merger and acquisition wouldn't work. Our client is having the
terminal till 2030
Candidate Oh Okay! Then I'll be looking into how we can grow organically. (I used
the traditional Ansoff matrix to go ahead). Before I go any forward, can
you tell me what all services we provide to our customers and how we
differentiate from our competitors?
Interviewer Okay. So, as I told you before our client connect shippers with the
airlines. They facilitate the movement of the goods in the airport which
includes security clearance, customs clearance, temporary warehousing,
offloading and on loading services. They don't have any involvement once
the goods are out of the airport gate and once, they are on the aircraft.
They have a slight edge in terms of the automation that they use other
than that they have a pretty standard operation.
Candidate (I took 30 seconds pause here). I'll be first looking into how we can
increase the growth rate using the same services in the same market. For
this I'll analyse the complete journey of how we acquire customers to
how the process happens on the airport to any post purchase services
that we provide. Does this sound like a good approach?
Interviewer Yes. Please go ahead.
Candidate Our customers are shippers who'll be having their own customers and
they all will be looking for on time delivery and safe handling of their
goods. They would also want to have the best prices possible from us. So,
to look for ways by which we can increase the growth I'll look into the
operations that happen on the airport and any value-added services that
we can provide to our customers.
Interviewer Okay. You are going in the right direction. I just have some more
information for you. There are two types of shippers - domestic and
international. We are just the forwarders. International shippers deal
with clients who want to export or import goods like textile or mobile
companies. These clients need temporary warehousing facilities and
custom clearance.

Candidate Okay. So, I will approach domestic shippers and international shippers
separately. For domestic shippers I will start with the offloading of goods
from their vehicles at the airport gate. We can look to automate this
process using robots just like Amazon is doing in their warehouses. This
will reduce the time involved any other manual errors that might happen
in handling the goods. Other thing is security clearance, our client can
install their own scanners to do a quick scan of the goods before sending
them for security clearance which will ensure that we catch any non-
authorized goods beforehand only and reduce the to and fro. We can
provide them cargo insurance services as well.
Interviewer Go ahead.
Candidate For international clients the main point of importance is custom
clearance and temporary warehousing. The suggestions provided for
domestic customers would also apply here along with facilitating customs
clearance for high value customers. For these customers we can also
provide loyalty points just like jet miles which they can use afterwards for
add on services like insurance, priority processing and free warehousing
facility.
Interviewer I think we can close the case now. All the best.
Candidate Thank you! It was pleasure talking to you
DOs and Don'ts/ The buddy calls are very important and they play a major role in the
Important Tips selection process in my opinion. During the interview you need to listen
to the interviewer carefully. In my case I didn't know much about the
industry and I also didn't asked much questions in the starting but
eventually while solving the case I asked about the industry and it helped
me shaped my recommendations.

Profile Information
Name Nishtha Jain
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Karan (Round 1) and Anshuman (Round 2)
Undergraduate NSIT
College
Branch Computer Engineering
Firm McKinsey Knowledge Centre and Urban Company
Sector CRM Analyst and Operations
Interviewer Asked about my Urban Company work ex in detail. Interviewer was Karan
Dhall. Your client is an apparel retailer (similar to Louis Phillipe). Suggest
how can they improve the like for like sale from the same store.
Candidate Asked prelim questions on the target segment, time frame, product
categories, distribution channels, geography etc.
Interviewer Premium customers in a fragmented market. The client operates via
company stores (franchises), retail outlets, multiband outlets, E-
commerce. There are primarily 3 product categories: trousers,
jackets/blazers, formal shirts & they also have accessories. 50%
production is inhouse & 50% is bought as finished products.
Started off my breaking down sales into # of
customers*frequency*average cart size/customer; average
price/product; product mix. Then dived into the first bucket & picked up
no of customers first. Broke it down further into new & old customers.
For new customers, focused on aspects like location, connectivity, traffic,
competitor presence to increase the overall customer acquisition. For the
old customers, started with the customer journey & looked at all the
buckets. Since the goal was to increase the sales majorly went on to how
to enhance the overall customer experience & make it more affordable.
In the customer experience, further looked at physical store experience
(ambience), sales representative interactions, trial rooms, payment
options, stock outs, packaging, loyalty schemes, customer feedback etc.
Next, went into analysing how to increase the average cart size and
suggested price bundling techniques to include accessories etc, price
signalling, complementary recommendations (e.g., shirt & tie). Had asked
which are the higher margin products (in house production) & which are
the lower margin ones (bought).
Gave other general broad recommendations like product diversification &
vertical integration.
Candidate Asked for feedback. I knew I had lost structure a couple of times. The
interview had minimal interjections from the interviewer & he was
patiently listening to me. The interview was mainly around creativity &
ideas.

Interviewer I wasn’t pausing enough to think & was just talking whatever was coming
in my mind. Hence was losing structure at some places & had to go back
once I realised.
Interviewer Interviewer was Anshuman. He tried to make me less nervous and asked
about a board that was there in my room.
Candidate I was happy to talk about my hobby and relaxed a bit. I showed him a
painting behind me that I had made.
Interviewer Asked me more about my McKinsey Knowledge Centre work ex. The
client is an air cargo terminal operator. Design a growth strategy for
them.
Candidate Asked basic prelim questions on metric, timeframe, int’l v/s domestic
cargo, geography of operation, client & their past performance, industry
& competitors.
Interviewer Increase revenue for the client who is 20 years old & known for their
better technical as well as financial knowledge. They were previously into
ground handling (passenger related services) & recently went into the
cargo industry (both domestic & int’l). The client is growing but not
gaining any market share despite being more technically & financially
sound than the competitors. The competitors are growing at the same
rate as us in a niche industry.
Candidate Started with the growth framework & further into the organic growth
part. Then broke down profits into revenue & cost
Interviewer The interviewer prompted me & tried to help me with how the cargo
industry works. Long term contracts of 20-25 years are given out. The
different stakeholders are shippers, linkers (forwarders), airlines [the flow
of goods is in the same order]. There are 3 broad categories of service:
handling (transport) [loading, unloading etc.], storage (if the airline
company ends up storing for > 24 hours the forwarders have to pay
extra), documentation (audits, clearances, x-ray etc.). The breakup of
cargo for the client is: imports are 60%, exports are 30% & domestic is
10%.
Candidate From here, the interviewer flowed more like a conversation where we
kept on discussing ideas in each of the three type of services offered. We
discussed priority handling, requirement of different industries, tapping
of more clients, cutting down linkers etc.
Interviewer After a good discussion, I was asked to summarise the case.
DOs and Don'ts/ Take pauses & think clearly before you speak.
Important Tips

Profile Information
Name Shikha Singh
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Rahul Mishra (Principal), Pravin Devanathan (Principal)
Undergraduate HBTU, Kanpur
College
Branch Information Technology
Firm ZS Associates
Sector Consulting
Round - 1 Unconventional Case (Strategy)
Interviewer Tell us about your work experience at ZS
Candidate Gave a summary of work experience along with two flag ship projects
Interviewer Let’s dive into the case. So, your client is government of Uttar Pradesh.
There has been recent development of spray that can kill the virus.
This spray needs to be spread on the entire city (In this case Lucknow) via
helicopter. There are two constraints: 1) Spray can't be done on humans
as it will harm them so you need to vacate entire city before spraying 2)
This spray works at a particular temperature i.e., winters and this is
winters only. So, you need to vacate the city as soon as possible. So,
develop the strategy to vacate all the residents to the nearby city.
Candidate Cleared the objective of the problem statement. Ask few clarifying
questions. Then took break of 1 minute to structure my thoughts. Post
that divided the problem statement into three parts. So, assuming
population of Lucknow to be around 25 lakhs figured out all the possible
modes of transportation. 1. Road ways 2. Airways 3. Waterways (Low
probability as there are no ports in Lucknow).
And then asked the interviewer if he wants me to look into any particular
mode first.
Interviewer He was fine with the structure and asked me to focus on whatever mode
I want to.
Candidate Discarded waterways due to absence of ports. Ignored airways due to
limited availability of seats and the cost of operating as well. Assumed
only 10% population will be able to travel via airways. Focused on
roadways.
So, there were 5 options available: 1. Two wheelers, 2. Four wheelers, 3.
Bus, 4. Trains and 5. on foot travel
Again asked him if he wants me to look into any specific one first.
Interviewer He asked me to focus on Bus first. Asked me that how many people can
be vacated via bus.
Candidate So, I assumed that there are just two exit points in Lucknow to travel to
nearest city. Figured out how many buses can pass through each
point in a day and then extrapolated that to see how much buses and
days will be required to vacate entire city via buses only.

Interviewer He asked me if I have missed anything important.
Candidate Then I pointed out that there will be few major constraints which I
ignored like the traffic, capacity of road, availability of buses and the
drivers. Then we spend some more time on discussing how many busses
can fit in a km of road and how many people will it be able to transport.
Interviewer Let’s move to other options.
Candidate 2 Wheelers, 4 wheelers can be a good option but given that we want to
transport maximum people we discussed that how cars will clutter the
road and occupy less people in same space and for two wheelers we
calculated the same number.
Interviewer Don't you think on foot would be the best option. Less planning will be
required from government's side and at the same time cost would be low
as well.
Candidate So, I gave reason of why it won't be a good idea citing some real-life
examples of migrants returning back to their homes on foot.
Pointed out health conditions and the distance and the time it will take.
Also, human value would be greater than money value at all points of
time.
Interviewer Okay, so can you summarize the discussion.
Candidate Pointed out the problem, key modes of transport and the total days it will
take to vacate entire population of 25 lakhs.
Interviewer Do you have any questions?
Candidate Asked few questions related to his work experience.
Interviewer Okay, so you can leave the call. All the best.
Round - 2 Cost Reduction Case
Interviewer Asked to introduce myself.
Candidate Gave a prepared response.
Interviewer So, your client is a soda manufacturing firm and they are witnessing lower
profits as compared to their competitors. Help them in figuring out the
reasons and provide some recommendations too.
Candidate Asked few clarifying questions. Took some time to structure the problem.
They asked if I should focus on cost or revenue since Profit=Revenue-Cost
Interviewer He asked me to focus on cost side.
Candidate So, went with value chain analysis. Listed down all the buckets that are
there for a soda manufacturing firm.
Asked him if he wants me to focus on any specific bucket first.
Interviewer He told me to focus on packaging part first.
Candidate So, went on with the cost of procuring the packaging material, whether it
is self-manufactured or sourced from third party.
Interviewer So, it is procured from a third-party supplier.
Candidate How far is the location of suppliers and how much they charge as
compared to industry standards.
Interviewer So, the charges are as per industry standards and we have 3 warehouses
located at the exterior of cities whereas supplier is in middle of city.

Candidate Focused on the cost of procurement for us as compared to competitors.
Figured out that the distance between our warehouses and packaging
suppliers was way more than compared to our competitors. This was the
only supplier in the city too.
Interviewer Okay, so this was one of the major reasons for this difference. Can you
provide some recommendations?
Candidate So, gave three recommendations: 1. Self-manufacturing of packaging
material. 2. Changing packaging material if there is cheaper option
available
Interviewer Okay, so we are done with your case. How well do you think you have
performed?
Candidate So, I think I did pretty well though there were few things on which I could
have deep dived.
Interviewer He laughed and gave feedback of forming equations and then solving the
case where ever possible.
Candidate Okay, I'll try to implement this in next case.
Interviewer Okay, so we are done with your interview and I will be sending you to
next interviewer.
DOs and Don'ts/ DOs: Confidence and communication were the key players that will help
Important Tips you sail through the whole process. Think out loud.
A bit of partners' background check will give you better insights into the
business type of the cases. All the interviewers including the buddy cases
were an extension of their real-life projects.
Don'ts: Don’t expect that any particular type of cases will be asked. I got
two unconventional cases, one during buddy call and another one on the
main day.

Profile Information
Name Siddharth Chhajed
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Arpit Mathur (Principal) and Rahul Mishra (Principal)
College
Branch Metallurgy & Materials Engineering
Firm EXL Services
Sector Consulting
Round - 1 Growth / Unconventional Case
Interviewer Where can I find your CV? let me check.
Candidate (Interviewer got dropped off for 2-3 mins then re-joined) I was about to
have a panic attack. Thought my CV got me rejected right away.
Interviewer (Haha) No, I clicked the wrong button. Alright, so I have gone through
your CV. We have 20 mins of time, let's quickly start the case.
Candidate Sure, sir
Interviewer Our client is a top FMCG player who wants to develop a strategy to grow
sales using e-commerce channels. How would you go about it given that
they want to increase overall topline while maintaining profitability?
Candidate Can I take a few minutes to structure my clarifying questions?
Interviewer Off course
Candidate I would like to know more about the company, its competitors,
customers and constraints, if there are any. I'll start off with the company
branch first. Will that be fine?
Interviewer Sure, go ahead
Candidate Okay, so being a FMCG what are its typical products and their
composition. I believe it'll be related to personal or home care.
Interviewer Correct, we have two broad segments: Personal care which comprise of
80% of sales and home care comprising 20% of sales.
Candidate How is company performing overall? Where do they operate?
Interviewer Sales are currently growing at 5-6% YoY. It operates pan-India.
Candidate What are different channels through which company sells its products?
Interviewer It generally sells through retail stores: traditional & modern stores.
Candidate Who are the major competitors? Are they present on e-commerce?
Interviewer Major competition in the industry is from Global MNCs who all are
already present on e-commerce channels.
Candidate Being an FMCG, can I assume its major customers to be households?
Interviewer Yes, you can proceed with that assumption.

Candidate Okay, to setup ecommerce presence I'll look into 4 broad components: i)
Availability & Listing ii) Targeted customer ads iii) Competitive pricing and
discounts iv) Cross-selling and promotions. Shall I dig dipper into each
one of them?
Interviewer Sure, go ahead
Candidate Firstly, we should decide on what all products shall we list on ecommerce
channels and do we have enough capacity to produce them. We can look
into competitor's product sales and customer's preference to get that
insight.
Interviewer What do you mean by customer preferences?
Candidate So, there may be products which customers like to purchase online since
it provides the flexibility to compare and select different brands. Also, if
there are any bulk purchases, customers might want to get them
delivered to their place directly. We should list those products on
ecommerce channel.
Interviewer Okay, let's explore the other components.
Candidate Once products are listed; we should try to gather data about consumer
past orders and searches to attract them using targeted ads on the basis
of demographics and geography as I believe generally youth and people
living in metro cities will be using ecommerce for purchases. In terms of
pricing, we should be at par with competitors and provide discounts
initially to attain market share.
Interviewer Alright, what'll you do in cross-selling and promotions?

Candidate On the basis of purchases, we can offer complementary products with
the primary one, giving a discount on purchasing both of them. We can
also provide our offline customers some discount coupons which they
can use while making online purchases as during pandemic customers
might not want to come to retail outlets. Social media can also be used to
promote heavily among customers.
Interviewer Let's end the case here. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked a prepared question.
Round - 2 Optimal staffing level / Unconventional Case
Interviewer So, you have pursued metallurgical engineering. How much of metallurgy
do you remember? Tell me a bit about your B. Tech project.
Candidate I have a basic understanding about metallurgy though I haven't worked in
the same field. Told briefly about the B. tech project.
Interviewer Okay, since you're aware of the industry, let's do a case on one of the
biggest steel players in India who manufactures coated sheets used for
roofing and decoration. They are worried about their high manpower and
want you to identify if they are operating at right level and reduce head
count wherever possible.
Candidate Can I take a few minutes to structure my preliminary questions?
Interviewer Sure
Candidate How many steel plants do they have and where do they operate?
Interviewer They just have 1 steel plant, located in outskirts of Thane.

Candidate What is their current manpower as compared to competitors?
Interviewer They employ close to 1700 people as compared to 1200-1300 by
competitors.
Candidate Is it overstaffing or lack of automation that they have so high manpower?
Interviewer It's actually both. They have an old plant with old machines and
equipment due to which a lot of manual intervention is required.
Secondly, company also offers its employees retirement-extension policy
due to which a lot of older employees choose to work for longer period.
Candidate Can you walk me through the different steps of manufacturing so that we
can dig dipper in every step to figure out where exactly are they
overstaffed?
Interviewer Sure, so it starts with hot rolled sheets which are acid washed to reduce
their thickness. Then, Zn-Al coating is done, followed by profiling, cutting
and rolling.
Candidate Okay, so to decide if they are operating at a right level, we can broadly
look at 2 components: External & Internal. In external, we can benchmark
client's staff level with competitors at every processing step. While for
internal, we can look at employee productivity, working hours & shifts
and automation level.
Interviewer Let's assume they are the only player operating & there is no competition
to benchmark.
Candidate Alright, then we can look at three factors at each step: i) Employee
productivity: where we can look at their efficiency, skills and pay scale. ii)
Working hours: Employees working hours, break time and no of shifts. iii)
Automation level
Interviewer Okay, keeping in mind all these factors we are able to optimize the
workforce. But what will you do about the surplus workers who are
extending their retirement?
Candidate Being such a reputed and established player, asking them to leave won't
look good. We can think around three options: i) Try fitting them in other
processes of company, ii) Make them instructors and trainers for training
new workers since they have years of experience and knowledge, and iii)
Providing them with pension facilities
Interviewer Sounds good, there are also large number of security guards they have. Is
there some way we can optimize on that number as well?
Candidate To determine the right number for security guards, we need to know how
big is the plant and how many entry/exit points are there. I would assume
the main task of security guard would be to maintain register of people
coming in and going out during day time and ensure security of plant in
night.
Interviewer Yes, you can proceed with that assumption.
Candidate Okay so to optimize that number, we can train the security guards to
contribute in the manufacturing process during their break-time. Places
where there are no entry / exit points but still guards are placed can be
replaced with CCTVs and other technology which will enable us to
eliminate those positions.

Interviewer Great, we can close our case here. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked a question based on interviewer's past professional experience.
DOs and Don'ts/ Think out loud and articulate very properly. Don't make any assumptions
Important Tips without confirming with interviewer. Lay out the broad structure and try
to follow it throughout the case. Even in pressure situations try to stay
calm, keep a smile on your face and believe in yourself. Confidence and
communication will help you sail through your interview.

Profile Information
Name Surabhi Rakhecha
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Saumya Krishna and Neelesh
Undergraduate RV College of Engineering
College
Branch Electronics & Instrumentation
Firm NA
Sector NA
Interviewer Asked me about myself, my interests etc
Candidate Gave her a 1 min reply
Interviewer Let’s begin the case, there’s a naked man in the middle of the desert
holding a straw, ask me 21 yes/no questions to understand how he got
there and give me the full story.
Candidate Sure, give me 2 mins to structure my thoughts. I will break down my
questions into 3 sets, set 1 to get some bare facts to clear out my
assumptions, set 2 to probe his situation at the moment, set 3 to work
backwards and understand how he got there
Interviewer Very well, go ahead.
Candidate Asked some basic questions like, is he dead? Are there more dead bodies
around him? Are his clothes around him? Was he on some sort of a trip/
vacation? Did he come with friends?
Interviewer Yes, no, yes, yes, yes
Candidate Okay so now we've established that this was some sort of a vacation with
a group of friends, and our guy alone is dead.
Interviewer Now that some basic facts were established, I realised my earlier
structure was not the best and so I pivoted and delved deeper into the
case in this manner. three things particularly were unusual for me, his
death, the straw and the nakedness so I decided to probe in this manner -
Part a) solve the mystery of his death, part b) nakedness, part c)
understand the significance of the straw
Candidate (I had a general idea in my mind about what might have occurred and
framed my questions in a way that I test my hypotheses.) Was there an
accident because of which our guy got separated?
Interviewer Yes
Candidate I had 2-3 theories about his death and tested them. First was it an
accident, a murder or a suicide.
Interviewer Suicide
Candidate Now I set about solving the nakedness, were his clothes used to control
the damage of the accident, e.g., fix a leak, burn for fire etc

Interviewer No
Candidate I found out that their vehicle was a hot air balloon and was running out of
gas and to lighten its weight, our guy took off his clothes. By now, the
death and nakedness were solved to an extent. And straw remained. I
just didn't ask questions but also kept recapping our story until then,
whatever had shaped up, and informed the panel about my structure in
between.
Interviewer Okay
Candidate The straw mystery needed some help in solving and we found out that
they played some sort of a game to decide who jumps out to reduce the
weight and the hot air balloon remains afloat.
Interviewer Hi, run me through your CV
Candidate Told him
Interviewer Asked me about a particular internship at ITC, describe my work and
learning
Candidate Gave him the answers. (we chatted about my family, my father's
business, etc) business
Interviewer Asked me more questions about my dad's business, let's do a case
Candidate Okay
Interviewer Let’s estimate his annual turnover
Candidate Okay
Interviewer Tell me how you'll do it, just the approach
Candidate Gave him the first approach that came to mind
Interviewer Asked for more approaches, then asked me to pick the best one and start
solving it with numbers
Candidate Solved and arrived at a figure
Interviewer Solve using another approach and let’s match the answers
Candidate Okay
Interviewer The answers were a bit off so, we went back and tweaked our model and
closed the case.

ACCENTURE STRATEGY

Profile Information
Name Akshada Shetty
Interviewing firm Accenture Strategy (CN)
Slot 2.30 pm
Interviewer
Undergraduate ICAI, HR College (Mumbai University)
College
Branch CA, Commerce
Firm SMMP & Associates (Articleship)
Sector Audit, Taxation & Legal Compliance
Round - 1 Personals
Interviewer Tell me something about your yourself
Candidate Graduation, past acads, articleship experience
Interviewer Biggest takeaways from the articleship
Candidate Experience in different sectors, understanding how senior managers
worked, conflict resolution
Interviewer Explain how power is generated and distributed
Candidate Explained thermal power generation
Interviewer Effect of Covid-19 on the sector
Candidate Explained about effect on demand of coal, etc.
Interviewer Do you have any questions for me
Candidate Since I had not applied for the role, I asked him about the role, the kind of
projects that would be assigned and the opportunities after MBA
Round - 2 Personals
Interviewer Where did I do my articleship
Candidate SMMP & Associates
Interviewer Is it a family firm? How did you get into it?
Candidate It is not a family firm. I applied and gave a test and an interview after
which I was selected
Interviewer 3 biggest achievements at your articleship
Candidate Led 7-member team to complete IFC Audit of 10 companies, found a ₹7
crores discrepancy in NPA provisions and carried out amalgamation
proceedings of 13 companied
Interviewer Explain the major amalgamation events
Candidate Listed down the entire process
Interviewer Explain P2P (Procurement to Payment) process of a company
Candidate Explained the entire process in relation to the process carried out in the
IFC audit company
Candidate Asked him about Accenture, their work life

Round - 3 HR Interview
Interviewer Tell me something about yourself
Candidate Asked her how are the roles assigned and do we get to give a preference
on location
DOs and Don'ts/ Don't discount yourself based on your CV points. My CV was heavily
Important Tips dependent on Academics with no PORs and very few extra curriculars
post school.
You should be able to think on your feet and not freeze when something
unexpected happens.
Do ask help from peers in case of any problem.

Profile Information
Name Anshul Kataria
Interviewing firm Accenture Strategy (IB)
Slot
Interviewer
Undergraduate NSIT
College
Branch CSE
Work Experience
Firm Amdocs, NIKI
Sector IT
Round - 1 Personals
Interviewer Tell us about your work experience in Amdocs?
Candidate Answered satisfactorily
Interviewer Explain the impacts of your work in Amdocs.
Interviewer Two most important learning of yours about the telecom industry.
Interviewer Explain the products that you worked on in Amdocs in-depth?
Interviewer How would you innovate the payments in this product?
Interviewer What did you work on in Singtel?
Interviewer A case on the new market entry of a telecom service provider in the
Australian market.
Round - 3 Personals
Interviewer Why did you move from Amdocs to the startup?
Interviewer What would you like to change about Amdocs? What’s the one most
important area of improvement?
Interviewer What is your expectation from the summer internship and what kind of
work would interest you?
Candidate Answered satisfactorily. This was followed by HR Round.
Interviewer What are your future goals? Where do you see yourself in the next few
years?
Interviewer Do you have any preferences in terms of location?

Profile Information
Name Jasleen Kaur
Slot 08:45 AM
Interviewer
College
Firm NA
Sector NA
Interviewer Hello Jasleen, I am XYZ
Candidate Hello XYZ
Interviewer Do you mind if I eat my breakfast alongside?
Candidate No, not at all
Interviewer Okay, so let's begin with a brief introduction of yours
Candidate Introduced myself
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Great. So, you'd want to do a case first or a guesstimate?
Candidate I am fine with either of the two.
Interviewer Okay, so let's do a guesstimate. Estimate the number of beer bottles sold
in India.
Candidate Solved the guesstimate giving logic behind the approach and the
assumptions that I was taking.
Interviewer Asked if I geography could be one filter to which I replied yes.
Candidate Yes, right. Discussed how sales in dry states like Gujarat would differ from
that in other parts of the country.
Interviewer This was one filter that was left to be included. Rest, it was good. Do you
have any questions for me?
Candidate Yes. It's been a while since you have been in Accenture. So, what is it
about Accenture that has made you stay for that long?
Interviewer Answered. The HR will let you know about the further process. Thanks
Jasleen.
Candidate Okay. Thank you so much!
Interviewer Hello Jasleen, I am ABC.
Candidate Hello ABC.
Interviewer Let's begin with a brief introduction

Interviewer Then, he asked me to elaborate on the conference that I attended at
Imperial College London (about which I had mentioned while introducing
myself) and we had 8-10 mins discussion on the same. He pointed out
some negatives of the solution (on how household power consumption
can be reduced) that I presented during the conference and wanted me
to come up with logical solutions as to how those negatives could be
eliminated.
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Why Consulting? Why Accenture?
Candidate Answered confidently
Interviewer Okay. Let's begin with a guesstimate. I want you to estimate the total
number of petrol pump stations in Patiala (my hometown)
Candidate Laid out my approach after asking the clarifying questions and started
with solving the guesstimate. I was thinking out loud throughout and the
interviewer gave me cues wherever I got stuck. I used top-down
approach by calculating the number of vehicles and bottom-up approach
to calculate the no. of vehicles a typical petrol pump can service. Towards
the end, I got a little confused in solving the second-half(top-down) of the
guesstimate.
Interviewer Okay Jasleen. Have you solved this guesstimate before?
Candidate No, I haven't.
Interviewer So, I liked your approach. Usually, people get confused at the very
beginning and then are not able to reach the end. There was a little issue
in the end but overall, you handled it well. I'll give you a chance.
Candidate Thank you.
Round - 3 Personals and business knowledge
Interviewer Hello Jasleen
Candidate Hello sir
Interviewer Let's begin with a brief introduction
Interviewer I've heard you have great interest in marketing (this is what had been
conveyed by my buddy to the MD (buddy interactions are important and
buddies notice each and every detail that you tell them))
Candidate Confident yes
Interviewer Why do you want to get into consulting?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Is there any specific industry you're interested in?
Candidate Yes sir, consumer goods and services.
Interviewer Could you describe how digital is impacting consumer behaviour?
Candidate Answered (I had read up on the emerging trends in consumer services
from Accenture's website apart from other sources from marketing prep)
Interviewer Well-articulated.
Candidate Thank you, sir (with a smile)

Interviewer I have another question for you. Suppose there are 2 unlisted companies
FMCG companies and your client needs you to tell him the financial
metrics that you'd look at while choosing one of the two. What financial
metrics would you suggest?
Candidate I took my time to think and then thought out loud suggesting metrics like
measuring return on capital employed. It was like a discussion wherein
the MD led me to the answer by also giving his own inputs
Interviewer Okay. It was great talking to you. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked about his experience in consulting
Interviewer Answered
Candidate All the best!
Interviewer Thank you, sir.
Round - 4 HR Round (Personals)
Interviewer Generic questions- introduce yourself, strengths, weaknesses, location
preference, etc
DOs and Don'ts/ Be extremely confident of your abilities. They are looking for enthusiastic
Important Tips folks to join their firm. So, make sure you radiate positive energy and
confidence. During the interview, think out loud as that keeps the
interviewer in loop and engaged. Be well prepared with answers like Why
Consulting and Why Accenture (were asked in each round) and read
about the firm. Be aware of what the kind of work it does. Buddy Process:
Make efforts to reach out to your allocated buddy and leave a strong
impression.

Profile Information
Name Krutika Shahare
Slot 9:30 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate IIT Kanpur
College
Work Experience 1 year
Firm Dr. Reddy's
Sector Process Engineering
Candidate Brief information
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Case 1: 5 factors that lead to efficiency loss in an operating line of a
pharmaceutical industry. The case was related to a project that I was a
part of at Dr. Reddy’s
Candidate Mentioned all the factors that led to loss for example minor stoppages,
man-power loss, Type A, B cleaning procedures etc. Prioritized each on
the basis of how intense the effect of each is on the finished product. A
lot of cross-questioning occurred in this case since the interviewer was
from an Operations background.
Interviewer Asked me about a project in R&D on my resume that he found interesting
Candidate Gave a detailed explanation using the CAR framework. There was some
cross-questioning on the monetary effects of the project on the company
but it was mostly based on my work experience.
Interviewer Case 2: A small profitability case on the effect of Covid on the
pharmaceutical sector of the country.
Candidate brownie point: Gave some background information on the suppliers of
active pharmaceutical ingredients from China and how the supplier
relationships have been affected due to the ongoing tiffs with China
Interviewer Asked me 2 things I did not like in my previous company
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Any questions for me?
Candidate Since he was also from Operations background, I asked him what made
him choose consulting and how has his knowledge from Operations help
in specific projects at Accenture.
Interviewer Please wait for the next round
Round – 2 Unconventional Case

Candidate Answered
Interviewer Case 1: Again related to the pharma industry but the interviewer was
inclined to know the legal procedures to get a generic into the market.
Candidate A lot of cross-questioning on the paragraph 4 filing procedure but since I
had personally witnessed generics from Dr. Reddy's going for paragraph 4
filing, the case went smooth.
Interviewer Case 2: In the process of getting a generic approved by the FDA, where all
can a generics company reduce their time to file
Candidate Explained in detail the complete process of filing for FDA, some concepts
of ANDA helped. The interviewer was keen to know the legal procedures
that go behind.
Interviewer Why Accenture?
Candidate Explained about some on-going projects at Accenture that I knew of
related to the health and wellness sector and how well Accenture was
nurturing those projects. Had a personalized explanation of why I wanted
to go for consulting and why Accenture was the right choice.
DOs and Don'ts/ For people with work experience, thorough knowledge of the projects
Important Tips that you were a part of and thorough knowledge of the industry. All the
cases given to me were from the industry of my work experience. In my
first interview, I started asking questions to the interviewer about his
background once I got to know he had a prior experience in Operations. I
asked him why he chose consulting and how has an experience in
operations helped in the projects at Accenture. It gave a personal touch
to the interview and it became more like a two-way conversation.

Profile Information
Name Shantanu Chate
Slot
Interviewer
College
Branch Production & Industrial Engineering
Firm Ola Cabs, Axis Bank
Sector Logistics & Operations, Business Analytics
Interviewer Walk me through your CV
Candidate Mentioned top two points from every bucket
Interviewer Why did you shift from Ola Cabs to Axis Bank?
Candidate Mentioned about wanting to learn more about Business Analytics & BFSI
sector
Interviewer Question pertaining to an analytics model used in a project at Axis Bank &
how I implemented it
Candidate Explained how predictive analytics models are used to calculate the
propensity of a customer to buy a Health Insurance policy
Interviewer Estimate the number of petrol pumps in Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
Candidate Used bottom-up approach to estimate fuel consumption in city & fuel
supply at each petrol pump per day. Estimated number of 2W,4W,
Commercial vehicles based on Population mix.
(Engaged the interviewer by asking if I was making fair assumptions for #
pumps per station, time taken to fill for 2W, 4W & CV and fuel filled per
visit, # vehicles in the city etc.)
Interviewer What are the other ways to estimate the same?
Candidate Assuming 1 petrol pump suffices for an area of 5 sq km (based on
population density and vehicle ownership rates) and area of Mumbai
MMR ~2500 sq km also gives ~500 petrol pumps
Interviewer What was your role at Ola Cabs?
Candidate Explained how we made regional growth plans and how I tracked KPIs to
monitor progress and used data analytics to run Ops more efficiently
Interviewer Tell me more about the Elastic fares model that you had built for
Outstation category
Candidate Told how fares are a function of dynamic demand/supply, demand origin,
competition prices etc and how one or more of them can be used as
levers to drive Revenue
Interviewer Technical Qs: What all analytical softwares have you used? Have you ever
created a dashboard and which tools did you use?
Candidate R, SQL. Yes, MicroStrategy.

Interviewer Client is the CEO of a major retail chain and wants to know why profits
are declining for the past 1-1.5 years
Candidate Is it an industry wide issue or a client specific problem? How many stores
do they own? Region in which the chains operate?
Interviewer Client Specific. 500 across the country. Metro+ Urban
Candidate What is the primary issue declining revenues or rising costs? (Had created
a basic profitability tree on paper)
Interviewer Rising costs only, revenues are almost constant
Candidate I can break costs into Fixed & Variable buckets for a retail chain. Fixed
costs would include Salaries of employees, Rent and Variable costs would
include Inventory costs, Marketing expenses, Incentives etc
Interviewer Walk me through each one of the heads in detail
Candidate marketing costs might have increased because we might have opened
new stores recently and spent money on promotions, same for incentives
Interviewer Ok, Yes, Client spend on Promotions had increased but that was not the
major reason
Candidate Coming to fixed costs the Rent component might have increased.
We can look at PnL at store level and calculate Revenue per sq. ft and
compare it with rent per sq. ft to cluster the stores in profitability buckets
Interviewer Ok. So that way we identify unprofitable stores. What next?
Candidate We can try negotiating the terms of contract and find suitable alternative
store locations to ensure profitability from every store
Interviewer Tweaked the case, Now the client was an apparel chain owner and was
facing declining profits, crux was to identify that they had launched own
brand and their Average Ticket Size had fallen leading to decline in
revenues and Transportation costs had increased- elaborated each
bucket in the value chain.
Round - 3 Unconventional Case (MD Round)
Candidate Personals answer
Interviewer I see you have passed CFA L1 and you are applying for a Consulting
Internship, why not go for a Finance role instead?
Candidate Personals-Why Consulting over Finance? + quoted an M&A case that was
presented in Pre-Placement Talk- said maybe CFA knowledge could help
in such projects
Interviewer If selected, would you pursue advanced levels of CFA?
Candidate Yes (repeated few points from previous answer)
Interviewer Which industry are you more comfortable with Manufacturing or
Banking?
Candidate Manufacturing.
Interviewer Suppose I am an investor (PE/VC) and I have to invest in one of two
automobile component manufacturers, what should I look in the financial
statements?
Candidate A quick analysis of Income Statement would reveal the most info
Interviewer Ask me relevant heads and values and come at a conclusion

Candidate Asked the EBIT, EBITDA, Net Profit, CA, TA CL and calculated a few ratios
and concluded on basis on Return on Capital Employed value
Interviewer What all can come under Current Liabilities for the firm?
Candidate Accounts Payable, Lease Payable, Accrued Expenses etc
Interviewer & Current Assets?
Candidate Accounts receivables, Prepaid Expenses, Cash, Inventory etc
Interviewer What is Cash Conversion Cycle?
Candidate Explained
Interviewer Any Questions?
Candidate Asked about Accenture Innovation Architecture
DOs and Don'ts/ In case you have work experience, be thorough with the business model
Important Tips of the company and be prepared to explain how exactly you
implemented the projects mentioned in CV

Profile Information
Name Shweta Rai
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate G.B.Pant University, Pantnagar
College
Branch Civil Engineering
Firm
Sector
Round - 1 Personals
Candidate Answered
Interviewer So, you worked in Coal India Ltd. (CIL), where were you posted?
Candidate CMPDI HQ, RANCHI
Interviewer Okay, CIL is one of our clients. Do you know them (took names of
director, etc)?
Candidate Yes sir
Interviewer You have coal fields in Singrauli also. Have you ever been there?
Candidate Yes sir, I went there for inter coal athletics meet, never for office work
though.
Interviewer Okay. What all sports you play?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer And you mentioned you are an influencer. What exactly is that?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Okay, so do you earn money also? how does that work?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer You are a gold medallist, and then all this, very impressive, how do you
manage time for all this?
Candidate Told about time management skills, etc
Interviewer Okay, so in this role, you will have to travel a lot. I have travelled 40
countries in just few years
Candidate Of course, sir, I would love that in fact
Interviewer Nice. Do you know Python?
Candidate No sir, I don’t.
Interviewer Oh, that will be used during your internship
Candidate Okay sir, I will learn that before my internship period
Interviewer Very nice. Thank you Shweta, have a nice day
Candidate Thank you sir, same to you.
Round - 2 Personals

Candidate Answered
Interviewer What was your work in CIL?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer How will you rate CIL as a company, the work culture etc?
Candidate Answered (positive)
Interviewer So, you mean CIL is a good company? I have heard otherwise though
Candidate I can say this for sure that everybody there was so supportive, open and
caring for me. They helped me during my cat preparation, they gave me
opportunities to show my work during seminars etc, and praised me for
even my small contributions. I cannot imagine having better seniors and
colleagues.
Interviewer Okay, that is very good. Thank you Shweta, see you soon then.
Candidate Thank you sir.

Profile Information
Name Sweety
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Partners & MD
Undergraduate Kirori Mal College, DU
College
Branch BSc.(Hons.) Statistics
Firm NA
Sector NA
Interviewer Hi Sweety. How are you? Different name…Tell me about yourself?
Candidate Answered the well prepped “tell me about yourself” subtly.
Interviewer Why Statistics? How do you think it implies in MBA and consult?
Candidate Answered with a mixture of Why MBA + Data driven, analysis and its
uses.
Interviewer Glanced through the CV pointing good grades and then asked about the
internship section. Describe your experiences in all your internships? (I
had 3)
Candidate Explained the crux of internship following what I achieved and learned
from the whole process and how it has helped me reach where I am
today.
Interviewer I had two projects. They asked to explain it?
Candidate Answered similarly explaining crux, learnings and the concepts I covered
in each of them.
Interviewer I had a consulting case solution intern experience. He asked me a
guesstimate on similar grounds. To calculate the per day consumption of
chocolates in India.
Candidate Asked some prelims about no. of chocolate types covered, verified all the
ballpark figures I was taking and reached on the final number.
Interviewer Some further talks and then sent forward.
Interviewer A brief introduction
Candidate Answered with the short “tell me about yourself”
Interviewer Had 4-5 national level case competitions in my achievements. Asked to
describe them?
Candidate Explained in short, the case, approach and motivation behind the
particular solution.
Interviewer Further questioning on other prospects of the case I described.
Candidate Tackled them as and how the ideas popped in my head.
Interviewer A trick question- How long can you travel from a scooter if you have a
spare tyre and 1 tyre can travel only for 5 kms.

Candidate Answered correctly. Point to be noted: You don't have any toolbox.
Interviewer Asked a market entry case about entry of a new chocolate variety in the
market? Was easy going.
Candidate Followed the 3CP framework. Asked prelim questions about the market,
positioning etc.
Interviewer Started with economic feasibility. Calculated market size using
guesstimate. Moved forward to market share and others.
Candidate Stopped the case further satisfied with approach and asked me to
summarise.
Interviewer Did that outline all aspects of the case
Candidate Some talks further and then moved forward
Round - 3 Personals (MD Round)
Candidate Told
Interviewer Some CV highlights you can point
Candidate Highlighted a few from all sections
Interviewer Further probing on the internships and case competitions.
Candidate Answered briefly.
Interviewer Why Accenture?
Candidate Told about all the positives.
Interviewer Asking further about the Knowledge centres.
Candidate Some further talks and then offer raised.
DOs and Don'ts/ Don't expect very heavy cases. Mine was triggered because I had a
Important Tips market entry case in my CV. Prepare your CV thoroughly. Sit in the
interview with an open mind.

ARTHUR D. LITTLE

Profile Information
Name Aayush Sahay
Interviewing firm Arthur D. Little
Slot 9:00 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate IIT Guwahati
College
Branch Mechanical
Firm American Express
Sector Finance
Interviewer A technological company has created a teleportation device. You are
supposed to create a market entry plan for the same.
Candidate Some clarifying questions on the same about the company, competition
and market in mind.
Interviewer No competition, completely new product, no similar product exists.
Market depends on you.
Candidate Some discussion on market. Pointers on which two decide: Ease of setting
up a market and need for the product.
Interviewer Which factor is more important?
Candidate Need for product is more important since air travel today (especially
international travel) is quite time consuming and expensive)
Interviewer Develop a pricing plan for setting up the product for national travel
within India
Candidate Developed a pricing plan using domestic air travel as a reference and
willingness to pay by the customer
Interviewer Do a sizing a for the market that we can expect for the same on the price
just discussed
Candidate Simple guesstimate
Round - 2 HR interview
Interviewer How was your case interview?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Why should we select you
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Name a person in your life whom you don’t like but is actually a good
person. Why?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Name a person who doesn’t like you. Why
Candidate Answered
Interviewer What are your weaknesses?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer If we were to reject you today what could be a reason?

Candidate Answered
Interviewer If you had to choose between MBB and ADL what would be your answer?
And Why?
Candidate Answered diplomatically. ADL has a very open office structure with little
hierarchy.

Profile Information
Name Aditya Suresh
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Manager - Round 1 and Managing Partner - Round 2
Undergraduate NIT Trichy
College
Firm GEP Worldwide
Sector Consulting
Interviewer You have just invented the world's first teleportation device. Should you
launch it in India?
Candidate I would first like to know more about the company, product and the
market. About the company, I'd like to know its current revenue streams,
and its primary objective (profitability/maximising market share etc.).
About the product, I'd like to know of any operational constraints,
capacity, cost of developing the product & operational costs of running
the product. I would also like to know of how long it takes to teleport a
person from place A to place B, and if there are any risks involved. Are
there hubs for teleportation, or can a person directly be teleported to his
house? (Last mile connectivity) Coming to the market, do we know
anything about the demand for the same, are there any regulatory
requirements that I need to be aware of, and is only domestic travel
permitted, or can international travel also be permitted? Also, is there
any patent(s) on the product, so that competitors cannot ape it?
Interviewer The teleportation device is your first product. You have spent money in
developing the product, obviously, but that is a sunk cost now. The
operational cost for running the device is 0. One device can teleport one
person instantly, at a time. No cool down time is necessary. The company
is just looking at maximising profits for now. There are no risks involved,
and yes, only domestic travel is permitted. You could ignore competition
and other regulatory requirements for now. As far as last mile
connectivity is concerned, we do not offer that. The hubs would be
similar to airports, such that (say), the device would transport you
instantly from Mumbai to Kolkata.
Candidate Alright, since the aim is to maximise profits, I want to know if there is any
number/% in mind, and any time frame for it too.
Interviewer No, we do not have any set numbers. I want to see your approach, more
than the numbers.
Candidate So, Profit = Revenue - Costs. Do we have an estimate on the costs we
have incurred so far, and the costs expected to be incurred on personnel,
parking, rent and other operations?
Interviewer Just focus on the revenue side

Candidate Revenue = Price per trip * Number of trips. Shall we first look at the
pricing?
Interviewer Yes. Can you tell me the different pricing strategies you could employ?
Candidate We could look at cost+markup, parity pricing or value-based pricing.
Interviewer In case of parity pricing, what could you compare this to?
Candidate Since the USP of this teleportation device is speed, and not last mile
connectivity, this looks very similar to any airline. In essence, it is an
airline where travel time is reduced from 2 hours (Average domestic
flight time) to 2 seconds. Since there is really no advantage of using an
aeroplane over a teleportation device, pricing it similar to leading airline
companies should ideally see a 100% shift from those who travel by
flights to those who would use this product. This is apart from those
others, who would shift from other modes of transport to teleportation,
due to the added benefit.
Interviewer Assuming you charge ₹2000 (similar to any leading airline) for one trip,
estimate the market size using your own assumptions.
Candidate So, assuming that there would be a shift from flights to the teleporter, I
will estimate the number of people currently flying by flights in a week.
For simplicity sake, I shall assume 30 main hubs (~1 in each state).
Assuming there to be three daily flights from each hub to every other
hub, number of daily flights = 3*2*30C2. Taking the capacity of each flight
to be 30 Rows * 6 seats per row = 180, and an average of 75% occupancy,
number of passengers per flight = 135. Thus, daily number of passengers
flying from these 30 hubs = 135 per flight* 2610 flights = 3,52,350
passengers flying daily. 100% of these should now start travelling by the
teleporter, apart from those who either switch from other modes of
transport, or those who travel more frequently due to reduced time.
Thus, the minimum expected number of people using the teleportation
machine is 3.5L per day.
Interviewer I'd like to stop the interview here. Thank you!
Round - 2 HR & CV Related Questions
Interviewer Basic questions about past work experience, why consulting and why ADL
DOs and Don'ts/ Be prepared to demonstrate strong interest in consulting and working at
Important Tips Arthur D Little, in particular

Profile Information
Name Prachi Tosniwal
Slot 11:30 AM
Interviewer Arvind Rajeswaran (Round 1) and Barnik Chitran Maitra (Round 2)
Undergraduate IIT Guwahati
College
Branch Biotechnology (B.Tech)
Firm EXL Analytics
Sector Consulting
Round - 1 Unconventional Market Sizing Case
Interviewer Told his background and asked about mine.
Candidate Had prepared the answer.
Interviewer Let's start with the case. Your client is a scientist who has recently
invented a teleportation machine. Estimate the market size.
Candidate Asked a few questions related to the objective of the client, timelines of
the teleportation device, its availability, possible places of travel and
access to machines, whether the product is patented (first mover
advantage + to understand competitor landscape) and finally any specific
customer segment client wants to target.
Interviewer Client wants to estimate market size in dollar/rupees. The teleportation
machine takes 2 secs to transport people. There is no constraint on
machine production (it can meet the demand) and people can travel
anywhere in the world. The product is patented. Can you tell me who will
be our potential customers?
Candidate Sure. We can either lend our product (sell or lease) or we can provide the
services of the teleportation machine ourselves. Airlines or the
government (for healthcare, war emergencies and travel of officials) can
be approached to lend our product. If we choose to cater to the travel
needs ourselves, we can potentially target the affluent class or the
business officials (companies). Do we know if the client wants to lend the
product or is he ready to enter the travel market all by himself?
Interviewer If the client wants to target the airlines, what will be the available market
size? Can partner with multiple airlines.
Candidate Travel can be divided into domestic travel and international travel. Our
teleportation machine can easily replace international travel and long-
distance domestic travel. Is it okay to focus on international travel only
for now? (including long distance domestic travel could complicate the
calculations.)
Interviewer Go ahead.
Candidate For international travel we have 6 metro cities. Assuming that all the
metro cities are the same, I'll calculate the number of passengers for 1
metro city (say Delhi) and then extrapolate the numbers. Is that okay?
Interviewer That's fine. How will you calculate the number of passengers?

Candidate I would like to approach the problem from the supply side (physical
constraint of an airport). Number of passengers = number of runways *
number of flights per runway * capacity of a flight * % occupancy. To
calculate the number of flights per runway - we can break down the
number of operational airport hours into peak hours and non-peak hours.
Generally, the international flights take off at night (say 12-4), so if the
airport is operational for 20 hours, peak hours = 4 and non-peak hours =
16. Are my assumptions in line and do we have any data regarding the
number of runways?
Interviewer Let's assume that there is only 1 runway for international travel and there
is no flight scheduled during the non-peak hours. During the peak hours,
there is no gap between to take offs. Please proceed.
Candidate Runway = 1
Number of flights per runway = (60 minutes / 5 minutes (time taken per
take off))*4 hours (peak hours) = 48
Capacity = ~500 (as per my experience, international flights generally
have a 3-3-3 seating arrangement in economy. Considering 50 rows, 9
seats each row and a few seats in business class and first class - let's
assume there are 500 seats available. Does that sound good?)
Occupancy = *80% (assumption, on an average)
Interviewer Looks good. How will you price the tickets? Just tell me the factors.
Candidate Since it's a rare product and first in the market, we can price the tickets
using a combination of cost-based approach and value-based approach.
We can calculate the break-even prices for our client and mark up the
prices using the value-based approach. The normal airline tickets can be
used as a proxy for the same along with the value of the time saved
(income * the income segment of the potential customer). We also need
to look at the potential risks of our products versus the airplanes (prone
to accidents or mishaps).
Interviewer Is there anything else that our client needs to lookout for while entering
the market?
Candidate Before making the final decision, the client should also look at the risks of
market entry. We can divide these risks into internal risks and external
risks. Internal risks would be product related (accuracy of the product -
does it change with time, are there any side effects, the fuel on which the
machine operates are a few concerns at the top of my head). On the
other hand, external issues can be competitor-related (since the product
is patented, we can assume that for the next 4-5 years at least the market
would be ours), government-related (rules and regulations to use and sell
the product) and customer-related (since it's a new product, customers
need to trust that the product is reliable and safe to use). Am I missing
anything here?
Interviewer I think you have covered mostly everything. Let's end the case here.
(didn't want me summarize). Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate Asked a question related to his profile.
Interviewer Answered. Please wait for the second round.
Round - 2 General questions
Interviewer Gave his introduction. Asked about me. Asked if I was nervous.
Candidate Told the 'tell me about yourself' answer with modifications.

Interviewer There were a few follow up questions related to my acads, cities I have
grown up in.
Candidate Answered. Some more back and forth questions. Just a general
discussion.
Interviewer By now you must have figured out that we would like to extend you an
offer, if you accept. Is there anything you would like to ask me?
Candidate Thank you, I would be happy to intern with ADL. Asked a few projects
related questions and had a discussion around it.
DOs and Don'ts/ Try not to lose your calm and know your CV inside out + a few points
Important Tips which are not mentioned in your CV.

Profile Information
Name Shishir Agrawal
Slot 8:30 AM
Interviewer Amit Maheshwari (Round 1) and Barnik Maitra (Round 2)
College
Branch Civil Engineering
Firm EXL Service
Sector Consultant (US based banking client)
Interviewer Introduced himself and asked me to introduce myself and how's my day
going.
Candidate Gave prepared answer. My introduction included that I am from Kota.
Interviewer Oh, I am also from Kota. Where do you live in Kota?
Candidate Gave answer. Talked a little more about Kota.
Interviewer Ok. We are running a little short on time so let’s jump on to case now.
Your client is in Passenger Cruise Line business and he wants your help in
deciding whether to buy a new cruise ship for an investment of $250
million.
Candidate Reiterated the case statement. Asked for a minute to draft prelim
questions. (Got my clue from $250 mil investment that it’s going to
involve numbers). Asked why client wants to buy a new ship, is it
different from current fleet of ships, more info on client’s business,
revenue model (a single ticket or individual pricing for everything),
Business geography, competition) and time to break even
Interviewer Client wants to buy new ship for future needs, its same as current fleet,
client provides 3-night tour packages on its cruise ship in Mumbai.
Customers have to pay a fixed ticket price that will include all benefits like
food, drinks, stay, recreational activities, pool, games, shows etc. Average
life of ship is 5 years
Candidate I explained my approach that I can calculate the revenue we can generate
from this new ship and the cost incurred. Based on this we can calculate
the return we can expect on our $250 mill investment.
Interviewer Fair enough. Proceed with this approach.
Candidate Started with Revenue. Divided Revenue into Price per customer *
Customer Capacity * Occupancy * No. of trips in 5 years
Interviewer Assume Capacity to be 1500. Occupancy is 75%. How many trips do you
think will we be able to make?

Candidate Tours will be 3 days long. Assumed 1 day between tours for restocking all
the stuff and maintenance. Assumed 1-2 month when ships will not
operate due to. monsoon season or due to some maintenance. From this
no. of trips = (365-30)/4
Interviewer A one-day gap between 2 tours is very long. They can operate
continuously without any break. Now let’s come to price. How much do
you think we can charge our customers?
Candidate Recalculated no. of trips. For price, I pointed out that our closest
competitors are high end resorts so we can calculate cost for same
facilities in a high-end resort and then mark up as we are providing one-
of-a-kind experiences. Divided into various components - Breakfast,
Lunch Dinner, Drinks, Room, Swimming Pool, Shows, Spa, Games etc. Put
a price on each and calculated total Price. Was checking with interviewer
at each stem and explaining my rational for the prices.
Interviewer Ok So based on this, can you calculate the expected revenue?
Candidate Did some quick calculation. Took Alignment. Moved to Cost Part
Interviewer What are the major drivers for cost?
Candidate Divided my cost into - Employees (Training + Wages), Supplies used,
Shows (Artist fee), Fuel, Maintenance, Marketing, Clearances
Interviewer Ok. I think we can wrap up the case now. Any question?
Candidate Asked a question.
Round - 2 Personals
Interviewer How are you. How was your round 1?
Candidate Answered (Summarized my case in 1-2 lines)
Interviewer Tell me something about yourself.
Candidate Gave prepared answer.
Interviewer So Shishir you are from Kota. When did u started going coaching?
Candidate Class 9th.
Interviewer So even after being from Kota and going to coaching institutes from class
9, u just managed to get AIR 3177 in JEE? Do you think u
underperformed?
Candidate A little surprised. Said I had a competitive advantage over others in class
9-10th. It had a positive impact on my performance. Pointed out
Olympiad results from resume. In 11th and 12th I was among top batch of
my coaching but in exams I messed up some questions. Gave some
philosophical answer that whatever happens on D Day you have to live
with it. etc.
(At this point I was just wondering, when will case interview start. We
were just having some normal conversation from last 10 minutes)
Interviewer Yes, I agree. I can also relate to this. Even I messed up my JEE. I was
expecting under AIR 10 but got AIR 100. I was feeling really terrible after
my results (continued more on this). How did you cope up from this?
What were your learnings?
Candidate At this point I was going crazy. Will there be a case now? How will I solve
a case in so less time? I answered his questions. Related learning to CAT
exam (pointed out high percentile this time)
Interviewer Was completely in agreement with my answers. Told about his learnings

Candidate At this point we were just having normal conversation. I was relating to
his experiences. Trying to compare both.
Interviewer He asked more about my POR in college
Candidate Answered. He interrupted a few times and we went in full details of what
I did.
Interviewer Ok Shishir. If we offer you this role, will you accept it?
Candidate Yes. Gave prepared answer to why I wanted to join ADL and Consultancy
(Used the content my Buddy used to pitch ADL)
Interviewer Any questions
Candidate Asked a prepared question.
Interviewer Ok. Go to the waiting room. They will let you know about the results.
Candidate I had to wait over 15 mins after my interview.
DOs and Don'ts/ Keep Calm. Practice cases. Don't ignore personals. There is no fixed
Important Tips pattern in an interview, be ready for anything.
Try to pick cues from interviewer, it helped me to do well in round 1.
Explain your thought process at each step also summarize your approach
before you proceed.

MASTERCARD
MASTERCARD

Profile Information
Name Akula Aditya
Interviewing firm MasterCard
Slot 10:00 AM
Interviewer Reshmi Gosh
College
Firm Reliance Industries Limited
Sector Operations
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Can you give me an estimate of bottled water market in India?
Candidate So, just to clarify, you want me to estimate the number of litres of
packaged drinking water consumed in India per day or do you want me to
estimate the cost?
Interviewer Yes, go ahead with the number of litres
Candidate So, we are not considering RO users, right?
Interviewer Yes, do not add RO users.
Candidate Can I take a couple of minutes to come up with a framework?
Interviewer Sure.
Candidate I am thinking about taking the total population of India and then segment
it based on urban and rural living population and then further segment
them on basis of income as high, mid and low-income group and then
estimate the bottled water market size
Interviewer Ok, looks fine
Candidate In Urban population, low-income group, the number of people drinking
packaged water would be less as this group consists majorly of daily wage
workers with low income, I am taking the penetration here to be 20%, is
it fine?
Interviewer Yes, go ahead
Candidate In Urban population, mid income group, the number of people drinking
packaged water would be more as this group has a lot of spare money
and the usage of packaged water is common and RO's are costlier
alternatives, require a huge initial investment compared to water price. I
am assuming 70% of the population to be using packaged drinking water.
Is this number fine?
Interviewer Yes
Candidate Coming to the high-income group, the penetration of RO's is very high as
they have sufficient income for the investment in RO. I am assuming that
only 30% of the population here use packaged drinking water. Is this fine?

Interviewer Yes. Can you just quote a factor for percentage of rural bottled water
drinkers, given urban percentage of bottled water drinkers and then do
the calculation?
Candidate If I want to take a factor of the urban, I would choose a number lower
than urban bottled water consumers as the penetration of packaged
water is lesser in rural India. I would say 80%, is this figure fine?
Interviewer Yes. Thank you!
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Your client is a credit card issuer to employees and is facing profit decline
in the past 6 months. Find the issue and give recommendations
Candidate Can I know if it is an industry wide issue or specific to our client?
Interviewer It is specific to our firm
Candidate Who are our major customers?
Interviewer We supply credit cards to employees majorly.
Candidate As it is a credit card company, can I assume its major sources of revenue
to be coming from delayed payments and account opening charges?
Interviewer Yes, those are our major revenue streams.
Candidate Can I know if the costs incurred by the company have increased or
decreased in the past 6 months?
Interviewer No, the costs incurred are roughly the same as in the past.
Candidate So, since the costs are almost the same and we are facing profit decline,
the revenues are declining. Am I correct?
Interviewer Yes.
Candidate Coming to the revenues, was there any change in the number of accounts
that are getting opened?
Interviewer No, the number of accounts is almost the same as in the past.
Candidate So, the revenue dip is due to a decrease in number of delayed payments?
Interviewer Yes.
Candidate Revenue from delayed payments can be written as (total number of
delayed transactions*average transaction amount per delayed
transaction*delay rate). What decreased among the three?
Interviewer The number of transactions and average transaction amount are
decreasing.
Candidate Since the number and average amount are decreasing, let me first look
into why there is a decrease in the number, then I will look into the
amount decrease is this fine?
Interviewer Sue, go ahead.
Candidate As this is a firm specific issue, I am expecting the number of transactions
decreased for our company only?
Interviewer Yes, the total number of transactions industry wide are the same.
Candidate So, there is no change in market size, but our market share has
decreased. Let me look at it from the customer's point of view, and look
at the customer journey and try to find the pain points there. Is that fine?

Interviewer Yes
Candidate As a customer, I would first choose what to buy, then choose among the
various offers offered by various cards, and choose the best one among
the ones I have and then make the purchase. Later I would pay the credit
card bill. I would like to analyse every step-in detail; can I go ahead?
Interviewer Yes please.
Candidate Since the market size is same, the number of purchases industry wide is
same and hence the customers are still buying the same amount as
normal. Is this a correct assumption?
Interviewer Yes
Candidate Coming to choosing alternatives, there may be new players in the credit
card industry, like amazon ICICI credit card which provide better rewards
than conventional credit cards, which might be the reason a lot of card
owners are switching from using our credit card?
Interviewer Yes, there are new entrants who have captured a bit of our market share,
but it still does not explain our dip completely, can you explore further?
Candidate Yes. Coming to the next step, the customer would make a purchase after
choosing our card. Were there any problems with the payments recently?
Interviewer Yes, our client uses Visa services to secure their payments and a number
of transactions recently were declined due to a glitch in Visa payment
gateway's software upgrade. Can you summarize the case now?
Candidate Yes, our client was a credit card issuer and was facing a revenue decline
in the past 6 months. We found out the issue was majorly due to a faulty
software upgrade of Visa and new entrants offering better discounts. I
would suggest our client to either ask for a roll back on Visa payments
platform or to switch it and to provide better discounts to customers by
tying up with major e-retailers so as to offer competitive discounts.
DOs and Don'ts/ Always ask the interviewer about their views about what they think of
Important Tips the approach so far whenever in doubt.

Profile Information
Name Ayushi Chirania
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate Hansraj
College
Branch Computer Science
Firm NA
Sector NA
Interviewer The interviewer first introduced himself and had a small talk with me. So
tell me about yourself
Candidate Gave a prepared answer
Interviewer How has IIMC been so far for you? How is the online MBA?
Candidate Talked about my expectations and reality. Spoke about the placement
days, stress and time management and drastic change in the
environment of DU and IIM.
Interviewer So, you are from Delhi, have you ever been to a concert?
Candidate Talked about the Marshmello concert I had been to.
Interviewer Okay. So, there is a Hollywood singer coming to perform in Delhi.
Estimate the ticket demand. Also let the singer be Enrique Iglesias.
Candidate Okay. I rephrased the case and took a min to structure my approach. Is
the singer performing in any other city? And what is the price per ticket?
Interviewer Mumbai and Bangalore. It starts from 2000/-
Candidate Okay. Let’s take the population of Delhi as 2cr. Because it is a concert
only people in the age group 16-24 will be interested in the event. 20% of
2cr is 40lakhs. Since the ticket prices are high, only the high-income group
and small part of middle-income grp will be able to afford it. High income
is 10% i.e., 4 lakhs and middle-income group is 30% i.e., 12 lakhs.
Interviewer Okay carry on.
Candidate Assuming that 7.5% of the higher income group will be interested in the
event ticket demand is 30,000 and assuming 2.5% of the middle-income
group is interested, the ticket demand is 30k.We can ignore the number
of people travelling from nearby cities for the concert. Now since Enrique
Iglesias is a 2010 star, we can assume that a small part of age grp higher
than 24 will be interested in the event.
Interviewer That would be a very small part and we can ignore it here
Candidate Okay. So total ticket demand is around 60,000.
Interviewer Okay that is a decent number and approach is good. Let's close the case
here
Candidate Okay
Interviewer So why MasterCard and why consulting?

Candidate Gave a prepared answer related it with my internship experience. Talked
about the famous work culture of MasterCard.
Interviewer So that will be all. Thank you.
Interviewer The interviewer introduced himself and then started with the interview.
So, tell me something about yourself.
Candidate Gave the rehearsed answer.
Interviewer Why MBA? You are a fresher? Why didn’t you work for a few years?
Candidate Gave the rehearsed answer.
Interviewer Okay so let's look into a case. 2 men are dead in a cabin in the woods.
There is extinguished fire all around. Anyone will be able to identify these
men. Who are the men and how did they die?
Candidate There can be multiple reasons for death. They are in the woods so it
could be an animal attack, an accident, murder, suicide or a fight where
they killed each other.
Interviewer Let’s rule out all except the accident.
Candidate Okay. We know the trees nearby are burnt. So, the cause of death must
be fire.
Interviewer No.
Candidate First, I can figure out why they were in the woods. They must have gone
for hunting/recreation or they were lost.
Interviewer Anyone can identify them.
Candidate Okay. I also know that they could be identified by anyone so they must be
someone famous like an actor, politician and sportsperson.
Interviewer Those men aren’t famous.
Candidate Okay one other way to identify them is through their outfit. They can be
policemen, firemen, miners, army or…
Interviewer They are from the army.
Candidate Oh okay. They can be fighter pilots and they must have faced an aircraft
failure and decided for an emergency landing in the barren area of the
woods. Their aircraft would have blown apart leading to the fire and their
death.
Interviewer Great. So, let’s close the case and be in the waiting room.
DOs and Don'ts/ Keep calm and have a structure before starting with your answer.
Important Tips

Profile Information
Name Czaee Shefali Kolekar
Slot 9:00 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate St Xavier's College, Mumbai
College
Branch Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM)
Work Experience
Firm
Sector
Interviewer You have a very unique name. What does it mean?
Candidate It's the name of a flower in Marathi. The spelling has been taken from
that of the Russian Czar.
Interviewer That's interesting. So, tell me something about yourself.
Candidate (answered from what I had prepared from the personals form)
Interviewer Okay…so why do you want to get into consulting, despite already having
a background in marketing?
Candidate (answered from what I had prepared from the personals form)
Interviewer Let's solve a quick guesstimate. How many ping pong balls can you fit
inside an aircraft?
Candidate Sure…can I please take a minute to gather my thoughts?
Interviewer Okay
Candidate Is this a passenger aircraft with all the regular fixtures including the seats,
and storage compartments, etc?
Interviewer Yes, think of it as a domestic aircraft
Candidate And we have to fit in ping pong balls without removing any of the
fixtures?
Interviewer Yes, that's correct
Candidate Is it okay if I being with estimating the volume of the aircraft and then
divide it by the volume of a single ping pong ball to find the number?
Interviewer That sounds reasonable. How will you find the volume of the aircraft?
Candidate Can I assume it to be a cuboid of dimensions 150ft*15ft*20ft?
Interviewer Why the assumption of 150 ft for length?
Candidate So, a regular aircraft has around 30 rows, and I am assuming that each
row takes around 3 feet of space, another 5 feet each towards the
entrance and exit, 4-5 feet on both ends for the washrooms and the rest
for the cockpit.
Interviewer Okay…sounds like a decent assumption
Candidate Now, I would like to divide the aircraft into two halves and start with the
top half, which has the seating space.
Interviewer Okay

Candidate Can I assume that 25% of the space is occupied by fixtures and the rest is
empty?
Interviewer Okay, that makes sense…I am more interested in what you think about
the bottom half
Candidate So, in the bottom half, I think we should have around 50% of the space
available, which is usually used to store the cargo.
Interviewer Why only 50%?
Candidate I am assuming that half the space would be used up by the internal
machinery of the aircraft like the engine, etc.
Interviewer Okay. Let's stop here. Do you have any questions for me?
Candidate I have a rough idea about what MasterCard does in the consulting
department, but could you please give me a better idea of what kind of
projects you all deal with?
Interviewer Answered
Round - 2 Growth Strategy Case and Guesstimate
Interviewer Let me tell you a little about myself, and then you can introduce yourself,
and we'll begin with the case
Candidate Sure, Sir
Interviewer (Told about his work ex)
Candidate (Introduced myself)
Interviewer Case: A bank which provides thin file credit cards wants to expand to
other geographies, which factors would you consider while choosing a
country?
Candidate Could you please tell me a little more about the bank and thin file credit
cards
Interviewer Explained thin file credit
Candidate Divided the factors into government and regulation, market size and
expected market share, and feasibility of setting up.
Interviewer Let's start with regulations, what all would you look at?
Candidate Answered, did the same for the other factors as well
Interviewer Do you know how does a bank earn money through a credit card?
Candidate Mentioned possible ways like subscription fee, transaction fees, etc.
Interviewer How much fees do you think all credit card transactions on Amazon
incur?
Candidate Solved as a guesstimate
Interviewer How many ICICI credit cards do you think are there in India?
Candidate Solved as a guesstimate
DOs and Don'ts/ Be confident and ask a lot of questions while solving guesstimates and
Important Tips cases. Ask in case you are unsure about anything (I asked the interviewer
what thin file credit is since I wasn't aware).

Profile Information
Name Prerna Raj
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate Defence University
College
Branch Forensic Science
Firm Pioneer Bfactory Consultancy and Services Pvt. Ltd.
Sector Academic Consulting
Candidate Spent 1 minute talking briefly about schooling and college, about why
forensics and psychology, tried to connect it to my approach in decision
making and 1.5 minutes about work-ex
Interviewer Follow up question on work experience
Candidate Answered it
Interviewer Why MBA?
Candidate Answered it, tried to connect it with interest in business psychology
Interviewer Asked whether you have won any case study competition? Please tell the
details of the same
Candidate Talked about case study competitions that I have won and mentioned in
my CV. Talked about Mahindra Rise Competition. Some details about
what was my approach and what all helped me in winning it.
Interviewer Why Consulting?
Candidate Answered it, tried to connect it with my work experience. How Academic
consulting has led to my interest in consulting. How consulting aligns with
my interests in Business psychology
Interviewer Let’s do a case: Our client is a third-party logistics company who has been
seeing a challenge in terms of EBITDA. Give recommendations on how to
reverse the situation.
Candidate Asked some questions to clarify the case further and stated some
assumptions
Interviewer Asked some follow up questions on my assumptions
Candidate Told the approach of starting with the profitability equation. Then asked
further question on whether the issue is from revenue side or cost side.
Further went deeper into the cost side. Divided the cost side in two legs:
Fixed and variable. Divided fixed cost further into rent, salary and others.
Then divided the variable cost into storage and transportation. Was there
issue in Operations, marketing or was it some financial problem
altogether. Deep dived into transportation side. Focussed on transport to
warehouse and inventory cost.
Interviewer Stopped in between and asked me to give recommendations

Candidate Stated recommendations on the basis of the analysis so far: Incentivize
labour, Shift in locations
Interviewer Asked a couple of clarifications question
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Why do you think you can be a good Consultant?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer What are your expectations from Mastercard and what do you know
about Mastercard Consulting?
Candidate Answered, talked about my career expectations and how they align with
the Mastercard Consulting
Interviewer What is the biggest challenge a Consultant might have faced in these
unusual times?
Candidate Answered keeping Covid 19 situation in perspective
Interviewer Case: Our client has a rental business for furniture and electronic
equipment. They were seeing a decline in revenue growth for past 5-6
years and now it is stagnant. What are the potential reasons and suggest
recommendations
Candidate Focussed on Lower leasing fee. Divided the structure further into client
recommendation & lease contracts. Divided Client recommendation
further into Requirements, new customers, competition, frequency of
use. Divided lease contract into new contract and increase of duration.
Interviewer Asked questions on recommendations
Candidate Answered: Discount on bulk payments, Duration of 5-6 months with
payment in 3 installations, Discount via external merchant, Make
duration of a period of 11 months
Interviewer Do you have any questions or suggestions for us?
Candidate Asked about his experience

PwC

Profile Information
Name Pooja Das
Interviewing firm PwC - Tech Consulting
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate Jadavpur University
College
Branch BE
Firm Bharti Airtel
Sector Telecommunications
Round - 1 Personals
Candidate Answered
Interviewer What was your favourite project while working at Airtel?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Have you ever worked on Cloud computing?
Candidate No
Interviewer Would you like to work on cloud computing?
Candidate Okay
Interviewer Do you have any preferences for location?
Candidate No
Round - 2 Personals
Interviewer What tools are used for cloud computing?
Candidate Don't know
Interviewer Did you do any analytical projects in Airtel?
Candidate Yes
Interviewer Which tool did you use?
Candidate Microsoft Excel
Interviewer What are drawbacks of using Excel for such purposes?
Candidate Answered the question
Interviewer Do you have any question for us?
Candidate No
DOs and Don'ts/ Be calm and confident
Important Tips

Profile Information
Name Shikhar Nathani
Interviewing firm PwC - Tech Consulting
Slot 8:00 AM
Interviewer Soumen Dutta, Prasenjit Samajpati
Undergraduate IIEST Shibpur
College
Branch Computer Science
Firm PwC
Sector Technology Consulting
Round - 1 Personals
Candidate Gave prepared answer. Talked mostly about my education and previous
work experience.
Interviewer Asked about the team in PwC of which I was a part of in my previous
stint.
Candidate I shared the details of the vertical and the Partners under whom I was
deployed.
Interviewer Why do you want to intern at PwC, given that you have left the firm?
Candidate I said that my intention to leave was to do an MBA, and that I would be
happy to return in a business-oriented role.
Interviewer In my experience, non-MBAs make better managers than MBAs, so why
should I take you?
Candidate I am acquiring business knowledge and concepts via training, that are
otherwise built over time via experience, and acquiring it from the best
possible place at IIM C. Apart from that I believe that I have the qualities
to manage and lead people, which is important for any manager.
Interviewer Asked me about the details of my project and my role in it.
Candidate I shared the relevant details.
Interviewer Asked me about the value that the internship would bring to me, and the
value that I would bring in the two months.
Candidate I said that I wanted to experience the projects from a business analyst's
perspective. I said that since I know the firm, I would settle down faster
and contribute better over the two months.
Interviewer How did you use your time between exiting your job and joining IIM
Calcutta?
Candidate I talked about analytics course I had completed (it was in my CV), and I
said that I was in the process of learning to write basic analytics code in
Python - pandas library, etc.
Interviewer What are your long-term objectives?

Candidate I said that I am passionate about the idea of firms adopting emerging
tech, like AI, Cloud, Big Data, etc., and PwC is the perfect place to make it
happen. I added that I knew about PwC's practice of rapid promotions,
which, even from a self-centred perspective, was added incentive to stay
there for the longer term.
Round - 2 Personals
Interviewer Asked me about my previous work experience with the firm, and the
senior members of my vertical.
Candidate A similar answer to the one mentioned above.
Interviewer Asked about my project work in detail.
Candidate I talked about the big picture purpose of the project, and my contribution
to it, in detail.
Interviewer Asked about data modelling concepts - this was related to my work ex.
Candidate I talked about dimensions and facts. I also talked about normalisation and
denormalization and their respective applications - normalisation for
transactional databases and denormalization or redundancy for analytical
databases.
Interviewer Asked about very basic functional concepts in banking - since my client
was a private bank. Asked about ways to uniquely identify a particular
transaction or account.
Candidate For a transaction, different analyses can be done basis either txn id, or
account id + txn time, and to identify an account, account id is enough.
Interviewer Asked me about the reason for wanting to intern with PwC.
Candidate Answer was similar to the above-mentioned answer.
DOs and Don'ts/ For tech consulting, any previous experience with tech is likely to be
Important Tips discussed. Personals will be discussed. From previous PwC workex, can
say that articulate candidates will be appreciated, so a confident flow and
an interactive interview will be helpful.

AUCTUS ADVISORS

Profile Information
Name Vinayak Nadir
Interviewing firm Auctus Advisors
Slot 8:30 AM
Interviewer
Undergraduate DTU
College
Firm Deloitte India
Sector Consulting
Round - 1 Decision Tree Case
Interviewer What are your sector preferences?
Candidate Consulting and Product Management
Interviewer Why do you want to join Auctus?
Candidate Smaller Size, Larger Responsibility, Previous WorkEx
Interviewer Risk management type case
Candidate Solved by confirming the flow of the decision tree and asking relevant
probability and branch value data
Interviewer Tell me about your background
Interviewer Asked me about my experience while investing
Candidate Seemed like a stress question; answered how I decided to buy a
particular stock
Interviewer Case on launching and pricing of a toothbrush that never wears down
Candidate Similar case in the IIM Calcutta casebook; answered in a similar fashion
Interviewer Asked about why Auctus
Candidate Smaller Size, Larger Responsibility, Previous WorkEx
Interviewer Asked about my workex
Interviewer Gave a case on how I would deal with COVID in Feb 2019 if I was a mid-
sized IT firm
Candidate Asked about company, clients and type of work. First dealt with priority
clients and then what type of clients we should look out for. Then gave a
consolidated strategy
Interviewer How would you decide what products to place in a duty-free store in an
airport?
Candidate Looked at customers and competition - buying preference

Interviewer If you had to launch Mi Home products, how would you go about doing
that?
Candidate I targeted Tier-II cities with offline channels + online channels to test
DOs and Don'ts/ Structure is the most important
Important Tips

SYNERGY CONSULTING

Profile Information
Name Shubham Chavan
Interviewing firm Synergy Consulting
Slot
Interviewer
Undergraduate VJTI, Mumbai
College
Branch Production Engineering
Firm NA
Sector NA
Round - 1 2 caselets - Balancesheet Readjustment and Risk Management
Interviewer Introduce yourself
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Why Synergy Consulting?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Why finance?
Candidate Mentioned CFRA course. Application-based course. Final project about
financial statement analysis
Interviewer Explain the three financial statements and their use
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Give me more details- Line items in balance sheet
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Step-by-step procedure from Sales to Net Income
Candidate Answered
Interviewer What is the significance of Cash Flow Statement?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer How do you prepare indirect cash flow statement?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Caselet- The depreciation for an asset has been reduced from 2000 to
1000. What adjustments would you make?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Let's talk about your internship. Briefly explain what you did.
Candidate Siemens Ltd., Mumbai. Worked in a SwitchBoard factory as an Operations
Excellence intern
Interviewer Think of all the things related to the factory and the working of the plant.
And identify risks associated with it.
Candidate Told about few financial risks- credit risk, inflation etc.
Interviewer Not just risks related to finance. Think about all the risks associated.
Candidate Applied PESTLE framework to identify some key risks related to the plant
Interviewer Now tell me how you will tackle each of the risks associated.
Candidate Answered

Round - 2 HR Round
Interviewer Tell me your one strength and one weakness
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Why are your expectations out of your internship?
Candidate Answered
Interviewer Why should we select you?
Candidate Answered

IIMC Summer Interview Experiences - 57th Batch

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