UB

IIM BANGALORE
CASEBOOK
Volume 7(b)

Compiled by

ICON-IIMB CONSULTING CLUB

91
Contents
CASE INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES – SUMMERS 2016......................................................................................... 2
CONTRIBUTORS' PROFILES.......................................................................................................................... 2
ACCENTURE STRATEGY ............................................................................................................................... 5
ALVAREZ & MARSAL.................................................................................................................................. 14
AT KEARNEY .............................................................................................................................................. 15
BAIN AND COMPANY ................................................................................................................................ 25
BCG ........................................................................................................................................................... 33
DELOITTE ................................................................................................................................................... 46
MCKINSEY ................................................................................................................................................. 51
ROLAND BERGER....................................................................................................................................... 72
STRATEGY& ............................................................................................................................................... 74
CASE INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES – SUMMERS 2015....................................................................................... 81
CONTRIBUTORS' PROFILES........................................................................................................................ 81
ACCENTURE STRATEGY ............................................................................................................................. 83
AT KEARNEY .............................................................................................................................................. 87
BAIN & COMPANY ..................................................................................................................................... 93
BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP ................................................................................................................. 96
GEP.......................................................................................................................................................... 110
MCKINSEY & COMPANY .......................................................................................................................... 111
ROLAND BERGER..................................................................................................................................... 123
STRATEGY& ............................................................................................................................................. 124
CASE INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES – SUMMERS 2014..................................................................................... 126
CONTRIBUTORS' PROFILES...................................................................................................................... 126
AT KEARNEY ............................................................................................................................................ 127
BAIN & COMPANY ................................................................................................................................... 129
BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP ............................................................................................................... 133
DELOITTE STRATEGY & OPERATIONS ...................................................................................................... 139
MCKINSEY & COMPANY .......................................................................................................................... 141
ROLAND BERGER..................................................................................................................................... 148
STRATEGY& (FORMERLY BOOZ & COMPANY) ........................................................................................ 149

1
 CASE INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES – SUMMERS 2016

CONTRIBUTORS' PROFILES

Resume Spikes (not in

Graduation Work Experience
order)
Name Company
Duration
Branch College Company (months) One Two
KPMG
Aditya Bain & Co. B.Tech, Civil NIT Trichy Advisory 29 Work
Muralidhar Engineering Services Experience

B.Tech.,
Himani Work
Arora Bain & Co. Computer IIT-BHU Microsoft 22 Experience Academics
Science
B.Sc. in
Pradeep G. Bain & Co. Physics, St. Joseph’s Oracle 48 Work Extra-
Chemistry, College Experience Curricular
& Math
B.Tech., Awards &
NTU, Barclays Work
Ritika Jain Bain & Co. Computer Singapore Capital 34 Experience Achieveme
Science nts
Dual
Awards &
Sankhadeep Degree, IIT
Bain & Co. Broadcom 22 Achieveme
Pal Electronics Kharagpur
nts
Engineering

Sanchit Bain & Co. B.Tech. IIT Kanpur Rio Tinto, 34 Work Extra-
Singhal Australia Experience Curricular
Best All-
Abhishek Thapar Goldman Work
GEP B.Tech, ECE 36 rounder
Somani University Sachs Experience Award
Delhi
Aayushi Accenture Electrical College of NTPC 46 Academics Awards
Agarwal Strategy Engineerin
g
Accenture IIT Reliance
Amit Kumar Strategy Chemical Guwahati Industries 10 Awards Academics
Prabuddha Accenture Jadavpur Work
Mechanical BPCL 34 Awards
Guha Strategy University experience
Sohil Accenture Work
Electrical IIT Kanpur Ericsson 47 PORs
Mahajan Strategy experience
Kottana Metallurgic
Naveen Strategy& al and IIT KGP Tata Steel 34 Well
Kumar materials Limited rounded

2
 SKCET,
Khizar TVS Work
Strategy& Mechanical Anna 42 Academics
Sherrif M Motors experience
University
Electronics
PSG College
Srikkanth and
A.T. Kearney of - - Academics PORs
Sridhar communica
Technology
tion
Himanshu Process IIT Work
A.T. Kearney Axtria 22 Academics
Khera Engineering Roorkee experience
Buddharatn Alvarez and Industrial IIT ZS Work Extra
Ratawal Marsal Engineering Kharagpur Associates 33 Experience Curriculars
Awards
Electrical & SSNCE, and
Keerthika A.T. Kearney Electronics Chennai - - Achieveme Academics
nts
IBM
Computer Work
Janani A.T. Kearney NIT Trichy Software 22 PORs
Science experience
Labs
Metallurgic
Work
al and MNIT, ZS 36
Preksha McKinsey experience Sports
Materials Jaipur Associates months
Engineering
Quantitati Awards
ve 24 and
Electrical Work
Koustav Dey McKinsey Engineering IIT Kanpur Analyst, months Achieveme Experience
Morgan nts
Stanley
Metallurgic
al and
Overall
Materials EXL 23
Ashwin McKinsey Engineering IIT Madras. Services months PoRs balanced
profile
Essex Work
Priyanka 30 Academics
McKinsey SRCC Lake Experience
Bagai B.Com (H) months
Group
POR/
Mechanical
Utsav Giri McKinsey Engineering BIT Mesra - - Academics Extracurri
culars
Civil IIT Kanpur EXL 35 Work
Harsh Shah McKinsey engineering Services months Experience Academics
Anuradha Economic
McKinsey LSR - - (Don’t believe in spikes)
Rao (Hons)

3
 Balanced
B.Tech
Shubham IIT Axtria Inc. 12 Resume- Extra-
Deloitte Mechanical
Mittal Engineering Roorkee months Good acads Curricular

B.E.,
Texas
Praful Electrical
BCG BITS Pilani instrumen 22 PoRs Awards
Parakh and
ts
Electronics

Utkarsh BCG B.Tech, IIT ITC 37 Departmen Awards

Prasad Chemical Kharagpur t Rank 2
Allen Dan BCG B.Tech, Civil IIT Atkins 33 Academics Awards
Babu Kharagpur
S Aatresh BCG Chartered - KPMG, 20 CA All India Work Ex
Accountant Nestle Rank 3
M.Tech & Opera Extra-
Agrim Gupta BCG B.Tech, Civil IIT Kanpur Solutions 20 Curriculars Work Ex
B.Tech,
Oracle Institute
Sharmili Electronic & NIT
BCG Financial 20 Rank 1, PORs
Adhikari Communica Durgapur
Services Awards
tion
B.Tech, NIT Institute
Smriti Priya Roland Berger Mechanical Allahabad NTPC 36 Rank 2 Awards

4
 ACCENTURE STRATEGY

CASE 1

Candidate: Amit Kumar

Case: Guesstimate

Interviewer: You are from IIT Guwahati. Tell me how’s Guwahati doing?
Candidate: Guwahati is doing really well sir. (Mentioned some current campus news.)

Interviewer: There were Reynolds pen kept at the table. Can you tell me what is the market size of
Reynolds pen in IIMB?

Candidate: Can I have a minute sir?

Interviewer: Sure, take your time.

Candidate: I would go for an approach of finding the total population of IIMB, calculating market
penetration of Reynolds in different segments and then calculating the market size. Interviewer:
Approach looks fine. Please go ahead.

Candidate: IIMB has a mix of PGPs, EPGPs, Faculty and their children. Assuming a PGP batch size
of 400*2, Executive MBAs of 100 and 80 faculty members. I am assuming a rough estimate of 4

members/household so there would be 320 members from faculty. The rough population of IIMB

thus comes out to be approximately 1200.

Interviewer: It seems fine. What will you do next?

Candidate: IIMB has a batch size with people with high work experience. Not all of them would use
Reynolds given that it’s a cheap pen of Rs. 5. I will assume a market penetration of 40% in PGPs and
50% in executive MBAs. Though professors wouldn’t use Reynolds as a regular pen but their children
might use it. I will assume a market penetration of 40% among professors. Interviewer: (Interrupts.)
Can you tell me the components of a balance sheet?

Candidate: Balance sheet is divided into 2 broad categories of assets and liabilities & equity. Assets
include cash, inventory, trade receivables, investments and intangible assets. On the other side there
is trade payables, current liabilities, long term debts, retained earnings and stockholder’s equity.
Interviewer: Good. Go ahead with your guesstimate.

Candidate: Total market size will be (800*40% + 100*50% + 320*40%). This comes out to be
approximately 500. Each pen if used completely could last for half a month and every person will use
2 pens in a month.

Annual consumption of pens in IIMB is 500*2*12 which will be 12000. A market size of around Rs5
*12000 = Rs. 6 lacs

Interviewer: Sounds good. Thank you!

5
CASE 2

Candidate: Amit Kumar

Case: Guesstimate

Interviewer: Why are you looking for consulting?

Candidate: (Gave a prepared answer on how it fits his goal of doing an MBA.)

Interviewer: (Goes through the CV.) What is this P&G Emerging leadership?

Candidate: (Gave a small overview of the program)

Interviewer: Can you know name some brands of P&G?

Candidate: Tide, Pampers, Gillette, Olay.

Interviewer: (Draws a product life cycle graph on paper.) Can you identify the graph?
Candidate: It is a product life cycle graph with product sales on y axis and timeline on x axis. It has 4
stages of introduction of a product, growth, maturity and decline.

Interviewer: (Writes 1, 2, 3, 4 on paper.) Can you identify what is this with respect to P&G?
Candidate: I am not entirely sure on this. But it looks like introduction of different products as P&G
settled in India.

Interviewer: Do you know about Gillette strategy to increase market share?

Candidate: I know that Gillette has a unique strategy of selling razor at low prices but sells blades at
higher prices and makes on the money by repeated usage of blades

Interviewer: This (1,2,3,4) is related to Gillette. Can you guess it now?

Candidate: It could be number of blades in a razor. Like Gillette started with 1 blade, moved to 2 and
latest I know Mach3 has 3 blades.

Interviewer: Good. That is correct. Now suppose you are the marketing manager of Gillette and the
growth is slowing down. What will you do to increase sales?

Candidate: We could grow in our present markets or extend to new markets. Gillette having a huge
global presence I will stick to present markets. Shall I go ahead?

Interviewer: Yes. What will you do?

Candidate: I would try to understand the issue of why our growth is stagnating. Is it due to a
competitor producing high quality products or has the market been very competitive on prices.
Apart from this, competitor external factors might have affected our growth, like new products
coming into fashion replacing our razors.

Interviewer: What do you think are the major threats for Gillette?
Candidate: I feel Gillette is hugely penetrated. So a major threat for it is the growing demand for
trimmers and shavers among the population. Another threat could be shaving going out of fashion,
where people with beard are considered fashionable. If shaving goes out of fashion then people will
reduce the frequency of buying blades and our growth will decline.

6
Interviewer: Being the marketing manager, how will you solve that problem?

Candidate: I would design an IMC campaign with bringing shaving back into fashion. Most of the
fashion industry is controlled by fashion shows, magazines like Glamour, Vogue etc. I will collaborate
with editor in chiefs of fashion magazines and create a suitable environment of shaving being the
“coolest thing”. I would associate with fashion shows and ask designers to design themes around
shaving. I will hire an ad agency to make advertisements showing how shaved men are more
successful in life and girls love shaved men. I would associate with fashion shows and ask designers
to design themes around shaving.

Interviewer: Can you suggest any other ways to grow the Gillette business?
Candidate: Women razors market is also growing and Gillette could design special soft razors. These
razors would be soft, delicate and flexible to cater towards target segment needs. I am not much
aware of women razors.

Interviewer: (Laughs) That’s completely fine. The strategy seems good. Now suppose one of the
brands in US is gaining considerable market share in trimmers/shavers category. It is eating into your
market share and trimming has become a fashion there. What will you do?

Candidate: I would do the above mentioned steps and bring shaving as a “macho” thing whereas
trimming being a more feminine stuff.

Interviewer: If that strategy doesn’t work out. What else will you do?
Candidate: I think Gillette is a mega brand and to develop new products would involve considerable
time. Besides I am not sure of the current capabilities to be in the trimmer business now. I will
acquire the small brand and make it a sub-brand under Gillette.

Interviewer: Great. You need to acquire smaller players and consolidate the market. Thank you.

Candidate: Thank you sir.

CASE 3

Candidate: Aayushi Agarwal

Case: Cost Reduction

(After the initial exchange of greetings, was told, “Sorry I’m not carrying a copy of your resume can
you please provide one”. Quick tip: Carry a number of copies of your resume at the time of your
interview.)

Interviewer: Can you please walk me through your resume.

Candidate: (Started talking about the resume points. Interrupted by the interviewer in between and
asked about the cost saving number mentioned, what was the role of the candidate in particular in
achieving those savings. The candidate explained the details of the cost savings mentioned and her
role in particular. This helped in building the initial conversation.)

Interviewer: Okay Aayushi. Let’s take the case of ABC Construction Company. Can you help them in
achieving savings?

Candidate: For this, we will first have to analyze the costs involved. (Started writing down the
different costs in the sheet simultaneously.)

Interviewer: You can continue.

7
Candidate: Drew a chart and started explaining about raw material cost, labour cost, and the number
of costs involved in the entire value chain. (Tried to follow think aloud tips as mentioned in a no. of
case preparation interview books.)

Interviewer: You can take your time, there is no hurry and I understand it is difficult to think and
explain at the same time.

andidate: Structured all the costs, and then gave pointers about effective sourcing of raw materials,
entering into long term rate contracts using the prior knowledge of contracts. I also talked about
transportation involved, ways to reduce those costs. In the close to 4 years of work experience, the
candidate had spent a year in purchase department and close to 1.5 years in contracts.

Interviewer: (Didn’t go in much detail of the case after this.) Alright. Why Accenture Strategy?
Candidate: Said the usual prepared praising stuff about the company. (Quick tip: Questions like this
are asked frequently and the candidate should be well prepared to answer.)

Interviewer: Okay, thanks, we are done for this interview and we’ll let you know about the
subsequent rounds.

Candidate: Thank you.

CASE 4
Candidate: Aayushi Agarwal
Case: HR Round

Interviewer: Aayushi, what are your favourite subjects at IIMB?

Candidate: Hesitantly mentioned Finance.

Interviewer: Okay, can you tell me what all are the line items before Profit after tax?

Candidate: Explained confidently.

Interviewer: Do you have any idea about provisioning?

Candidate: Explained.

Interviewer: Why Accenture strategy?

Candidate: So wished that this question is not asked again, but it was! No option, had to answer, so
tried framing again. Accenture is one amongst the few companies that has pro women policies.

(Interrupted)

Interviewer: The person who came just before you was also saying the same thing.
Candidate: Thought again on the feet. Tried to justify how it is the best company for me.

Interviewer – Thank you, we’ll let you know.

Candidate – Thank you.

CASE 5
Candidate: Aayushi Agarwal
Case: Market Entry

8
Interviewer: Our client wants to enter into a new industry, what do you suggest for him? Candidate:
Sir, what are the current capabilities of our client and what industry does he want to enter into?

Interviewer: Just walk me how will you go about analyzing the new industry

Candidate: Drew the standard value chain of an industry. Porter’s five forces. Never named the
framework, but essentially did everything similar.

Suppliers: We will first see how many suppliers are there for the raw product. If suppliers are very
few as compared to the incumbent players in the industry, in which our client wants to enter, we
will deduce that since supplier power is much higher, it’ll be a negative from point of view of
entering this industry.

Buyers: Again we need to see the number of buyers as compared to existing players i.e. what is the
volume purchase of each buyer vis-a -vis the production capacity of existing industries. If buyers are
few in number, we can deduce that bargaining power of buyers will be much higher. Again a
negative to enter such an industry.

Industry rivalry: How many existing players are there? Are they competing on cost or any other
factor?

Threat of new entrants: What are the barriers to entry? How easy or difficult will it be to enter for
any other player? Explained this in greater detail.

Threat of substitutes: Took Aquaguard example and what can be substitutes to Aquaguard for
explaining this. (No specific reason for taking Aquaguard example. Just tried to explain concepts
using examples.)

Interviewer: Okay, do you know of any other things which we might have to check?

Candidate: Yes, we will also have to look at exit options available, in case our client turns out to be
unsuccessful after entering. We will have to do a research before selecting a region where we would
be interested to start our industry. We also need to consider macroeconomic factors and political
stability in the region that we are considering. In case we are to enter into huge technology based
investment, we will need to check how fast the technology gets outdated.

Interviewer: Great.

(Suddenly HR person enters, and now they are three people, Partner, one more guy, and the HR
person.) So any questions for us?

Candidate: I would like to know, do we have any say in choosing the internship projects?
HR person: Do you have any specific preference?

andidate: I am open to working in any sector, but something involving cost savings gives me a kick,
as there, I can right away see the impact of my work.

HR person: Alright Aayushi, we’ll consider this during allotment of projects. It was nice talking to

you. Thanks, have a great day.

Candidate: Thank you.

9
CASE 6

Candidate: Prabuddha Guha

Case: Profitability Analysis

The first interview was taken by a Manager. It was a case interview where the candidate was given a
one liner problem statement and asked to explore plausible causes and suggest solution.

Interviewer: Hello! How are you? Feeling confident?

Candidate: I am good sir.

Interviewer: Ok then. Let’s get started. So there is a factory that manufactures pumps. The factory
was setup 3 years ago and the project plan predicted that it should turn profitable on a standalone
basis in 2 years. But even this year, it has registered a loss. You are the consultant and find out the
problem for the client and propose an implementable solution.
Candidate: So the profitability issue can be broadly viewed under two different categories-revenue
and cost.

Interviewer: The factory has no control over the pricing aspect as it is decided on a national level.
And the sales team is pretty efficient- other factories are profitable on a standalone basis. So we are
pretty sure it is not a revenue side issue. Let’s explore the cost angle.

Candidate: Fine. So the cost can be segmented into two different headers- fixed and variable cost.
The fixed cost can be further subdivided into different categories- Plant and Equipment Cost,
Employee Salaries, Training and Development cost. So have the actual costs varied significantly from
the projected costs in these categories?

Interviewer: Yes, you are right, plant and equipment is significantly different from the original
project plan. Can you tell me why?
Candidate: Well, there can be various reasons for the same. Did the market prices appreciate
significantly for the machinery in between preparation of the project plan and procurement of the
machines?

Interviewer: No.

Candidate: Okay. So was any addition made to the original factory layout to include any additional
machinery?

Interviewer: Yes, an additional testing facility was included as per the modified industry guidelines
after the project plans were drawn up. Ok, so you have identified one issue. There is another. Let’s
try to find that out also.

Candidae: Ok so has the salaries spiraled off projections?

Interviewer: No both salary and T&D costs are under control.

Candidate: So then can I move onto the variable cost header or am I missing something in this
section?

Interviewer: Are you sure you have covered all the fixed costs?
Candidate: Can I have minute to think?

10
Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: After a small pause. Well I can think of only one more relevant fixed cost component-
depreciation.

Interviewer: Good. Let’s explore this. Here are the income statements filed by the company for the
first 2 years. Have a look at them and tell me what is wrong.
Candidate: Analyzed the statements for a minute. Well, based on the depreciation amount in the
two statements, I can say the factory is using a straight-line method of depreciation (both amounts
were same). Did the project plan also consider a straight-line depreciation?

Interviewer: No. Can you tell me what they considered?

Candidate: Well if they considered an accelerated depreciation, then projected profits will be higher
than the actuals (arrived at using straight-line depreciation).

Interviewer: Very good. That was the problem. Thanks. We are done for the first round.

Candidate: Thank you sir.

CASE 7

Candidate: Prabuddha Guha

Case: Balance Sheet Analysis

This round was taken by two partners.

It started off with the candidate being asked to analyze two different balance sheets and comment
on the nature of the companies. One of the balance sheets had a high proportion of fixed assets
compare to the other. So the candidate predicted that one was a manufacturing based company
while the other was service company. The interviewers accepted this premise.

Then the discussion went on to oil and gas domain and macro-economic impact of the sector on the
nations’ economy. The entire pricing structure of a petroleum products was discussed in detail and
the candidate was asked how the subsidy mechanism can be improved. The candidate suggested
targeted and need based subsidy program through direct benefits transfer.

After this, the dynamics of oil price movements was discussed. The candidate was asked to explain
the logic why OPEC was moving away from their supply constrain mechanism to control world-wide
oil price. The candidate was able to successfully explain how OPEC is trying to protect their market
share and keep the oil prices low temporarily to put the shale oil upstarts out of business.

This was followed by another interview by the HR Manager and another partner.

A few profile based HR questions were asked.

CASE 8

Candidate: Sohil Mahajan

Case: Market Entry

11
The candidate had three rounds of interview. First round was case based, second round was resume
based and third round was MD interview.

(There were 3 interviewers. One of them was observing and the other two were conducting the
interview.)

Interviewer: Hi, How are you?

Candidate: Good Morning sir, I am good, thank you.

Interviewer: Can you introduce yourself. (Interviewer was going through candidate’s resume.)

Candidate: (Gave his introduction.)

Interviewer: (Stopped the candidate while he was talking about work experience.) Since you have
worked on IoT, let’s discuss a case around the same topic.
Candidate: Sure sir.

Interviewer: Consider a situation where your client is a device manufacturer who wants to launch a
new product in India. What factors should they look into and how should they proceed? Candidate:
Can you please tell me about the device?

Interviewer: The device can be attached to an LPG cylinder and it can indicate the user if the level of
LPG reaches below a certain minimum level. It would help the user book a new LPG before the
current one is empty.

Candidate: Asked about the company, if it was a startup or a multinational company. Has it launched
the same product elsewhere? Are there any market share or profitability or break even targets?

Interviewer: You can assume that it is a startup and is launching the product for the first time.
Candidate: Asked for a minute to pen down the structure.
Interviewer: Sure, take your time.

Candidate: I would like to start by looking at the market attractiveness, estimate the market size, at
what price point can they enter into the market, how would they enter (greenfield or JV), what kind
of margins are they looking at and how long would it take to break even. Can I proceed? Interviewer:
Yes, that looks fine.

Candidate: Households and commercial users of LPG cylinder would be our target customers. I
would like to estimate the market size.

Interviewer: You can discuss what factors you would consider while estimation. A numerical
estimate is not required.

Candidate: Sure sir. Started with the rural, urban divide:

Households: Family sizes in rural and urban would be different. In rural areas not everyone would be
using LPG. Families use kerosene, coal and other means as well. In urban areas, some families would
have a gas pipeline and this device would be of no use to them.
Commercial users: In urban areas most of the restaurants or food stores that use cylinders have a
spare cylinder ready and so this device would be of little use to them. However, in rural areas the
device would be beneficial and we can estimate that.

Interviewer: Is it a fair way to target both household and commercial at the same time? Candidate:
Since it is a startup, they can target households currently. Also, commercial users may find little use
of this device.

12
Interviewer: Okay. Let’s move on to pricing. How would you price the product?
Candidate: Pricing could be customer’s willingness-to-pay based. Without this device, the customer
would have to wait a few days for the next LPG to get delivered. In the meanwhile, either the
customer would order food or electric Chula or manage with other sources of cooking. Customer
willingness to pay for our device would be the amount that the customer would spent in these
alternative means plus a premium for comfort.

Interviewer: What else?

Candidate: Another way to price is look at the competitors in the market. Are there any other
players in the industry with the same product?
Interviewer: No, our client is the only player with the product.

Candidate: In that case, willingness-to-pay based pricing would be appropriate.

Interviewer: What else must the client do?

Candidate: They can tie up with the existing LPG suppliers and tap into the LPG distributor network
to reach out to customers.

Interviewer: What else?

Candidate : Since they are the only ones with such a device, they should patent their product to
avoid any duplication in the market.

Interviewer: Okay, that makes sense. Let’s end this case discussion now.

The other interviewer started going through candidate’s resume. The candidate had m entioned a
few points on cryptography events at UG College. The candidate was told that he would be given a
couple of puzzles with only 30 secs to solve. They were typical undergrad puzzles. Interview ended.

The second interview was a resume -based interview. Just one interviewer. Discussion was mostly
around candidates work experience and undergrad extracurricular activities. Also a few questions on
why consulting and why Accenture.

The third round was a MD interview. It was very informal. Discussion was mostly on hobbies, things
that the candidate was good at but not mentioned on resume, etc.

13
 ALVAREZ & MARSAL

Candidate: Buddharatn Ratawal

Case: Profitability

(Same case was asked to all the candidates in Summers’15.)

Interviewer: Hi! Good morning. Please sit.

(After a few questions on resume)

Interviewer: Are you with cash flow accounting?

Interviewee: Yes, I pursued a course on Financial Accounting in Term I.

Interviewer: Good! Do you know any shipbuilding company facing a financial crunch?

Interviewee: I am afraid that I do not.

Interviewer: No problem. Let us take a hypothetical situation of a Gujarat based shipbuilding

company which is quickly running out of cash. You have to identify the reason and provide the
solution for the company to come out of this situation.

Interviewee: Alright. Can I have a look at the Balance Sheet of the company?

Interviewer: Sure. (Hands over the balance sheet to the candidate)

Interviewee: (Takes a minute to go through the balance sheet) I notice a significant increase in the
YoY fixed asset. Has the company invested heavily in land or any heavy machinery?

Interviewer: Yes
Interviewee: Can you handover the cash flow statement of the company?

Interviewer: Sure.

Interviewee: I observe that the company has invested heavily in a particular machinery. What is it?

Interviewer: It is a ship building platform which partially automates the ship building activity and
helps in overall decrease in manufacturing time.

Interviewee: I find this as the prime reason for the company to be in this cash crunch situation as
they have invested heavily recently which doesn’t leave them with much quick liquid assets to burn.

Interviewer: Alright. How should the company come out of the situation?

Interviewee: The Company should focus on generation revenues. Where has the company dedicated
its resources currently?

Interviewer: They are focused on the on-going projects.

Interviewee: How many live projects are the company resources working on?

Interviewer: Five.

14
Interviewee: Rather than working on all five, is it possible for the company to focus selectively so as
to generate the revenue at the earliest?

Interviewee: Of course. But how will you decide that?

Interviewer: We can prioritize based on the client, returns and urgency. Who are the clients of all the
five projects?

Interviewer: Two of them belongs to Indian Navy which is the largest client of the company
equivalent to approx. 70% of the revenue while the other three are private ships belonging to
various traders, let’s say Alpha, Beta and Gamma.

Interviewee: May I have a look at individual projects cash flow statements, if that is available.
Interviewer: Sure. (Hands over 5 cash flow statements)
Interviewee (takes a minute to scan through): I am looking to find a project with minimum
investment but maximum & early returns. Project Beta is the ideal project to direct all the resources
as its returns for first module completion is highest.

Interviewer: But would you recommend stalling Indian Navy’s projects considering they are your
major clients?

Interviewee: Given the current condition of the company, it will soon be out of cash in order to work
on any projects. So either it can ask for advance payment from Indian Navy to continue on its project
or focus on Beta to generate revenues and subsequently work on multiple projects.

Interviewer: Fair point. I think we are good with the case. Thanks a lot.

AT KEARNEY

CASE 1

Candidate: Himanshu Khera

Case: Guesstimate

Interviewer: (After a few standard questions on resume) Let’s do a case. I want you to forecast
revenue for a switch manufacturer.

Candidate: I would like to ask a few questions to get more understanding.

Interviewer: Please go ahead.

Candidate: Where is the company located? Where does it sell its produce?

Interviewer: Kerala. It manufactures and sells in the same state.

Candidate: What type of products does it manufacture? How many different types of switches-
residential, commercial, high voltage industrial, low voltage industrial to be used in electrical
appliances or equipment’s etc?

15
Intervieer: Only residential.

Candidate: Okay. What kind of customers does it have? Does it have direct tie-ups with builders?
What all channels does it sell its products through- exclusive outlets, distributors?

Interviewer: It has direct tie-ups. Also a wide distribution network in Kerala.

Candidate: How many competitors in Kerala against the company? What is the probable market
share?

Interviewer: Very few competitors. 50% market share in residential segment.

Candidate: Alright. Give me a minute while I frame my thoughts.

Interviewer: Ok

Candidate: (starts thinking aloud). Revenue is a function of value, variety and volume. I would like to
first focus on volume. So assuming a population of 3 Cr in Kerala and an average family size of 4,
there are almost 75 lakh households. Out of these I can assume that 20% do not have proper
accommodation as they are below poverty line. I would like to categorize the remaining 60 lakhs in
different categories based on house ownership.

Interviewer: Go Ahead.

Candidate: (Again thinking aloud)

I assume a class division like: Upper Class (10%), Upper Middle Class (25%), Lower Middle Class
(45%), and Below Poverty Line (20%). I further assume the type of residential accommodation
people of different classes use:

Class bedrooms kitchens Restrooms Balconies

Upper Class 4 1 3 2
Upper 3 1 2 1
Middle
Class
Lower 2 1 2 1
Middle
Class
Below - - - -
Poverty
Line

*Each house will also include restroom, kitchen and balcony

Do you think these assumptions are relevant?

Interviewer: Please go ahead.

Candidate:
Combining the above 2 assumptions:

#bedrooms = 75,00,000*[4*(10%)+3*(25%)+2*(45%)] = 1,53,75,000

#Kitchens = 75,00,000*[1*(10%)+1*(25%)+1*(45%)] = 60,00,000 #restroom
= 75,00,000*[3*(10%)+2*(25%)+2*(45%)] = 12,750,000 #Balcony =
75,00,000*[2*(10%)+1*(25%)+1*(45%)] = 67,50,000

16
I will assume that each bedroom, kitchen, restroom and balcony will have 2, 1, 1, and 1 low voltage
switch boards respectively. The same number for high voltage switchboard (used for running
appliances etc.) will be 1,1,1, and 0.

So based on above methodology we arrive at

#low voltage boards= 1,53,75,000*2+ 60,00,000*1+ 12,750,000*1+ 67,50,000*1 = 5,62,50,000
#high voltage switch boards= 3,41,25,000

Interviewer: Fine. Don’t you think you are missing something?

Candidate: I will include 2 more:

Allowance for housing societies which have lighting in corridor as well= 6% (an additional factor
of 20% for 30% of the people who reside in housing societies, as in Kerala most of the
people (70%) reside in independent houses)

Allowance for new housing starts= 10%

Is this fair to assume?

Interviewer: Fine. Go Ahead.

Candidate: What is the average price for each type of switch board? And what is the average life?

Interviewer: Rs 150 for high voltage and Rs 200 for low-voltage small. Average life is 5 years.

Candidate: The revenue will come out to be

Revenue= [5,62,50,000*200 + 3,41,25,000*150] *1.06*1.1/5*50%= 190 Crores

Interviewer: Great. I think you have done a fair job.

CASE 2

Candidate: D Keerthika

Case:

Telephonic Case Round during ‘buddy’ interaction (in the middle of a casual conversation)
Interviewer: Keerthika, let us see you solve a case. I hope you are ready!
Interviewee: (surprised but composed) Sure. Let’s go for it.

Interviewer: My neighbour wants to buy a gift, but is confused on what to get and is now asking for
my expertise on the same.
(Thought for a few seconds as she framed the sequence of questions)

Interviewee: How old is the neighbour and what gender?

Interviewer: The neighbour is an 8-year-old kid. Female.

Interviewee: Who does she want to gift to and what is the occasion?

Interviewer: She expects to gift her mother for her birthday.

Interviewee: What gift was given to the mother last year?

Interviewer: She didn’t gift anything to her mother.

17
Interviewee: Did the mother receive any gift from the family last year? Or have they planned
anything to gift this year?

Interviewer: The kid’s elder sister is gifting the mother with a family photo.

Interviewee: What is the budget of the gift?

Interviewer: The kid can’t decide on the budget. What do you think she would be wanting to gift
from the discussion we have had until now?

Interviewee: (thinks for the moment) Something to do with the photograph, I believe.
Interviewer: Alright. The kid wants to gift her mom a photo-frame to put the family photo in.
Key Takeaways:

The answer “photo frame” is not going to fetch you any marks with the interviewer. In fact, the
answer doesn’t even matter. The ability to think from various angles is the one that matters.

CASE 3

Candidate: D Keerthika

Case: Market Entry

(India map outline with certain red spots (rectangular & triangular) on it and was placed on the
table.)

Interviewer: (no salutation - no questions from resume – directly jumps to the case)

Before you are the current locations of the manufacturing plants of XYZ chemical company.
Rectangular red spots represents that they are owned by XYZ and triangular red spots represents
that they are 3rd party outsourced manufacturers. The company wants to expand its manufacturing
locations. What are the parameters it should consider to analyse? Where and how (owned or
outsourced model) should it expand? You have 1 minute to think.

(Interviewer starts working on his laptop)

Interviewer (after exact one minute): I’m going to close my eyes and all I want to hear are the
keywords and no full sentences of whatever that you have thought. Remember, no full sentences.
(The interviewer closes his eyes.)
Interviewee: Questions to be framed with-
Why expand?
Future demand?
Lost sales due to unmet demand?
Demand centre?
Transportation cost?
Tax benefit?
(The interviewer doesn’t speak in-between till now and stops the interviewee at this point)
Interviewer: Do you think you performed well?

Interviewee: Considering the limited time and resource & information constraints, I believe I have
covered broad aspects which would further allow me to narrow down on key aspects. Interviewer:
Ok. You may proceed to the next interview.

This was followed by another short interview.

18
(After long discussion on resume)
Interviewer: Alright, now let’s get into discussing a case, shall we?
Interviewee: Sure.

Interviewer: I want to launch a reality show. What are the parameters I have to consider in doing

it? Just the parameters – only the keywords!

Interviewee: I will list the parameters as-
Country or location?
Type of reality show?

Channel: Star Plus-type or Disney-type?

Target audience?
Budget?

Interviewer: (interrupting) Alright. Thanks.

CASE 4

Candidate: Janani
Case: Profitability

(Partner Round)
Interviewer: Hello Janani, how are you?
Me: I am doing good. How are you doing?

Interviewer: How was the last one month?

Me: It was hectic and the environment in college was tense.

Interviewer: So Janani, quickly tell me what aspects in IIMB met your expectations and what did
not?

Candidate: I am really happy with the teaching, courses and the friends I made here. I was told about
how hectic it would get, but never imagined it to be this way. That was probably something that did
not meet my expectations, especially last two months.

nterviewer: Interesting, Say I walk across your wing in Under-grad what would be the three words
they would say to describe you.

Candidate: (Answers in three words)

Interviewer: Hmm, now I walk across your wing in IIMB what would be the three words they would
say to describe you.

Candidate: (Answers in three words (two common & one different))

Interviewer: Do you have siblings?

Candidate: Yes, two sisters

Interviewer: What would be the three words your sisters would say to describe you?
Candidate: (Answers in three words)

19
Interviewer: So good Janani. Shall I give you a case now?

Candidate: Sure

Interviewer: There is this shop in a college. The shop has been in the college for many years. The
shop‘s profit has reduced and the owner is wondering why. Can you help him understand why?
Candidate: Okay. So I have a couple of questions. Shall I ask you? Interviewer: Go ahead, shoot
them.

Candidate: So what does this shop sell?

Interviewer: It is a basic stationery shop with Xerox as well.

Candidate: Since when did they start facing these reduced profits?
Interviewer: You could say couple of months back

Candidate: Is this the only stationery shop present?

Interviewer: Yes, like any college, there is only one stationery shop present and it has been around
for long.

Candidate: Ok. Thanks. Can I have a few minutes to think through this?
Interviewer: Yes, of course.

(They had left a notepad on the table and on that I drew a chart)

20
 Profits

Revenue Cost

Sales of Stationery Xerox Labor

Xerox Rent
stationery related Related charge

Cost of Cost of
Inventory White
stationery Xerox
Cost paper
bought Machine

Candidate: Have the revenues dropped recently?

Interviewer: No, the sales have been good. In fact, they have increased.

Candidate: So it is safe to assume, it is a cost related issue?

Interviewer: Go ahead.
Candidate: There are multiple costs associated with the shop. I would like to bucket them to
Stationery related and Xerox related and apart from that Rent and Labor costs.
Interviewer: Valid, so elaborate further.

Candidate: In the stationery, have our costs of purchasing increased in the last two months?

Interviewer: No, they have been pretty much the same.

Candidate: So I can assume, our ties with our suppliers is also good.
Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: So, with respect to inventory cost, is that higher? Is the shop storing more than required
or higher than the turnover?
Interviewer: Not really, everything has been more or less the same.

Candidate: Now I will move on the cost for Xerox related activities
Interviewer: Yes, go on

Candidate: Has the shop added more machines?

Interviewer: No they have been working with 2 machines for a long time.
Candidate: Are the machines facing frequent break-downs?
Interviewer: No
Candidate: Have the costs of A4 paper increased?

21
Interviewer: No, that has been the same as well

Candidate: Have the rents for the shop increased?

Interviewer: In a way yes, the shop was present in the campus for very long time and no one really
questioned the legality. Recently the administration changed and they imposed a rent on the ship
which was not present earlier.

Candidate: That explains the sudden increase in costs. How much was the increase? Interviewer:
Around INR 30,000/- month and the owner of the shop is worried as he cannot afford 30,000 every
month. He is protesting with the administration and requesting them to consider not charging them.
What would you do as the administration?

Candidate: There are three aspects to this problem

Softer aspects
Financial aspects
Legal aspects

With respect to the softer aspects, it may be difficult to be harsh to a shop owner who has been in
the campus for a long time. Financially I am assuming, even if the college is in some financial trouble;
the money from this rent would be miniscule. And finally legally, they may face issues when new
shops come and set up their stores without permission. Then it may become difficult to place rents
differentially.

Interviewer: Fair point. Thank You Janani.

CASE 5

Candidate: Srikkanth

Case: Profitability

Interviewer: (After the pleasantries of a few standard questions).So let’s do a case. Our client is a
coffee retail chain whose profitability has been declining. Please help him out.

Interviewee: Just to get my bearings correct with regards to the client- Does our client own a chain
of retail outlets throughout India?

Interviewer: Yes, that is correct.

Interviewee: Has our client been facing declining profitability across all outlets or is it specific to one
or two outlets clustered in a particular region?

Interviewer: Across all outlets

Interviewee: Let me get a better understanding of the client’s business. What are the products he
sells and are there any other sources of revenue?

Interviewer: It’s basically a cafeteria with Coffee, Tea and Pastries being the main products. There
are no other sources of revenues.

Interviewee: Okay. So the profitability issue could be connected with either the pricing/profits or the
costs incurred by the outlet. Can I look in to the costs involved in operations now?

22
Interviewer: Yes, please. But restrict yourself to one outlet for now. That should give you the insight
for the entire coffee chain.

Interviewee: Alright. Just give me a minute. I’m working under the assumption that the cafeteria
controls all the operational activities right from sourcing till retailing. The major costs would be,
rocurement of raw materials. 2) Logistics involved in transporting raw materials 3) Operational costs
in the cafeteria 4) Advertising & Marketing
Interviewer: This looks like a comprehensive list of costs. Please proceed.

Interviewee: Has the raw materials costs gone up significantly, or are we paying our suppliers more
than before, as compared to our competitors?
Interviewer: Nope. Our costs have been going up as according to the standard rate of inflation.

But the client has already factored that in.

Interviewee: Alright. Anything regarding our operations? Have we incurred additional operational
overheads or logistics costs?

Interviewer: There has been some increase in the operational costs since we have recently changed
our raw material delivery system to a hub & spoke model. But our profitability hit seems to indicate
a much more serious issue.

Interviewee: Shall I hold on to the cost aspect of this for now, and look at the revenue side of things?
Interviewer: Sure.

Interviewee: Have we reduced the pricing of any of our products?

Interviewer: No

Interviewee: Is there a decline in demand of our products?

Interviewer: Our demand on an aggregate level has remained constant. If anything, it has seen a
slight increase this year.

Interviewee: Do we have details about the various products stocked & their respective demand
fluctuations?

Interviewer: Yes. The demand for tea has gone down by 10%, whereas the demand for coffee and
cakes have increased by 12%.

Interviewee: Do we have the profit margins for the individual products?

Interviewer: Yeah- we make 25% on tea, 10% on coffee, and -10% on cakes.

Interviewee: This seems to be the major source of the problem. The demand for the most profitable
product has gone done, while we are making smaller margins on our fast moving products.

Interviewer: Okay. So what do you suggest?

Interviewee: First we will need to identify if these products are price sensitive. If they are we could
reduce the prices of tea to see if demand rises Interviewer: Okay, I think we can leave it at that.
Good job.

23
CASE 6

Candidate: Srikkanth
Case: Market Entry

(It was an open-ended strategic case with a Principal from the firm over Skype.)

nterviewer: Hi. Our client is an automobile manufacturer who has been operating his
manufacturing plant at less than 40% capacity. In order to better utilize their capacity, they plan
to export. They have hired us to tell which the prospective countries to look at while exporting
are. How will you go about this?
Interviewee: Sure. Please give me a minute.

Interviewer: I need you to come up with a list of factors/criteria that you would use to narrow down
on the possible countries.

Interviewee: Firstly, we can eliminate the right-driving countries, since I assume the client wants to
use his existing facilities to produce cars for export. Interviewer: Yes- fair point.

Interviewee: Next, we will have to look at the regulatory environment to see which countries have
emission standards that are comparable to India. For instance, some European countries have very
stringent emission standards - an Indian automobile might not be able to meet these standards.
Hence, we can eliminate such countries. Interviewer: Okay. What else?

Interviewee: Now coming to the actual industry & market. Our target market should have a per-
capita GDP which is on similar lines with India (or higher), otherwise we will not be able to price it
competitively and make profits.

Interviewer: Okay, good. Any other major factors?

Interviewee: Yes- a good proxy for this would be to see the markets in which our existing (Indian)
competitors are in, and the type of cars they are selling, their price range etc.
Interviewee: Coming to the competitive environment, our client should not enter a market which is
dominated by a few big players. We might be construed as a threat and they may lobby to shut out
new entrants. We should target markets which are a little fragmented with more players – we might
have a better opportunity to come in with a superior product.

Interviewer: Is there any other reason you would chose a fragmented market?

Interviewee: Fragmented markets would have lower entry barriers. Assuming that some of these
players had entered the market recently, there is a clearly a scope to make in-roads and establish
our brand.

Interviewer: Okay. Take a couple of more minutes to summarize and then we can conclude.

24
 BAIN AND COMPANY

CASE 1

Candidate: Himani Arora

Case: Analysing Indigo airlines

(The interviewer was very friendly, attempting to diffuse the tension of day 0 by small talk. The
interview was a small case, testing very basics of case solving.)

Interviewer: Have you ever travelled from Indigo Airlines? How will you describe this airline?

Candidate: Yes, I have travelled from Indigo Airlines. They are low cost Airlines whose value
proposition in the market is cost leadership. It is the only airline which is profitable and has shown
consistent discipline to maintain its position.

Interviewer: You mentioned about profits, how does Indigo ensure that it makes profit?

Candidate: It does that through a number of factors – having a single fleet of aircrafts to minimize
training cost, no frill services e.g. no free meals and other in-flight services, allowing only 15 kg of
Baggage, increasing aircraft utilization by having more number of seats by reducing the leg space.

Interviewer: Can you think of any other factor?

Candidate: There are a number of other ways in which they save cost.

Interviewer: Is cost the only factor?

Candidate: No, They have found ways for making revenue also – selling meals in-flight instead of
providing it for free, charging for services like – priority luggage, selling products through their
magazine.

Interviewer: Okay. Great! Is there anything you will like to add to this?

Candidate: One more thing, which is not specific to Indigo but usually adopted by many airlines –
following hub and spoke model, in which flights are routed through a hub, usually big city, facing
high traffic compared to other cities. Further, the airlines aim to reduce the turnaround time on the
airport, thus improving utilisation of the aircraft.

(This was followed by five minute chat in which Interviewer mentioned that all the points were
adequately mentioned. He shared exact numbers/data points about Indigo)

CASE 2

Candidate: Himani Arora

Case: Merger and Acquisition

25
(The interviewer had experience of cases in technology. She started by asking me about my role in
Microsoft. After listening to my past experience, she chose to give me a case different from
technology sector.)

Interviewer: This is a small case about Merger and Acquisition. Are you comfortable with that?

Candidate: Yes, I will try my best!

Interviewer: Okay. So a little background about the case. It is about the two firms who supply palm
oil to FMCG conglomerates like HUL. This oil is a raw material in the manufacturing of soaps,
shampoo, etc. The typical steps involved in palm oil extraction is plantation, followed by crushing
and extraction of oil in a mill. This is followed by processing in refinery and then transportation via
the port.

These two firms are located in Africa. Let’s call them Firm A and Firm B. Firm A owns two palm
plantations close to each other, one mill and one refinery. Firm B owns one palm plantation, one mill
and one refinery. What are the synergies that they can exploit if they merge? The mill of firm A is
located closer to one plantation of Firm B.

Candidate: There are a lot of synergies that they can exploit if they merge. I will use the value chain
to list all the synergies. Give me some time to list the same if you are alright with the approach.

Interviewer: Sure. Go ahead

(After 2-3 mins)

Candidate: To start with, the two firms can standardize the approach they adopt in growing of palm
trees. They should choose on the basis of which approach is more productive.

Interviewer: The farming practices is more or less standard across the industry.

Candidate: Oh I see. Next, they can have some gains by economies of scale – buying the seeds,
fertilizer, equipment, labour together for all the three plantations. They will be able to bargain better
due to increased scale of operation.

Interviewer: Ok good. What next?

Candidate: In the next step, they can use mills that are closer to the plantations so that the
transportation cost is reduced. For example, you mentioned that plantation of Firm B is closer to the
mill of Firm A.

Interviewer: Apart from transportation optimization, what else can they do in this step?

Candidate: May be they can operate only 1 mill to achieve greater utilization. Again this will depend
on how much transportation cost they will bear to transport everything to one mill.

Interviewer: Great. What else?

Candidate: They can do a similar thing in refinery – operating only 1 refinery. After refinery, they can
transport the end product via ports

Interviewer: What other benefits can they get via transportation?

Candidate: They can transport all the refined oil together, from the refinery which is closer to port.
They will have economies of scale by shipping them together.

26
Interviewer: How exactly will they save money?

Candidate: (Falling short of words) I am not sure but if they book a ship each to transport oil. They
can send output using only one ship instead of two. (not convinced with my own answer)

Interviewer: Ok. Almost there . So, their oil was transported in the barrels which were half full
because of the smaller scale of operations which increased the cost of transportation per tonne.
With the merger, they could fill the entire barrel, reducing per unit transportation cost.

Candidate: Oh I see.

(This was followed by a general chat about her role in Bain & Company.)

CASE 3

Candidate: Pradeep G
Case: Internet of Things (Case Interview Not Cracked)

Interviewer: Partner (Technology, Media & Telecom), Bain

(This wasn’t so much of a case, but a discussion. The interviewer guided me at several points. Not
sure if there is a solution; If there was, I don’t think I got particularly close to it. A takeaway: reading
the news is important even for consulting interviews!)

Interviewer: Have you heard about Internet of Things (IoT)?

Candidate: Yes, I have.

Interviewer: What do you know about it?

Candidate: It’s technology that enables everyday objects to communicate with each other? For
example, when you leave from work, your phone could communicate with your geyser at home, and
ensure that you have water for a hot bath once you arrive. That sort of thing.

Interviewer: Okay, fine. Say you were advising Mr. Modi about an IoT strategy for India. What points
will you consider?

Candidate: Okay, an IoT strategy for India. Can I have a couple of minutes to think about it?
(Quite frazzled, tried to think of a way to bring some sort of structure to the case) Candidate: Is
there a particular timeline for this strategy? Interviewer: Take it as long term; 10-15 years.

Candidate: Alright. So my guess is that why the Indian Government will even be considering IoT is
because of its role in developing smart cities. I think the Government recently shortlisted 100 odd
cities, and will decide in a few months as to which will be the first few smart cities.

Interviewer: Okay, go on.

Candidate: So the way I would think of IoT is, devices and software (the best structure that I could
come up with in a minute). Let me take a look at software first. I don’t think the government will
have a significant role to play here; I think Indian software companies like Infosys and Wipro may
have already begun exploring IoT service solutions, and since IoT is set to take off globally, they may
already be evaluating this opportunity.

27
Interviewer: Okay (hesitantly).

Candidate: On to devices. Here, I could look at foreign firms setting up manufacturing units in India
(to meet India’s demand, and overseas demand), and India importing the devices and technology.
With regards to setting up manufacturing units, India will have to look at various ease of business
measures such as taxes, reducing red tape, land acquisition, quickening the process of approvals etc.
Several of these measures may be legislative.

Interviewer: Okay.

Candidate: Initially however, India may have to export the technology. For this, the government may
need to look at reducing import duties, customs etc., to ensure that the devices can be adopted.

Interviewer: Okay, anything else you’re missing?

Candidate: Maybe some measures to build an indigenous device and software ecosystem? Help
innovators take their products to market? Things that come to mind are setting up more incubators,
strengthening IP laws, perhaps having a central seed fund for IoT startups etc.

Interviewer: Alright, anything else that you can think of?

Candidate: No, I think that’s about it.

Interviewer: Okay, thanks.

CASE 4

Candidate: Ritika Jain

Case: Growth Strategy for an IT Service Provider

Interviewer: How are you doing today? How was your first interview?

Candidate: I’m doing well, thank you. I think it went well, we agreed to a solution the client would

ultimately appreciate.
Interviewer: Are you nervous?
Candidate: A little, but I think a little nervousness is always good

Interviewer: Great. So let’s start with the case then. I see on your resume that you’ve worked in
Finance and IT. Which of the two industries would you prefer a case from?
Candidate: I’m comfortable with both, so either work.

Interviewer: Let’s do an IT case I did last year then. There’s an IT hardware service provider in US and
he’s threatened with the advent of new cloud computing services. What should he do? Candidate:
Thanks for the question. Could you answer some of my questions regarding this client? Interviewer:
Sure.

Candidate: Where is he located?

Interviewer: US

Candidate: What kind of hardware services does he provide?

Interviewer: He provides storage facilities, networking infrastructure, and servers and routers.

Candidate: How’s the business split across these three services?

28
Interviewer: 20%, 40%, 40%. He differentiates in the market with the quality of his technological
solutions.

Candidate: What kind of clients does he have?

Interviewer: He has three types of clients – enterprises, telecom companies and retail companies.

Candidate: Of these clients, are all of them moving towards cloud or is any specific preferring to
stay?

Interviewer: The fixed demand from enterprises is staying, but the variable demand is shifting to
cloud services. Enterprises are fairly non-responsive as of now.

Candidate: How about retail?

Interviewer: Retailers are themselves scared with the onset of cloud services since they pose a direct
threat to their business as well.

Interviewer: Before we continue, could you tell me ways in which cloud services could provide better
solutions than hardware solutions? You understand cloud right – basically Amazon Web Services,
hosting on Dropbox, etc.

Candidate: Thanks, Sir. Yes, I understand cloud services pretty well being a software developer
myself. There are a couple of ways cloud services can be more useful than hardware – they’re
cheaper to host and provide more flexibility since they don’t really take up any physical space.

Interviewer: And can you think of any downsides?

Candidate: Yes, cloud services aren’t as secure as hardware solutions, being hosted on clouds.

Interviewer: Perfect. Now given all the above information, can you recommend me a way for this

hardware provider to survive in this shifting market?

Candidate: Sure. Can you give me 15 seconds?

Interviewer: Of course.

(I penned down all the possible ways he can continue to thrive in this market in the next 15 seconds.)

Candidate: I have thought of 4 possible ways in which he can sustain his business. I’ll explain them
briefly:

The first option is a very short -term solution for immediate action. They can offer long-term
contracts to existing customers with some attractive discounts. This will avoid immediate drop in
sales in a very short span. However, this is not a very sustainable solution.

The second way is to specialize in security intensive companies, such as defense, which will always
need secure storage and network facilities. This will always have a constant demand and they won’t
switch to cloud services.

The third option is to forward integrate with the telecom clients and provide an end-to-end solution
to customers. Since telecom clients are also threatened by cloud services, they’ll be willing to
collaborate and this association can provide a differentiated solution to customers.

Interviewer: That’s perfect! That’s what we recommended to our client, to forward integrate.

Candidate: Thank you, Sir. If you don’t mind, can I also explain my fourth recommendation?

29
Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: In an industry undergoing such an inflection point, I don’t see any advantage in avoiding
to adopt new technologies. This was the reason Nokia and Kodak failed. I believe that the client
should create an ambidextrous organization and start researching on expanding to cloud services
alongside.
Interviewer: Sounds great! We have good news for you!

(He went out to fetch another partner and congratulated me on receiving the offer.)

CASE 5

Candidate: Sanchit Singhal

Case: Growth strategy for a BPO player

Interviewer: Let’s get into the case. An Indian BPO player provides services to US and European
clients. Majority of its revenues are from its call centers in 3 major cities of India (Delhi, Bangalore,
Chennai). It also has a small establishment in Europe. The business has been doing good but lately it
has been under pressure with new competition coming from countries like Indonesia and
Philippines. What should the company do for its next phase of growth?

Candidate: What are company’s plan w.r.t to growth? Is it planning to grow in its existing US and
European markets or is it looking for other markets as well? Interviewer: They want to grow in the
existing markets itself.

Candidate: How is the competition threatening the client? Is the competition on the quality of
service or the price?
Interviewer: The quality does not differ across players. The processes are quite standard. The
competition has been beating the client on price.

Candidate: That’s very helpful information. Can I take a minute to think about it?

Interviewer: Sure.

andidate: We know that competition is beating us on price, so we can either provide better services
at higher price or reduce our price. You mentioned that the processes are quite standardized so can I
assume that better service is not a differentiating factor and we need to reduce our prices as well
with the same service quality. Interviewer: Yes, you can assume that.

Candidate: So now we know that we need to reduce our price keeping the service quality level
same. So we need to reduce our cost, else our margins will go down. I will try and identify the
major cost heads.

Interviewer: Okay, go ahead.

Candidate: As I understand, the major cost head for a call center will be its employee cost.
Interviewer: That’s correct. So, how can you reduce the employee cost?

30
Candidate: So, a customer calls the call center and the call is picked up by either an employee or
IVRS. There is automation in certain activities. Has the BPO used sufficient automation to reduce the
employee cost?

Interviewer: Yes, it has sufficient level of automation.

Candidate: Okay, another way of reducing employee cost is to increase utilization of employees.

Interviewer: How will you do that?

Candidate: We can measure calls/employee/hour to check if the utilization is above industry

standards. We can check average time/call and see if it can be improved using better
technology/software. We can also check if utilization varies across different shifts and we can
optimize that.

Interviewer: Good thought but utilization is quite high already.

Candidate: Okay, then we should check the average salary of the employees. As, I understand call
center jobs are generally low skilled job. Often, call centers might prefer to employ unexperienced
people to keep the salaries low.

Interviewer: That has already been taken care of by the client. Which are the other cost heads you
would want to look at?

Candidate: Besides employee cost I understand rental or real estate cost might be another major
cost for the client.

Interviewer: Good. So can you do anything about the rental cost?

Candidate: Yes, we can either shift to tier 2 cities or keep the present call centres in metros and
open the next set of call centres in tier 2 cities. This will reduce the rental cost and also the
employee cost as the salaries will be lower in tier 2 cities.

Interviewer: That’s a good answer. This is actually what we recommended to the client. Thank you.

CASE 6

Candidate: Sankhadeep Pal

Case: Growth Strategy for an Electronics Company

(Started directly with the case, after very brief round of introductions.)

31
Interviewer: Since you have worked in the tech industry, let me ask you about a case in the same
industry.

Candidate: Sure!

Interviewer: Your client is a foreign electronics company. It has several products in the Internet of
Things(IoT) sector. It is thinking whether to enter the Indian market or not, and if yes, what
segments to target. Can you help them?

(Clarified the question, found out that it is a strong player in the segment, with a presence in Europe
and China)

Candidate: So IoT is a huge field. Are there some specific product lines that the client has expertise
in?

Interviewer: Yes, it is a major player in the smart lighting business.

Candidate: In the countries that it is present in, what kind of clients does it have, commercial or
residential houses?

Interviewer: Both

Candidate: Do you want me to estimate the potential market size in India?

Interviewer: In the interest of time, let us skip that. If our client does want to enter India, which
segments should it target?

Candidate: Is it okay for me to assume that our client’s smart lighting products are priced at a
premium to ordinary lighting?

Interviewer: Yes, you may.

Candidate: Since these lighting systems are expensive and middle class Indians are, in general,
sceptical of spending a lot of money on new technology, I will follow a two phase strategy. First, I will
go the B2B way: target the office buildings, especially the modern ones which are IT and financial
centres. Assuming smart lighting will reduce their electricity bill and make them more cost effective
in the long run, they will be more open to adopt this technology. They would also have the capital to
invest in this. I will also target 4-5 star hotels. Since these are relatively large segments, they will be a
good launch pad for our product.

Interviewer: Okay, then?

Candidate: Then we can target the rich home owners, who would probably be working in these
offices or visiting these hotels. Having understood their usefulness, they would probably want it in
their apartments as well.

Interviewer: Is there anything else that the client can do?

Candidate: Yes, actually the government has announced plans for 100 Smart Cities in India. May be
our client can tie up with the government for the implementation of smart lighting projects in these
cities. Once this is done and the efficacy of this new product is well known, the client can go to the
mass-market.

Interviewer: Okay, that will be enough. Thank you

32
 BCG

CASE 1

Candidate: S Aatresh
Case: Reduction of Market Share

Interviewer – (Started with the standard breaking the ice question) Tell me about your startup
experience of MainbhiMBA.com?

Candidate – (Told him about the motivation behind it, how I went about it and learnings from its
failure)

Caselet: A large FMCG has a small business unit which manufactures and markets an “Energy drink”.
It had a market share of 90% but now its share has dropped to 40%. You have been asked to help
them gain back their market share.

Candidate – (Repeated the question to make sure I understood the problem statement correctly)
Apart from market share, do I need to look at any other issue like falling profitability?

Interviewer – No. Let us concentrate of market share first. And later if time permits, we will get into
profitability.

Candidate – Sure. Can I take 2 minutes to gather my thoughts and structure my ideas?
Interviewer – Sure. Go ahead

Candidate – (Started with standard probing questions. Since when market share is slipping, has a
new competitor entered etc) Okay. So I have drawn the possible issues that I would like to look at.
(Showed him my sheet)

Internal External
Product issues Competition
Pricing Regulation
Distribution Xx (Could not think at that time)
Branding Xx (Could not think at that time)
Capacity

My hypothesis is that the new competitor in the market is offering a better product. Can I go ahead
with it or do you want me to look at a particular issue?

Interviewer – As you rightly said, there is a new competitor in the market. But I want you to
concentrate first on product, distribution and capacity.

Candidate – Sure. I drew a table something like this

33
 Product Distribution Capacity
Colour issues Retailer penetration Do we have adequate
capacity to serve the market?

Taste issues Urban/ Rural mix Any recent fire or strike in

the factory that led to low
Container type Scarcity in production?
Supermarket/Hypermarket
Container size Drew a value chain from
factory to retailer comprising
Side affects
warehouse, DC, distributor, re-
Smell distributor, retailer and freight
and asked him if he would like
to look at a particular point

Interviewer – (Shockingly) No. All that is fine but the actual issue is pricing. Look deeper into it

Candidate – (I guess he was just trying to understand if I can double click whatever I say). So is there
a differential pricing between us and our competitor?

Interviewer – Yes. Our energy drink is priced at 966 and theirs at 874

Candidate – (I randomly started probing about where the difference is. And he seemed irritated due
to my lack of structure. So got back into the groove and made this table)

Particulars Client Competition

MRP 966 874
Retailer Margin
Distributor Margin
Price to company
Margin to company
Costs (Variable)
- Procurement
- In Freight
- Labour (Efficiency,
Cost)
- Packaging
- Distribution
- Returns (Expiry,
damage)
Costs (Fixed)

34
- Rental
- Salaries
- Promotional
- Under/Over capacity %

(His eyes gleamed looking at the last point)

Interviewer – Yes. Look at capacity utilization and link it to fixed costs. Assume margins are 26% of
MRP and please do all the calculations in your head

Candidate – SP of our client is 714 and that of our client is somewhere around 648. Why is there a
difference in prices? Is it due to higher costs or higher margin or because our capacity utilization is
less than our competitor.

Interviewer - (He started throwing numbers in order to test my quant) Assume Raw Material is 366,
variable cost is 160 and fixed cost is 176 for our client. COGS and VC is same for competitor but still
both earn same profit per unit of the energy drink.

Candidate – Since, costs and profit are same except fixed costs and the SP of our client is Rs. 66
(714-648) higher than competitor, our fixed costs (FC) then must be Rs.68 higher than our
competitor. Hence, competitor FC is 110. And this difference is either due to capacity under-
utilization or in general higher fixed costs

Interviewer – Good. Now tell me what is the volume I need in order to match the fixed cost of my
competitor?

Candidate – What is the current sales volume?

Interviewer – Market is 19.5 million. Share was 90%. Present volume is 17.6 million. Don’t use
paper. And I need the answer

Candidate – 90% would be 17.6 m units. 178 per unit is FC on volume of 17.6 million. To achieve FC
per unit of 110, required volume is 17.6*178/110, so 28-30 million approx.

Interviewer – Yes. It should be 28 million. So now tell me what should the client do?

Candidate – If the client is charging a higher price, then customers will be willing to pay only if the
product is superior. Client should either sell excess capacity to reduce fixed costs or try to increase
volumes through price reduction. Higher volumes will reduced FC per unit and hence push back
profitability to earlier levels.

Interviewer - Ok. Then finally tell me what are the two risks related to reducing the price of our
product?

Candidate – (Knowing that this is the make or break question because it involves synthesis of the
entire problem). The 2 risks can be

Price Elasticity of Demand – Is price the only reason for reduced sale? And if the price is reduced
to 874, will the volume actually rise to 28 million

Competitor reaction – How deep are the pockets of the competitor? A price drop might lead to a
competitor reaction leading to a price war.

35
Interviewer – (Seemed impressed) Good job. Wait here. Someone will let you know the way
forward.

Candidate – Sure. Thanks

CASE 2

Candidate: Allen Dan Babu

Case: Market Growth

Candidate: Good morning, Sir. How are you doing today? (Exchange of pleasantries)

Interviewer: (Looks at CV). So, why MBA?

Candidate: (Give funda about my reasons for doing MBA. Interviewer looks happy)

Interviewer: Ok, let’s get down to the case. The client is in the fertilizer industry in South India and is
looking to expand into the animal feed market. How would you advise the client?

Candidate: Sure, Sir, before proceeding with solving the problem, I would like to ask you a few
preliminary questions to get an understanding of the client and its business, if that’s ok.

Interviewer: Sure

Candidate: Which part of the value chain does the client currently operate in? E.g. does it operate
only in manufacturing or does it operate in manufacturing and sales?

Interviewer: It operates in all parts of the value chain, right from manufacturing to sales

Candidate: Ok. Sir, you mentioned South India. Which all states does it have a presence in?

Interviewer: (mentions a couple of states)

Candidate: Is there any specific reason why the client wants to expand into the animal feed
industry?

Interviewer: They have been recently advised that this might be a good opportunity. However, they
wanted our advice before taking any action.

Candidate: Ok Sir, just to make sure I have the right understanding of the problem, our client
operates in the fertilizer industry based out of South India and is looking to expand into the animal
feed industry and we are required to advise the client whether the company should enter the
industry or not. Is that correct?

Interviewer: That is correct

Candidate: Sir, I’m not completely aware of the animal feed industry. Could you give me a brief
overview of the industry in general?

Interviewer: Gives funda about the animal feed industry.

Candidate: (Noted down a few keywords) Ok, Sir, I would like to structure the problem into two steps.
First I would like to evaluate the potential attractiveness of the industry and then I would like to evaluate
the competitive positioning of our client before making a suggestion to the client.

36
Interviewer: Sure

Candidate: Sure, at this point, I would like to understand the size of the animal feed market. Do we
have any data from the client on the market size or would you like me to estimate the same?

Interviewer: You can estimate it

Candidate: Can I take a moment to structure my thoughts?

Interviewer: Sure

Candidate: (after a few moments) The approach I would take is: I would like to estimate the number
of animals covered by the feed industry and then multiply the number by the average feed per
animal and the average price of feed to arrive at the market size. I would like to take the cow as a
representative animal to calculate the feed requirement if that’s ok.

Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: To estimate the number of cows, I would like to use milk production as a proxy.

Interviewer: Sure. You can note down a few numbers here.

Annual milk production in India- x litres/ year. Feed required per animal – y tonnes/year. Average
price of the feed - Rs. v/kg.

Candidate: Sure, what would be the average volume of milk given by a typical cow in a day?

Interviewer: z litres/ day

Candidate: (walks him through the calculations and multiplies the daily milk production by 365 to
get the annual milk production)

Interviewer: Are you sure 365 is the right number?

Candidate: (smiles realizing he’s made an assumption) Oh right, how many days would a cow give
milk in a year?

Interviewer: Assume 300 days/ year

Candidate: Total market size=x litres/ year/(z litres/day/animal*300 days/year)*y

tonnes/year/animal*Rs. v/kg*1000kg/tonne (arrives at a figure)

Interviewer: What do you think?

Candidate: If we look at 1% of the market size, it comes out to Rs. q. To evaluate the significance of
the market share, I would like to compare it against existing revenues of the client. Can I know the
current annual revenue figure of the client?

Interviewer: Rs. w/year

Candidate: 1 % of the animal feed industry market share works out to be 5% of the existing revenue.
Even if the company claims 1% of the market share, the revenue growth is 5%, which is over and
above the revenue of the core business.

37
The interviewer has a discussion with the candidate about whether the growth is good or bad and
before the candidate attempts to proceed with the remaining aspects of the case, the interviewer
says with a smile that the case is over.

CASE 3

Candidate: Praful Parakh

Case: Declining CASA Ratio

Interviewer: Tell me about yourself?

Candidate: I gave an intro and made sure that it was not more than 60 secs, then she asked me
some work-ex related questions and also somethings that I was doing at IIMB

Interviewer: So Praful, You client is a Public Sector Bank and facing declining CASA Ratio over fast
few quarters. What could be the reason?

Candidate: So what I understand by CASA is that it is the ratio of the Current and Savings Deposits in
a bank to the Total Deposits and it is necessary to be high for current and liquidity needs of a bank
and it is less costly. Am I correct or do I need to know something else?

Interviewer: That is perfect! And a bank will need ideally a good CASA ratio as it a cheap source of
funds.

Candidate: Ok, Thanks! Now the CASA Ratio in itself can decline due to reduction in average Current
and Savings account deposits or may be a disproportionate increase in the Fixed Deposits, which
may be because the bank/economy is preferring and giving higher FD rates. Do we have any data
which could be the reason?

Interviewer: The current account deposits are not increasing at the pace at which FDs are, hence
focus on the Numerator only.

Candidate: What has been the timeframe that we are seeing this problem and has this been a trend
for our competitors too?

Interviewer: The ratio has been declining in the past few quarters and our competitors are just fine.
The numbers are not relevant.

Candidate: Thanks. So, our client, which is a public sector bank, is facing declining CASA ratio and is
it primarily because of our Current deposits not growing, which is only pertaining to our client and
we need to solve this. Is that the only objective I should be aware of or is there something else the
client is worried about?

Interviewer: For the scope of the discussion, this is the only problem we need to focus?

Candidate: Thanks, I will like to take a minute to structure my thoughts. <After a Minute, with a
structure>. The deposits can decline because of broadly two reasons, external like Economic Condition,
Interest Rates/Charges, but those should affect the others too, so I am ruling them out, and other
reasons internal to our client and their offerings. So this growth can be reduced due to the reason that
the average money in every account has fallen or that the number of accounts have not grown. The
classic problem of retention vs acquisition and also is the problem more prominent in a certain segment
viz. Business and HNI Accounts, Individuals (which can be Businessmen and Salaried and Others). Do we
have data to state anything on that front?

38
Interviewer: Our previous customers are still with us, but the number of accounts have been the
same and normally we cater to all types of customers and this pattern is with all the segments, but
more so with salaried and corporates.

Candidate: So should I move to analyze why our CASA penetration is lower in Corporates?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: So is it that the interest rates/charges that we are offering any different from other?

Interviewer: No.

Candidate: Now new customer acquisition could be low due to the services and products we have,
like Internet Banking, ATMs, mBanking, Letter of Credits, International Remittances etc. So do we
have an issue with any one or more of them?

Interviewer: We have our ATMs and other traditional banking facilities but our presence in the
Internet Banking and mBanking space is not that prevalent.

Candidate: So this can be a reason why corporates will not be on board and since they aren’t the
employees, who normally have an account, (gave an example from my work life) with the same bank. In
the situation when our services are not at par, corporates and salaried people will not come to our client.
This is a problem that we have identified, I will like to move and see if there are any other facets that may
be causing this. The CASA can also be lower due to our client’s Image as being a very businessmen-type
bank and may be the advertisements/promotions don’t connect to the corporates. Also normally bank
accounts for corporates and HNIs are through Relationship Managers and Sales people. So do we have
such mechanisms in place?

Interviewer: Yes, We have traditionally been a mercantile bank. Good, you have identified few
issues. Summarize the case for me and what will you recommend?

Candidate: So our client a public sector bank has been seeing declining CASA ratio. This was primarily
because of our low foothold in the Internet and mBanking space, which has slowed our growth in the
Corporate, HNIs and Salaried employee segment. Also the absence of RMs and our image have
aggravated the problem. Hence the bank should invest to get these systems up and maintain RMs
because this will bring Corporate accounts along with their employees, which will normally be CASA
in nature.

Interviewer: Thanks!

Interest Rates
Price
Charges

Internet Banking
Product ATMs, mBanking
Other Services
Internal
Brand Image
Declining CASA Promotion
Advertisements
External Branch Network
Locations of
Place ATMs

CASE 4

39
Candidate: Sharmili Adhikari

Case: Market Growth

I was one of the last ones to be called in for the interview and needless to say, situations such as
these bring in a completely different kind of jitters. The trick is to not think about it. You have
prepared well. Now just let your learning take its natural course. Case interviews are essentially a
two-way-street, candidates are advised to ask questions and believe me, the interviewer is more than
happy to guide them.

I had just the one interview that lasted about 50 minutes.

Interviewer – I really haven’t had the time to go through your resume. Could you help me out?

Candidate – (One of the best ways to handle this is to drop cues on avenues you intend to be asked
on. Exempli gratia, I had prior work experience in the banking sector and so that’s what I mentioned,
among others.)

Interviewer – Okay, so I see you have been associated with the SAC. What were your roles and
responsibilities?

Candidate – (Talked about it, highlighting on the tenets that I had learned in my capacity as a SAC
member, some critical decisions undertaken etc.)

Interviewer- So, let’s get started, shall we? A case on the banking sector, does that work?
Candidate- (As expected!) Sure!
Interviewer- Ok so there are four regions R1 through R4. Your client, the manager of a bank would
like to know if it is lucrative making housing loans for these regions. Historically the bank has a
customer reach of 20%, 30%, 10% and 20% respectively. In recent times the proportions are 25%,
30%, 5%, 20%. (I am making these numbers up as I type. For the life of me, I cannot recall the
original figures.) The bank wishes to make an overall targeted profit of Rs. 150 (assume). Which
region(s) should the manager pick and why?

Candidate- (Summarising is always a good way to go. Take notes as well, this obviates the chances
of forgetting key points narrated in the caselet.) So to summarise, our client is a bank that wishes to
rake in overall profits to the tune of Rs. 150 and is looking at regions to target in order to achieve its
goal. May I ask some contextual questions before I begin my analysis? This is a commercial bank
correct? The regions you speak of, can they be considered to be subject to the same macroeconomic
conditions?

Interviewer- Sure. Yes indeed.

Candidate- Does the bank face stiff competition? Is that a reason for the differentials in penetration
of the customer base?

Interviewer- Not relevant. Can you tell me what factors the bank is looking at?

Candidate- (Thinking out loud. This is a recommended practice, it tells the interviewer you have
understood the question and analysing it systematically. Added benefit? If you are wrong here, he/she
will correct you.) Well, the overall macroeconomic scenario is the same for all regions yet there exists a
disparity in the banking services penetration in these areas. Also there has been a change in the
penetration rates over the years for some of these regions. The locations- is there an industry (IT or
otherwise) that can lead to a surge in people needing houses in the first place?

40
Also, off the top of my mind, the bank is looking at credit worthiness of the people availing the
loans, risk of default, size of loan, demographics like age, a thorough KYC and of course, available
collateral. Also the bank relationship with the clients.

Interviewer- Yes exactly. Well you may consider the regions are subjected to the same external
forces. But yes that is indeed an important criteria to look for.

You mentioned bank relationship. Can you elaborate how that is pertinent?

Candidate – I am saying this because my dad is a banker and the loan disbursement, underwriting and
other processes becomes a lot easier if one is a valued customer. Also, now that I think about it, there
can some shortcomings on the services provided by the bank that could explain why their reach into the
customer base has been disparate in the different regions. Am I correct?

Interviewer: Interesting, can you explain what could they have done wrong?

Candidate: Let us take a step back and understand how a loan disbursement process works. (A
useful practise if you wish to clarify that there are no missteps in your basic understanding. You get
this part right, there are only some areas you could go wrong thereafter) A customer goes to a bank
to avail a housing loan, and after the necessary KYC and validations, the loan amount should be
disbursed…

Interviewer- It is a bit more basic than that. You mentioned shortcomings on the service. I want you
to think along those lines.

Candidate- Thank you for pointing me in that direction. Okay, so, there is a problem even before the
customer submits his documents and all. May I understand what kind of customers we are looking
at?

Interviewer- Apt question. So you can now assume that there is an IT boom in all of these areas that
has resulted in a surge of housing requirements. We have upper and upper-middle class families
migrating into the city. What kind of services do you think they require from the bank while availing
loans?

Candidate- Well for starters, they wish to be treated as valued customers owing to the size of the
loan they will be availing. Not to mention faster, hassle free loan disbursement process, being the
ones with high credit scores. The bank may be negligent in this regard.
Interviewer- Yes indeed. So now that we have discussed the factors, could you get into some
number crunching and explain which region to prioritise?

Candidate- Sure. The methodology I would adopt is take an initial amount say Rs. 100 and see which
area(s) are able to generate the required returns. This way I shall know for which regions status quo
needs to be maintained and for which the bank needs to ramp up its customer reach. Am I okay with
my analysis so far? (There is no shame in asking. Get his approval at every step and carry on.)

Interviewer: Good. I think you have got the planning right. Go ahead.

Candidate- Okay so if I calculate the total expected returns for all regions, it is only 80, so it falls
short of the target by quite some margin. Also, judging by the current proportions, the bank’s
customer base has dropped in R3 and increased in R1 possibly for reasons mentioned before.
Therefore the bank would be prudent to increase its customer base in the expanding regions,
maintain status quo in the regions consistently doing well and improve its services in regions it is
performing poorly to maximise overall profits and reach its targeted level. Does that make sense?

Interviewer – Fair enough. Can you briefly summarise our discussion?

41
Candidate: (Summarised for a couple of minutes. Here I ensured I relayed pointers that the
interviewer directed me towards during the course of the discussion. This shows that one is quick to
learn despite having made a mistake in the first go.) Do you want me to suggest some
recommendations for the bank?

Interviewer: Decent analysis. Let’s wrap this up now. How do you think it went?

Candidate- It was an interesting case and if I fared decently it would be because I enjoyed doing it.

Interviewer: Good, glad you enjoyed it. Thank you Sharmili.

(In my opinion, structure helps and being methodical in your approach is a plus. It is a good practice
to ask those initial questions to attain a general contextual familiarity. But sometimes, you must
think outside the purview of the said methods of tackling a case. You will surprised to find how crucial
expanding the breadth of your analysis can be!)

CASE 5

Candidate: Utkarsh
Case: Effect of GST on Operations

I had only one round of interview. Although this season the BCG interviews were majorly restricted to
one round only, candidates are advised to be prepared for 2-3 rounds.

Interviewer – Shall we get started? Utkarsh please tell about your work-experience at your previous
organization.

Candidate – Talked about my previous work experience

Interviewer – So what extra-curricular activities are you part of at IIMB?

Candidate – Talked about being part of ICON and sports activities

Interviewer- Since we have been in operations, you must be knowing a little about supply chain?
Candidate- Sir, I have some idea though I don’t have a substantial work experience in this regard.

nterviewer- So you must be knowing about GST. Our client is a FMCG major who wants to
understand how GST is going to affect his network planning. Can you help him?

Candidate- Sir, I am not aware about the implications of GST. Can you please elaborate?

Interviewer- Sure. So GST will lead to a uniform tax regime across all states. In fact the inter-state
taxes shall not be levied anymore post the introduction of GST. Can you predict the current
warehousing model followed by our client?

Candidate- Sir, since all states are levying their own regime of taxes, I think the client has its
warehouses in each state to distribute to its retailers.

Interviewer- Yes exactly. This was the model earlier but now with the GST coming up, the client is
planning to consolidate its warehousing. Assume that the company has only 4 factories in New
Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai each of which produce a different variant of the same
product, say soap.

42
Can you suggest the distribution network for the client post implementation of GST.

Candidate – Sir, I think the client should be looking at consolidating its warehousing to generate
economies of scale. However the client should first ensure aggregation of all the 4 variants of the
specific product from the respective factories in the 4 geographical zones where the factories are
located.

Interviewer- Ok, Go ahead.

Candidate- Sir, I also think that the client needs to utilize the hub & spoke model to distribute the
products from the 4 zonal aggregation centres across India.

Factory 1

Factory 2
Zonal
Aggregation
Factory 3

Factory 4

Interviewer: Good. I think you have got the network right. Now tell me some suggestions to improve
the savings further in terms of network planning.

Candidate: Sir, The major costs in this case are transportation and storage. I have already provided
suggestions for storage model. In term of transportation I can think of ensuring back-haulage as one
suggestion.

Interviewer: What else?

(Now I took almost 5-10 minutes to give suggestions. I gave multiple suggestions but even I was not
convinced by the same. But finally came to what the interviewer was looking for.)

Candidate: Sir, One thing which I can think of is the size of trucks utilized for transportation. I know
from my work experience that 16 tonnage trucks although carry more load do not utilize
proportionately more fuel as compared to 8 tonnage trucks. So 16 tonnage trucks should be utilized.

Interviewer: Yes exactly!! Thank you Utkarsh. That will be all.

(I personally felt that standard frameworks prescribed in the casebooks give you a good starting
point for preparation but on the D-day make sure that you are open to all possibilities.)

CASE 6

Candidate: Agrim Gupta

Case: Profitability

Interviewer: So Agrim, your client is a premium ergonomic luxury chair manufacturer for office.

The company is making losses, so what could be the reason?

Candidate: Sir, where is the company based out of?

Interviewer: He mentioned some European country.

43
Candidate: What does the company provide or what is their revenue model – do they sell chairs only
or they sell chairs and provide services like repairing and maintenance?

Interviewer: Chairs only

Candidate: Is the client making those chairs or just selling?

Interviewer: They design, make and sell

Candidate: Since when has the company been making losses?

Interviewer: Last 1-1.5 years, losses have increased steadily

Candidate: (thinking in head) 2 ways to make losses – either costs have increased or sales have
reduced

Candidate: Do we know if the number of units sold/year are increasing/decreasing or if the average
price of a chair has increased/decreased?
Interviewer: Number of chairs sold is constant or growing at a normal rate. Price of chair hasn’t
changed.

Candidate: This means cost is the issue. (Here I felt my work-experience was being tested since I had
worked on a business reorganization project on controlling costs.)

Costs are either headcount costs (like labor, pension, severance, etc.) or non-headcount costs like
Distribution, Sales & promotion, utilities, raw materials, etc. For a chair manufacturer, materials
should drive the major costs.

Candidate: What materials do we use to make the chairs?

Interviewer: Wood/Plastic

Candidate: Has material cost increase?

Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: Has wood become more expensive?

Interviewer: No

Candidate: How have the material costs increased then?

Interviewer: Transportation costs have increased since importing exquisite quality wood

Candidate: Is this wood available somewhere else?

Interviewer: It is available but of a slightly inferior quality

Candidate: What’s the problem with acquiring this quality of wood for production?

Interviewer: Never thought about it

Candidate: Why?

Interviewer: Procurement guy is bringing wood across the Atlantic Ocean, has no incentive to
change the wood.

Candidate: So basically, there is a mismatch in incentives since the person holding the P&L doesn’t
control the cost. The procurement guy has no KPI in reducing costs. He just follows vendor order.

44
Interviewer: That’s right.

CASE 7

Candidate: Agrim Gupta

Case: Market Entry

Interviewer: Your client is a premium ergonomic luxury chair manufacturer for office. The client
wants to pitch to a new market like India. Figure out if a country like India is viable. Candidate:
Where is the client based out of?

Interviewer: Europe

Candidate: (Thinking out loud) Where can we sell ergonomic chairs? Who would buy these chairs?

Factors affecting purchase decision can be figured out using 4Ps – Promotion should not be
important for chairs, Place can be anywhere, Price seems like the most factor and with respect to
Product we need to think would buy this product in India and at this price => This shall give the
target segment.

Interviewer: Okay

Candidate: What is the price of a chair?

Interviewer: $1000

Candidate: What are the selling points of the product?

INTERVIEWER: It is an ergonomic chair and can be seen as style statement. It’s comfortable and one
can sit on it for hours.

Candidate: Who are the primary customers in Europe - Residential or Commercial?

Interviewer: You tell me

Candidate: It should be commercial. In offices in boss’s cabin which means can mostly sell to CXOs.
We will see average size of a white collar company. In a building/office, on average around 250
employees.

Interviewer: Fine, let’s go with it.

Candidate: If we consider various head of divisions like HR, etc. and VPs, there would be less than 10
people per office with their own cabin.

Interviewer: Fine

(From here, it becomes a guesstimate)

Candidate: So to target in India, we will not go to Tier-2 cities. We will go for Tier-1 cities. In India,
there are 10-12 Tier-1 cities. Average population is 1 crore. Working population is around 50%,
hence around 0.5 crores. 10-15 Lacs people in white collar jobs. So 12.5 lacs total people, 250
people/office implies around 5000 companies which implies maximum 50,000 chairs maximum in 1
city. Taking 25,000 chairs per city and 10 cities, we get 2.5 lakh chairs at $1000.

Interviewer: So will you recommend?

45
Candidate: I don’t think we should enter right now. Market isn’t right to enter in India with a chair
priced at $1000.

DELOITTE

Candidate: Shubham Mittal

(Most of the consulting firms organize networking dinners whereas Deloitte conducts a case
workshop for shortlisted candidates. In the case workshop they give a brief overview about the
company structure which is pretty useful information to prepare answers for “Why Deloitte?” and
other related questions which are generally asked in the final interview round. After the company
overview, students are divided into small groups and the case workshop which involves discussion of
a case. This is like a group case interview where individuals are being evaluated on the quality of
their discussion. So do read and practice some common frameworks before the workshop.)

Round 1: Guesstimate

(The interviewer asked very basic HR questions and a guesstimate. The basic HR questions included
questions like “Tell me something about yourself”, “Hobbies”, “Examples illustrating leadership
skills”, Work experience related questions etc. Based on the hobbies or work experience, the
interviewer would ask a guestimate. I was not asked a guesstimate probably because I had work
experience in a data analytics firm. One of the other interns mentioned Cricket as his hobby and was
then asked to estimate the no. of cricket balls bought in a month in IIMB. It is generally advised not
to start the guestimate with population, choosing any other proxy is preferred in Deloitte.)

Round 2: Merger & Acquisition Case

(Not sure if it was a coincidence but every selected intern was asked the same M&A case.)
Interviewer: A company X which is a Wi-Fi or some electronic chips manufacturer with net worth of
$1 Billion wants to acquire another firm Y whose net worth is $2 Billion. Should firm X acquire firm
Y?

Candidate: To be clear, we are looking at a company which is interested in buying a much bigger
company, so let’s look at the possible advantages of acquisition. Do we have information on the
manufacturing sites of both these companies, markets to which they are currently serving or any
other information about the electronic industry?

Interviewer gave me 2 sheets of information which had a lot of numerical data. I found the
following data on the sheet:

Manufacturing plants – X had its plant in US and Y in Europe

Serving Markets – Both served Global markets

Industry trends

The shelf life of the products is very short and hence there is a requirement of
constant R&D to stay ahead of competitors

Market growth rate

Some technical capabilities which company Y had over company X)

Candidate: Okay, so it is possible that company X wants to start its operations in Europe and hence is
looking to grow inorganically by acquiring firm Y

46
Interviewer: Might be true but tell me how do we evaluate if Y is a good company to acquire?

Candidate: Do we have sales data to compare the acquisition cost with the increase in sales coming
from company Y?

Interviewer: We don’t have any sales information of the competitor; do you think we can use any
other proxy for the same?

Candidate: Since this is a capital intensive industry due to regular requirement of investment in
R&D, we can compare two scenarios-
Scenario 1 – Invest in R&D and analyze the return on investment
Scenario 2 – Invest in Company Y and analyze the return over investment
Should I continue with these two scenarios or do I need to consider other scenarios as well?
Interviewer: Let’s discuss these two scenarios in detail.

(Interviewer handed over 2-3 more sheets of information. Information in the sheets provided was
as follows-

Company X’s financial numbers and various ratios (Ex- Investment in R&D, Income, ROI)
Market share data of various competitors in the industry and their Net Worth (Graph)
Information of some M&A deals that took place in the past in the same industry
o Deal value

o A multiplier which was a measure if the acquired company was smaller or larger than
the acquirer

o ROI of those M&A deals)

Candidate: (Discussed Scenario 1 using company X’s financial data ROI was estimated to be in the
range of 7-10%. For Scenario 2, in order to obtain ROI, a proxy can be used which can be comparing
the current deal with the past deals and assuming the same ROI). Out of the given 8 deals, some
deals can be rejected from analysis as the acquired company was smaller than the acquirer, which is
not the case here. One of the remaining deals is comparable in size and shows the obtained ROI was
9.5%. Since this ROI is at the higher end of the expected return from Scenario 1. I would suggest that
Company X should acquire Company Y.

Interviewer: That’s great, we got what we were looking for. All the best!

(Deloitte generally expects you to support your understanding with data so you should ask for more and
more data. A M&A case is very different from other cases in terms of the frameworks used. You need to
have an understanding of financial ratios so that you can compare various companies)

Round 3

(This was a partner interview and the objective of the interview is to see if you are a good fit for
the firm. Initially the partner asked some icebreaking questions. Expect all HR type questions like
Why Deloitte?
How is the day going?
Why should we choose you over others?
Hobbies
Responsibilities in your previous firm

These and other HR questions were asked.)

47
Partner: How many interviews have you already given today?

Candidate: This is my first interview

Partner: Why so?
Candidate: Deloitte was my first preference so I had been waiting for this interview since morning.
(Actually Deloitte was my only consult shortlist so gave that answer with full confidence and it
worked. Don’t use this until it is true as some company officials know about the candidate’s
shortlists.)

Partner: Why did you choose Deloitte over other firms?

Candidate: Deloitte is better than other firms as (Gave 2-3 points)

Partner: How do you know about this?

Candidate: There was a company presentation in the case workshop where I go to learn about
Deloitte.

Partner: What else you know about Deloitte?

Candidate: I have heard from a friend who works at Deloitte that the culture in Deloitte is very good
and colleagues are very knowledgeable and helpful.

(The conversation went on for 15-20 minutes with some more HR type questions. In every interview,
in the end, you might be asked a question like “Do you have any questions for us”. You are expected
to ask something about the firm. So do prepare for that.)

GEP

CASE 1

Candidate: Abhishek Somani

Case: Guesstimate

Interviewer: Do you know about what GEP does?

Candidate: (told about what GEP does in 2-3 lines)

Case let – How many flights do you think Indigo has for its operations in India?

Candidate: Just to clarify we will be looking at Indigo’s business in India only or do you also want me
to look at the international flights by Indigo.

Interviewer: Let’s look at Indigo business in India for now.

Candidate: Alright. For the fleet size I will assume that there are 5 major (Tier-1) cities and 25 Tier-2
cities that Indigo provides its services to. I will be ignoring Tier 3 cities as part of this analysis.

Interviewer: Go ahead.

48
Candidate: Since Tier-1 cities will be having more traffic daily, I will assume that we will require 4
direct trips daily between those cities. So by that combination, we have 10 routes where the flights
will be flying 4 times a day.

For Tier-2 cities, since the traffic is low, we can use connecting flights. We can follow a hub and
spoke model. Since, we have 25 Tier- 2 cities, I would like to create a cluster consisting of 1 Tier-1
city with 5 Tier-2 cities. Therefore, all Tier-2 cities would be connected via Tier-1 city. Is this a fair
assumption?
Interviewer: Yes, looks fine. Go ahead.

Candidate: For Tier -1 to Tier-1 since we have 10 routes and 4 times a day, I would assume that 2
flights per route are required to achieve this. Therefore, we require 10*2 = 20 flights. So for Tier-1 to
Tier-2 cities we will have 2 flights daily connecting them. So we will have 5 routes from each Tier-1.
Therefore 25 such routes 2 times a day. For these 25 routes I would say 1 flight per route. Therefore,
25 flights more. So a total of 45 flights.

Interviewer: Do you think you require 25 flights exclusively for this or can you utilize the flights
between Tier-1 to Tier-1 to connect some of them?

Candidate: Yes, we don’t need exclusive flights for Tier -1 to Tier-2 cities. Some of these routes we
might be able to complete with our Tier-1 to Tier-1 flights. So, if our flight has to do 2 trips between
Tier-1 to Tier-1, then I would say it can do maybe 1 more trip to a Tier-2 city, taking into
consideration that it will require maintenance etc. at every stop. Is that a fair assumption?

Interviewer: Ok, go ahead.

Candidate: Therefore, we can say that one Tier-2 city can be covered by our existing set of fleet. So
we need 20 flights for the rest. Therefore, a total of 40 flights maybe required for this set of
combination we assumed.

Interviewer: Alright. I think we are good here. Do you have any questions for me?

Candidate: None, as of now.

Interviewer: Ok, please wait outside.

CASE 2

Candidate: Abhishek Somani

Case: This interview wasn’t a case but it was a round where the interviewer wanted to test
on-the-spot thinking.

Interviewer: Do you know about any startup opened recently?

Candidate: Yes, there is a startup named – Quifers. It’s a startup for logistics, started in 2013.

Interviewer: Ok. I will give you 10 mins, why don’t you think of a new start-up idea and think like

I am a VC. You have to convince me to give you funding.

(Candidate takes 10 mins to think about a possible idea)

Candidate: My idea is to come up with an app which will be targeted to restaurants and customers.
Currently the issue for customers is that you have a lot of wait time at many restaurants and you

49
don’t come to know about that till you reach there. And many times since the restaurant is crowded
the delivery time of food also increases.

While if we look at it from restaurants’ perspective, it increases their waiters’ cost. Since they have
to keep high numbers to serve.

This app will try to resolve both the issues - help customers to book a table if they want to go to a
restaurant. Once they have booked the table they can also look at the menu in the app and while they
are on the way they can order what they would like to eat. This reduces their wait time drastically
because as by the time they reach, their food might be almost ready. From restaurants perspective,
they now don’t need many waiters, since the order will directly appear in the app with the table
number. They just need waiters to serve food. Once customers eat they can also pay via this app so
that they don’t have to wait for the bill to come and the inconvenience of waiting for their card to
be swiped or cash to be returned.

Interviewer: Ok. Your idea seems interesting. But how will you earn money?

Candidate: In this case my revenues will come from tie-ups with restaurants as we would be helping
them reduce their waiter cost. So we will charge a mere 5-10% of the bill amount. So if we reduce
no. of waiters by 2, we reduce their cost by almost 30k. We provide more convenience to them in
terms of crowd management. Also our app will provide ratings to the restaurants and to their
dishes, which will make it easy for the customer to order.

Interviewer: Ok. But Zomato also provides similar kind of service. How will you make sure that they
don’t copy this and incorporate it in their app, given that they already have a huge database of
restaurants with them?

Candidate: That’s a fair point, to counter this I would start off by targeting big chains like Pizza Hut
since they will give us a lot of restaurants in one shot. Once we are able to get them on-board, we
can convince small restaurants by telling them about our associations with the big restaurant chains
and how we have been able to help them.
Interviewer: Ok. I think we are good for now. Please wait outside for next round.

(Just to tell, I didn’t get this idea like on the spot. I was talking to a friend of mine in IIM Bangalore
who before joining IIM had a startup. He told me about this idea of his. My only recommendation is
talk to people and try to know about their experiences before they joined IIM and you will learn a lot
of things which will help you.)

CASE 3

Candidate: Abhishek Somani

Case: This wasn’t a case round; it was more of a general round with questions around HR.

I would suggest that for this round prepare the HR questions provided by Placement Committee well
and it should be enough.

Also some additional questions asked were –

What kind of manager do you think you like working with?

Give an instance where you didn’t like how your manager handled the situation.

Give an instance where you were given a responsibility and you failed to deliver.

50
 MCKINSEY

CASE 1

Candidate: Anuradha Rao

Case: Profitability Analysis

This interview was quite unconventional and really made me think on my feet.
(Interviewer makes some small talk.)

Interviewer: So tell me, how have you changed the world?

Candidate: Those are heavy words to use. I can’t really claim to have changed the world…
Interviewer: No, I’m sure you have, just tell me how.

Candidate: I’m not sure if I’ve changed the world but I can say I’ve changed the people in my world
in a small but significant way by... (some instances)

Interviewer: You are an economics student. Comment on the state of India’s economy. What do you
think the government elected last year should be focusing on?
Candidate: (Gave him my opinion)

Interviewer: Interesting. I also gather that you debate and write poems. What kind of poetry do you
write? Tell me about the latest poem you wrote.

Candidate: (Told him about this)

Interviewer: Oh, so can you recite a few lines from that poem?
Candidate: I don’t really remember how that went, but I can perform another poem; one which I
performed at IIMB last term.
Interviewer: Sure, go ahead.
Candidate: (performs poem)

Interviewer: So I will give you a case now and I want you to present the solution to me in the form of
a role-play or a poem.
Candidate: Umm…

Interviewer: Our client is a branded pharmacist and is facing declining profits at a particular store.

Tell me why this could be happening and suggest some recommendations.

Candidate: Alright. I will just ask a few preliminary questions before delving deeper. Is that okay?

Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: May I know where our client is based?

Interviewer: In a metro city.

Candidate: Are other pharmacies in the city also facing this issue?

51
Interviewer: No.

Candidate: You mentioned our client is branded. Are they attached to a hospital?

Interviewer: No, they are an independent store.

Candidate: Does the client exclusively sell medicines?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Alright. The problem seems to be an internal one, so I’ll look at firm-specific profits. So
profits can be split into two components, as revenues minus costs. I’ll examine each of these in
detail. Is there any particular branch you’d like me to examine first?

Interviewer: Not really, your choice.

Candidate: Ok. I’ll begin with revenues. At each stage, I’ll benchmark performance with that of
competitors, who seem to be making profits. Factors influencing revenues are variety, price and
volume. To gauge variety, I’m assuming our client stocks all sorts of medicines. Is that correct?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: What do other pharmacies sell? Is the variety here the same as the variety there?

Interviewer: What do you think? Who do you think our competitors can be?

Candidate: It seems to me like the competitors are small kirana stores that stock not only medicines,
but also other goods like eats and other small goods. In terms of variety of medicines, our client is
probably superior, but in terms of a holistic purchase, the small shop is probably better.

Interviewer: That’s right. There are many mom-and-pop-stores stealing our company’s business.

Candidate: Ok. So I understand that all these stores charge the same price, but overall volumes of
sales are lower for our client than other stores. Our client doesn’t charge any premium for the
medicines?

Interviewer: Everything is sold at MRP, just like competitors.

Candidate: To explain this difference in volumes, I’m going to look at some factors like convenience
and customer profile.

Interviewer: We are running out of time, suggest some recommendations based on what you have
done so far.

Candidate: As a poem?!

Interviewer: No need, just state them.

Candidate: Sure. I have identified the major problem so far to be the existence of competition that is
catering better to customer needs. I think some recommendations are:

Identify what conveniences these small stores are providing to the customer. Our client should
try and offer the same kinds of services. This would include stocking other kinds of goods
and offering home delivery service to improve ease of access.

52
 Differentiate the store. After all, local stores do not have an air conditioned setting, pakka bills
or a brand name. If our client can advertise or make their presence better known,
customers, especially from upper income segments, would probably prefer buying from here
despite the products being the same as those in competitor’s stores.

Try tying up with a nearby established hospital. This would mean guaranteed volumes from
patients there.

We have not discussed costs, but costs could be reduced as well.

Interviewer: That’s alright. We’ll end here. Please wait outside.

Candidate: Thank you.

CASE 2

Candidate: Anuradha Rao

Case: Guesstimate

(Interviewer makes small talk)

Interviewer: When was the last time you travelled by flight?
Candidate: During undergrad, from Delhi to Chennai.

Interviewer: What do you usually do during a flight?

Candidate: I like reading.

Interviewer: Is there a bookstore at Delhi airport?

Candidate: Yes, there’s one in Terminal 1, it’s called Relay.

Interviewer: Estimate the daily revenues of the Relay bookstore outlet at Delhi’s domestic terminal.

Candidate: May I have a minute to structure my thoughts?

Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: Relay sells small items other than books as well. Do I need to take those into account?

Interviewer: No.

Candidate: Ok. Revenue = Price x Volumes x Variety. I can assume an average price and not take into
account variety, but that would be too simplistic.

Interviewer: You read books, so tell me some way in which you could account for that.

Candidate: I’d divide books into paperback and hardback, because there are major price differences
between the two. I’d then take an average price for paperback, and another one for hardback.

Interviewer: Ok, go ahead and make assumptions.

Candidate: Alright. So we have 2 average price points, say 400 for paperback and 700 for hardback.
Since these are averages, variety within paperback and hardback is accounted for. I will now
calculate the volumes of books sold.

53
I’ll trace the customer purchase journey for this. If I were buying a book, I’d have to be in the airport,
then visit Relay, and then buy a book. So I will need to estimate: (I draw all this out) People in the
domestic departure terminal People visiting Relay People purchasing books (number of books
and type of book are important). Interviewer: Sounds okay. Begin the estimation.

Candidate: To calculate the number of people in the domestic departure terminal, I’d split the day
into two parts. Mornings and evenings would be very crowded, while afternoons and nights would
not. So I’ll call these peak time and lean time. To calculate number of people in the departure
terminal, I’d look at this information for peak and lean times:

Number of flights taking off per hour x capacity per flight x utilization (ie, % of people who book and
catch the flight)
To calculate the subset of people who visit Relay, I’d examine:

Number of people reaching the terminal atleast 15 mins earlier than boarding x % interested in
books (over all the other shopping opportunities at the airport!)

Then I’d look at the number who actually end up purchasing a book rather than simply browsing and
going away. Maybe, I could look at information relating to the type of customer; a professional
would probably work or sleep while a student or holiday traveller would prefer reading. By this
method, I have volumes for peak and lean times.

To get revenues from the volume figures, I’d have to see what kind of book is purchased, paperback
or hardback. Information about latest releases or bestsellers would help. Interviewer: Ok, why don’t
you do some calculations now?

Candidate: But I have no idea about many of these figures.

Interviewer: Make assumptions.
(I make very random assumptions and get an extremely low figure.)

Candidate: I think something is wrong, this figure is too low.

Interviewer: Ok, now go over your calculations again and tell me which figures you think are wrong.
Candidate: (told him)

Interviewer: (Agreed with some of them and told me what he thought were more accurate figures.)
Alright, thank you.

Candidate: Thank you.

CASE 3

Candidate: Ashwin S Kalkar

Case: Guesstimate- Market Sizing

(Interviewer: Arjun, Partner)

Interviewer: Good morning Ashwin, how are you? Tell me about yourself.

Candidate: I’m good Sir. About me. Discussed about work and IITM. Then told him about being
Cultural Secretary and how I enjoyed organizing events. He asked will you be interested to join event
management? Then I countered saying it would be nice but not forever since learning will be
limited. I would rather join consulting and get diverse experience and learn.

54
Interviewer: Let’s do a case. Your client is a diabetes checking instrument (like Accucheck)
manufacturer. He wants to understand the market potential in India. The instrument will be priced
at $10 ~Rs.650.

Candidate: So if I understand correctly, we need to size the market for our client. Am I right?

Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: Okay so I’d like to approach it by taking the Indian population (120 Crores), dividing it
into urban (30%) and rural (70%). Further dividing it into age groups of less than 25, 25-50 and 50+.
Then the factors I would like to consider is the kind of jobs people are into – low or high on manual
labour, tendency to exercise; and then health problems due to age. In the rural areas, this would
leave only the 50+ segment with about 10% having the capability of buying it. In the urban areas,
there will be about 20% people not doing labour intensive jobs and of them about 80% might not be
exercising normally. This gives a population of ~4.78 Cr and a potential of Rs. 3110 Cr.

Interviewer: Okay now that we have the potential size, what are the factors you need to think about
before suggesting he enters the market? Assume there is going to be some market penetration.

Candidate: Market Size we know about. Margins in the market need to be looked at. Possible
competition in the market. Barriers to entry – regulatory and value chain setup if need be.
Interviewer: Anything else?

Candidate: Not sure if I’ve missed anything.

Interviewer: Okay now think what will happen in 3 years.

Candidate: Let’s say the market is going to grow at 10% every year then after 3 years considering
today is 0, it is going to be 3110*(1.1)^3 = Rs.4140 Cr.

Interviewer: So how much will the company make in 3 years assuming 4 equal competitors.
Candidate: Rs.1035 Cr.
Interviewer: Are you sure?
Candidate: (Thinking for a while) No Sir, this is the total market potential but the penetration will not
be 100% in 3 years so we need to know a % of market penetration before looking at revenue.
Interviewer: Good. If we have a 10% penetration, then it’ll only be about 100Cr for the client which
isn’t much.
Candidate: So it doesn’t seem like a good idea to enter.
Interviewer: Yeah. Good case, Ashwin. Thank you.
Key Takeaway: This interview went okay though I could’ve spoken about market penetration earlier only.
The initial HR part eased it a lot and though there was time pressure the interviewer was quite helpful
and gave me enough time to do the calculations. Overall it was a good interview.

CASE 4

Candidate: Ashwin S Kalkar

Case: Growth strategy for Nike

(Interviewer: Kaustubh Chakraborty, Senior Partner, Head of Delhi Office)

Interviewer: Let’s jump straight to the case

55
Candidate: Sure Sir

Interviewer: Our client is a sports apparel and equipment manufacturer like Nike and they want to
make a strategy for 2025. They want to know where to invest in R&D to be doing well 10 years later.

Candidate: Okay that’s an interesting problem. First I would like to understand a little bit more about
the industry. In terms of products, I’m assuming like Nike we make equipment for most sports and
have apparel for professionals and end-consumers. Is that correct?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Okay and we do have competitors in the Indian market?

Interviewer: Yeah let’s take the competitors to be like Adidas

Candidate: Okay sure. Now I would like to understand about the current R&D investments we have.

Interviewer: But how will that matter since we’re looking at 10 years.

Candidate: Yeah that’s true but it’ll help me get an idea

Interviewer: Well we do have investments in all the big sports since we’re quite big.

Candidate: Hmm okay. So now that we’re looking at 10 years down the line I would like to divide it in
the following ways:

Customers: Professionals and End-consumers.

Sports Types.

I think we should be looking at these 2 headings to broadly understand where we need to invest to
be in a good position 10 years down the line.

Interviewer: Sure, so tell me what you’re thinking.

Candidate: Under Sports types, currently Cricket is huge and many other sports are also growing well
like Football due to ISL etc.

Interviewer: Yeah but how do you know they’ll remain the same 10 years later.

andidate: Well. No, we don’t but we can see how Indian sports is headed. I believe Cricket would still
be big. For the other sports, we can see which sports are being promoted by the Indian Olympic
Association and which sport is getting maximum traction in terms of viewership as well. Interviewer:
Still, we’re talking about 10 years.
Candidate: Yeah so continuing on what I was saying earlier, on the customer side, we can look at
celebrity professionals who are famous in the sports space. We will be having long term contracts
with them for equipment and apparels. When these celebrities endorse our brand, it reflects on the
end-consumer as well.
Interviewer: But how do you know who’s going to be famous in 10 years.
Candidate: We can look at the younger generation of sportspersons like U-19 Cricket Team etc.
Interviewer: Okay we’re almost out of time.
Candidate: Can I summarize where we stand right now?
Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: Summarized it overall.

56
Key Takeaways: I thought this interview was terrible. We made absolutely no headway and after the
interview I got to know that the interviewer thought I was nervous. I had almost lost hope in this
round but I was called for another.

CASE 5

Candidate: Ashwin S Kalkar

Case: Valuation of a Coal Mine

(Interviewer: Satya Prathipati, Senior Partner, Head of Mumbai Office)

Interviewer: So Ashwin (while walking and looking at my file), how was your PST?
Candidate: I did okay I think.
Interviewer: Yeah, you did okay but you didn’t do well. Anyway, how was the earlier round?

Candidate: It was a good case but we could’ve made more headway into the problem.
Interviewer: Hmm yeah, looks like you were nervous, that’s what Kaustubh thought.
Candidate: I didn’t think so, Sir.
Interviewer: Okay cool. (Going through my file) So you interviewed with us in IIT too, and you didn’t
get through.
Candidate: Yes Sir I did. But I’m back again.

Interviewer: Good. So do you want to do a case or talk?

Candidate: Anything is fine, Sir.

Interviewer: Okay so tell me something not in your resume.

Candidate: Spoke about traveling. Experiences in Sri Lanka, Canada and US.
Interviewer: Favourite place in India?

Candidate: Mussorie since I had gone there recently.

Interviewer: Okay let’s do a case. Your client wants to buy a coal mine and wants you to value it.
Candidate: Where is this coal mine and what is its output?
Interviewer: It’s in China but do you need to output or the reserve?
Candidate: (Thinking) I’d need the reserves to value but output to know the revenues we can make.

Interviewer: Okay cool. Output is 1 ton/month and reserves need to be calculated. How will you do
it?

Candidate: Assuming it is a cuboid since we’re talking about coal, the concentrations would be
different in different areas. We need to find that out and then add up all to get the reserves
available.

Interviewer: I’ll give you numbers. Let’s take it as a cuboid – 1200m x 800m and 500m height.
Uniform concentration of 70%.
Candidate: Sure. So that gives me a coal mine of volume 0.48 cu. km. Effective coal is 0.336 cu km.

Interviewer: Okay good. Do you need anything else?

Candidate: Yes I’ll need the density to calculate the weight of coal available.
Interviewer: Let’s take it as 100 tons/cukm.

Candidate: Okay that makes it 33.6 tons.

57
Interviewer: Now how will you value it?

Candidate: I’ll look at the revenues we’ll make from it and how much time this is going to last. You
mentioned 1 ton/month which means it’ll last for 33 months. Then I’ll look at the discounted cash
flows (C-value per year) we’ll get over this period.

Interviewer: Okay how will you get the price of coal? This is in China.
Candidate: I’ll call up the McKinsey office in China and ask them to check.

Interviewer: Let’s say no one is available.

Candidate: The India office would have a coal expert.

Interviewer: Not available.

Candidate: In India, we can see the price on the exchange.

Interviewer: But there is no one in China to help you.

Candidate: Would their exchange have a website that can be accessed? Since we can look it up in
India online.

Interviewer: No they don’t

Candidate: Then I’ll probably look at the Chinese counterpart of an Economic Times to check for
the price.
Interviewer: Hmm. That might work.

Candidate: (Finally he agreed) Okay great. So we’ll use this price and calculate DCF.

Interviewer: What about costs?

Candidate: (Ah I should’ve mentioned it earlier) Yeah the C value is DCF should be the profits and
not revenues.

Interviewer: Right. Thank you Ashwin.

(While walking) How keen are you on McKinsey?
Candidate: Very, Sir. I really wanted to get through in IIT but couldn’t. Wouldn’t want to miss this
opportunity.
Interviewer: Hmm.

Key Takeaway: This interview was fast paced and at the end I wasn’t very confident of getting through
but they did like me after all. Couple of minutes later Satya came out to congratulate me Biggest
takeway was you never know how your interview was so don’t judge it yourself. The case can be anything
but you should just be calm and tackle it like a puzzle. It’ll eventually work out!

CASE 6
Candidate: Harsh Laxmikant Shah

Case: Market entry strategy

(HR question + case. The interviewer was trying to cross-question whatever I was saying. He wanted
to see if I could maintain my calm, accept if I was wrong anywhere and improvise quickly.)
Interviewer: Hi Harsh, Good morning! How are you doing this morning? Candidate: Good morning
sir. I am doing fine. How about you?

58
Interviewer: Great! Tell me something about yourself.
Candidate: Standard intro focusing on my work-ex, US experience and academics.

Interviewer: So what’s your GPA here?

Candidate: Told him my GPA.

Interviewer: Ok. So tell me an instance when you had shown leadership.

Candidate: Told about a project that I was working on. (Basically focus on the strongest part of CV.)

Interviewer: How many people did you influence?

Candidate: A team of 5 with 4 analysts and 1 client POC

Interviewer: Great. So Harsh let’s do a small case. There is multiplex chain across India with 400
screens and they want to enter the packaged food industry in India and want to establish a business
worth 1500Cr. So how would you devise a strategy for them.

Candidate: (repeated the main points of the question, confirmed the objective) So do they also have
an in-house cafeteria?
Interviewer: Yes but most of the products that they sell are procured from 3 rd party vendor or are
standard FMCG products like Pepsi, Lays, etc.
Candidate: Ok. Makes sense. Can I take 2 mins to lay down a structure?

Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: So the entire packaged food industry falls into 2 categories: Solids (including paste forms)
and liquid. They can focus on entering the liquids by finding a niche segment like Paper-boat.

Interviewer: Do you think that makes sense? There are already Cola and non-Cola products which
are well established in the market.

Candidate: Umm. No there is too much competition and we might not create a business worth
1500Cr in 5 years. (I was a little nervous here but I tried to maintain my calm and accepted that what
I said doesn’t make sense).

Interviewer: Precisely. So what about solids?

Candidate: We can further create the segments based on serving size in solids:
Full serving: like MTR ready to eat
Medium serving: like chips, Kurkure, biscuits
Small serving: majorly confectioneries

Does this segmentation make sense?

Interviewer: Yes. This looks good. For segment 1 what do you think is more important- taste or
health?

Candidate: Both are important but we will have trade-offs and can’t include both at the same time.
So we can have 2 variants. One which tastes good and one which has good nutrients and is low on
preservatives. This will help us to capture a good market share.

Interviewer: (Smiling) Looks like you have spent a lot of time cooking and understand the pain of
working bachelors. So what about the confectioneries and biscuits? Do you think with firms like
Mondelez and Britania we can enter the market?

59
Candidate: Sir we can always find a gap in the market and position our product accordingly just as
Unibic has positioned itself in the market as premium cookies.

Interviewer: Excellent Harsh. It was great talking to you. Good luck for other interviews.
Candidate: Thank you sir. Have a good day!

CASE 7

Candidate: Harsh Laxmikant Shah

Case: Defending market share

(Only case. Case was pretty straight forward. Interviewer was trying to evaluate how much can I
think on the spot.)

Interviewer: Hi Harsh. Let’s do a small case. There is a tire manufacturing company and has the
highest market share currently in India. The company at position 2 is catching up quickly. So what
should our client do to tackle this situation?

Candidate: (repeated the question, confirmed the objective) Sir can you please elaborate a little
more on the value proposition of both the firms.

Interviewer: No 1 produces tire with better quality and last for 50K miles and is priced at $250 per
tire. No 2 produces tire which lasts for 40K miles and is priced at $240 per tire but now they have
reduced the price to $225. Both are used in trucks.

Candidate: Alright so No 2 is playing on the price elasticity of consumer and are increasing their
market share.
Interviewer: Right.
Candidate: But if we look the total value of the product, our tires last for 25% more miles and the
price is more by only ~10%. So we can focus on that and advertise better.

Interviewer: Good. No 2 was expecting this move and they reduced the price to $200 for the same
offering. Now what?

Candidate: Now both the deals look equivalent. But we can focus on the fact that our product lasts
longer and so it is of better quality. This is our POD (point of differentiation). We can emphasis on
the low transaction costs and convenience.

Interviewer: Good. Again they were expecting this and they have come up with new offer that their
tire will last for 50K miles and they will replace the old tire with a new tire in case it wears out. Now
what do you think?

Candidate: Their offer is definitely better on paper. But it could be the case that the drivers are not
exercising the warranty.
Interviewer: Why?
Candidate: They might have seen in the testing phase that very few drivers would come to actually
replace the old tire because its very hard to detect if the threads are completely worn out and most the
drivers who don’t own the truck would not even care about it. So they might be piggybacking on this
fact. Also for emergency they always carry a spare tire.

Interviewer: Ok. What could be other reasons?

60
Candidate: 1) They might have better technique to produce the tire at lower cost. May be they might
be having better economies of scale.
They might have deep pockets and would be compromising on short term profitability to gain
market share and have strong sales.
Average truck may be driven only for 40K-45K and so it doesn’t matter if tires last for more than
40K which most probably might not be the case but we could check that.

Interviewer: Great Harsh. Thank you very much!

CASE 8

Candidate: Preksha Mangal

Case: Automobile Industry-Declining Revenue

(First 5-7 mins of the interview went in general chit-chat and HR questions. The interviewer was
trying to make me feel comfortable before starting the case. He also asked about my opinion on auto
industry.)

Interviewer: Hi Preksha, Good morning! Is it your first interview?

Candidate: Good morning sir. Yes, it is.

Interviewer: Are you nervous? I think you are. So let’s discuss the case after some time. First, tell me
three things you really enjoyed doing in school. Candidate: Told him my hobbies and 1-2 interesting
incidents

Interviewer: So do you know how to drive? What all cars have you driven? Which brand do you
prefer and why?
Candidate: Told him about my experience.

Interviewer: Do you know how a car is designed?

Candidate: Not much (told him the little bit understanding that I had)

Interviewer: So, since you drive car and also take decisions in which car to buy, would you mind if I
ask you to help me on one of my projects with an auto client. The client is the market leader in auto
industry in India. But recently observed a drop in the conversion rate? Can you identify the root
cause behind it?
Candidate: Asked about the client – their presence across India, where exactly they are facing the
problem and from how long. Also asked about the industry and competition landscape.

Interviewer: Client has PAN India presence. They are facing this problem from last 1 year in one
store located in Bangalore. Industry is performing as per the expectation.

Candidate: Clarified if the drop in conversion rate is impacting only the revenue of the firm. Also,

if it is related to the drop in footfall

Interviewer: Footfall is same.

Candidate: Do we have any data that suggests that conversion rate has dropped in one particular

type of car/model or across all products

Interviewer: Same impact across all the products.
Candidate: Ok. Let me take a couple of mins to lay down the points.
Interviewer: Sure.

61
Candidate: So the drop in conversion rate leading to drop in revenue (of a particular store) can
happen due to following reasons:
Drop in # of customers
Due to demand side reasons
Drop in # of old customers
Drop in conversion of new customers
Changes in macro policies

Sales people – training and quality of service provided

Ambience of store
After sales services offered
Location of store
Competition is offering better services or products
Due to supply side reasons
Price of the product
Do we have any information about the above mentioned points?
Interviewer: Great! We have some information. The conversion of new customers has dropped.
Sales people are the reason.
Somebody knocked at the door informing that only 5 mins are left.

Interviewer: Ok. We don’t have much time left. Let’s quickly get to the solution. How can we make
sales people more competent while dealing with customers in auto retail store? Candidate: The
whole process can be divided into 3 stages:

Recruitment: following should be analyzed

Evaluation of candidates on the qualities needed for the job
Past experience/performance of the candidate
Origin: a local candidate is preferred sometimes
Training
Knowledge about product and company policies
Brief description about different categories of customers
Communication skills – emphasis on personalized conversation
On job training sessions
On job monitoring
Dress code
Customer feedback
Feedback from sales people
Comparing the feedback from customer and sales people will help in getting to the root cause of the
problem.

Interviewer: Awesome. It was great talking to you. Good luck for other interviews.

Candidate: Thank you sir. Have a good day!

CASE 9

Candidate: Preksha Mangal

Case: Healthcare Industry-Increase in complaints
(Interview happened over call. The interviewer went straight to the case. Case was not very tricky,
but interviewer wanted to check if I cover all the points leading to problem.)

62
Interviewer: Hi Preksha! Since you have worked for Pharma and Healthcare clients in your previous
company, let’s do a case related to that only. There is a hospital located in Delhi, which is doing very
well. From last 1 year, the number of patient complaints have been rising. Can you please find out
the reason behind it?
Candidate: Asked a few preliminary questions about the client, objective of the study and if there is
any pattern in patient complaints (type of patients, reason of complaint, related to particular
disease/doctor, time of complaints).

Interviewer: Yes, just one pattern has been observed. The patients are complaining that the waiting
time has gone up.

Candidate: Sure. Can I take 2 mins to write the possible reasons for it?
Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: The waiting can go up due to the following reasons

Increase in the number of patients
External:
Changes in weather or other macro factors
Deterioration of services by competitors
Internal:
Better services offered by the hospital
Better marketing
Decrease in the number of doctors
Internal
Changes in policies/pay structure

Reduction in recruitment
External
Poaching by competitors
Other lucrative alternatives
Increase in the service time: it can happen at one or more of the three activities listed
below:
Registration desk and alignment
Service time by doctor
Billing desk

These can be the possible reasons for increase in waiting time. We can deep dive into the relevant
options depending upon the data available.

Interviewer: Good. Let me give you some information. On an average, 20 patients are registered per
hour. 8 doctors are available all the time who take around 15 mins/patient. What do you think the
problem is?

Candidate: Ok. So, the available slots for treatment for patients per hour are 60*8/15 = 32 and
patients arriving are 20. Average utilization of doctors is 20/32 = 62.5%, which is a good number. But
this is average utilization which can be a misleading number. The actual utilization might vary during
peak and non-peak hours.

Interviewer: Perfect. The utilization of doctors during peak hours (8-9 AM and 6-8 PM) is 150-200%
and during non-peak hours, it falls below 50%. What measures can we take to avoid under-
utilization and over utilization of doctors?

Candidate: Possible measures could be:

Increase supply of doctors during peak hours:
Appoint contract/guest doctors. This is a usual practice in some hospitals

63
 Decrease demand of doctors during peak hours
Discounts in consultancy fees during non-peak hours

Interviewer: Great! Good Luck Preksha!

CASE 10

Candidate: Priyanka Bagai

Case: Disinvestment

Jain Sinha, an Ex-Mckinsey partner is the MoS Finance and has a 5000 crore disinvestment budget.
Prioritise and achieve this target. (This was a telephonic interview, the first 2-5 minutes were about
general courtesy and them apologising for the delay. it was supposed to be on VC, but technical
glitches, etc. occurred.)

Interviewer: You are aware what disinvestment means right?

Candidate: Yes, from what I understand Disinvestment is the sale of government’s stake in a Public
sector (PSU) undertaking for cash. Government ownership in the PSU goes down and the intent is to
raise funds for fiscal expenditure.

Interviewer: That is correct. And the funds raised go to the Union budget.
Candidate: Well, seeing this as a budgeting exercise I believe it’s important to focus on both- the
sources of revenue and the application of funds.
Coming to the source of funds, we would need to determine
Which and how many units to disinvest
How would the process be conducted - would it be public or private disinvestment

(The interviewer cut me here and asked)

Interviewer: How would you decide what units to disinvest from.

(I initially started by mentioning 1-2 factors, then realising that there were going to be multiple
dimensions I could cover, I asked the interviewer for a minute to structure and prioritise them.)
Candidate: There are a number of factors to be considered.

First and foremost the performance/Profitability of the unit. There is an opportunity cost involved
here, if I sell a high-performing unit I forego a continuous source of income in lieu of a higher
lumpsum amount I can receive now. On the other hand, a low performing unit, which is a burden on
public funds, will raise lesser funds.

Then we might want to look at

the assets of the PSU (Tangibles vs Intangibles-IP, etc)

the people (briefly explaining about the impact on employment of the workforce, the severance
costs, etc)

(I had written the following factors on my sheet but somewhere in the middle the interviewer had
interrupted me, writing these down for your reference)

Industry the PSU belonged to

Demand (what % of it is contributed to by the PSU)egulation
People/Political Opposition
Cost incurred

64
(I believe it was after the 4th point, because there was something specific the interviewer was
looking for, and I realised later it was mentioned low on my list)

Interviewer: There is this one specific and important factor I'm looking for, think about the recent
cases, in Bengal- why have such initiatives been successful or otherwise.

The political opposition - that can be a make or break in such decisions- as unfortunate as the case
might be.

Okay, so once you have decided which unit to disinvest from, what are the caveats to be wary of?

Candidate:

Employee Resistance
Corruption in raising/deploying funds (motive behind sale)

Controlling interest- who runs the show (caveat being loosing the reigns) So
the big Decision is to ascertain what % share is to be disinvested

Interviewer: Once you've got the funds, tell me one sector you would want to use it in?
Candidate: (thinking for 10 seconds) Education sector.
(There was no political/economic rationale behind this, education is one field I personally believe in
and I told the interviewer the same, further giving them justification on why and how.) Interviewer:
That’s it, thank you!

Key takeaways:

Mckinsey does a lot of government projects and the socio-economic ecosystem it

operates in are key considerations

Factors to be considered are sometimes beyond the conventional P&L items that
govern decision making in corporates. So it helps to bring out the nuanced factors first

CASE 11

Candidate: Priyanka Bagai

Case: Tyre Industry-Market Entry

(There is case on this industry, context being on how to enter the industry, which I recommend you go
through (from last year’s ICON Casebook, Gaurav Chauhan’s interview with Accenture). It's quite
comprehensive. My case, however, was quite different. It was a competitor analysis piece.)

Interviewer: Two tyre companies having different tyre purchase costs for different
technology/quality. Your competitor had a first mover advantage but this new technology
investment could help change that. How will you evaluate the investment?

Candidate: Maintenance costs were a key consideration- the frequency vs cost trade-off.
And initial costs of purchase vs recurring costs of maintenance and life.

Interviewer: How will you acquire new customers for this new technology tyres? Can this new
technology be leveraged to poach existing customers? Is the investment a feasible one?

65
There were also two sales promotion Offers the company was trying to evaluate and I had to tell
which one would be better. Helps to know the nuances of the industry- what factors influence the
decisions of key stakeholders- for this industry, it is the truck drivers, and not the owners, who have
more say.

This was followed by another 10-minute interview.

Case: Market entry strategy into F&B industry by multiplex chain

(This was very brief- 10 minutes of which the first few minutes went into discussing about earlier
interviews. Then about interests, of which food was one. This case was asked to two other people as
well since it was an ongoing project and they were looking for fresh/innovative answers.)

Interviewer: You have to devise a food and beverage strategy for a client who is currently among the
top 50 multiplexes in India. He now wants to compete in the packaged branded foods category-
1500 crore, 5 years, from scratch.

Candidate: Some decisions choices include:

channel for sale: multiplexes (premium pricing but niche) vs retail (mass volumes
but intense competition from existing brands like ITC and Nestle.
Analysis of existing food categories - i could think of Confectionary, Ready to eat,
Frozen Foods, carbonated Drinks, Health drinks. The intent here was to understand the
competitive landscape and identify avenues lucrative for a new player to enter.

My interview was stopped here.

CASE 12

Candidate: Utsav Giri

Case: Telecom Sector-Declining Profitability & Valuation of a celebrity

(I had a pretty long slot of interviews with McKinsey. I had three interviews in which I had to solve
four cases. At the outset I would like to say that in none of the interviews that I had could I reach a
conclusion that was satisfactory for the interviewer. However, in each of the interviews I learned
something about the case interviews that multiple case prep sessions didn’t teach me.)

(I went inside and after the initial pleasantries, the interviewer asked me why I was nervous. I told
him it was a big occasion for me. He asked me why. I gave him my reasons (mostly revolving around
how not getting into an IIT was a big regret for me and how badly I have wanted to prove myself
ever since). He then asked me about myself and I dictated my “About myself” monologue.)

Interviewer: The client is an Indian telecom major. Over the past 5 years, our client has been
experiencing a decline in profitability even though its market share has been increasing. What
information do we require from the client in order to solve this problem from him?

Candidate: How I approached the case: I made a typical revenue and costs issue tree and tried to
find possible reasons for the decline in profitability. Then I started suggesting what could be the
possible problem for the client and how it could be solved.

The mistakes I made:

The question was what information is required from the client. This is like the typical first
stage of the client engagement where data is required from the client. I was not expected to

66
 hypothesize possible solutions at this stage. I was just supposed to come up with a list of
data sources.

I didn’t suggest competitor benchmarking as a possible method to analyse the problem. I

thought this was similar to a telecom case that I had solved and I tried to solve it that way. I
didn’t realize that this was a completely different thing- unlike all the cases that I

had prepped for I was not expected to solve this case at all.

The interviewer asked another case in the same interview.

Interviewer: The interviewer asked me what I do in my free time. I said that I watch TV Series. He
asked me what my favourite TV series was. I said Sherlock. Then the interviewer asked me to
determine the valuation of Benedict Cumberbatch

Candidate:

How I approached the case: This case stumped me as it was completely new for me. I divided his
valuation into two parts- current assets and present value of future projects. Current assets were
easy to value. Future projects was where I got stuck and could not proceed further.

The mistakes I made:

Didn’t think of competitor benchmarking as a possible solution. To evaluate any actor’s

future valuation, we are supposed to compare him with another actor of similar calibre and
assume that both their careers will follow a similar trajectory.

Key Takeaways:
Always take an outside-in approach- Think of the competitors first and then go to internal
processes.

Never assume that a given case is similar to a case you have practised- the interviewer will
ensure that he gives a case that will stump you.

CASE 13

Candidate: Utsav Giri

Case: Pharma Sector-Declining Revenues

(The interviewer introduced himself. He then asked me about myself and I dictated my “About
myself” monologue.)
Interviewer: The client is a national-level pharmaceutical retailer. Over the past two years the client
has been experiencing a decline in its revenues whereas its competitors’ revenues are increasing.
What could be the possible reasons for this?

Candidate:

How I approached the case: I broke down the revenues to a store level including factors such as
price of drugs, availability of drugs, customer footfall etc. Then I started listing down possible
reasons that could impact each of these factors. I also considered competitive benchmarking this
time. For every reason that I listed down, the interviewer said that this could not be a possible
reason. After a point I could not proceed any further.

67
Key Takeaways: One important difference in this interview was that the interviewer turned the
concept of “solving the case along with the interviewer” on its head. When we do case prep we are
asked to think loudly and verify any assumptions/ hypothesis/ conclusion with the interviewer. In
this case, when I was asking the interviewer if this assumption is correct, he was saying “I don’t
know, you say.

You are the consultant. I am paying you money to give me answers not ask question.” In other
words, he was acting like a typical client. This situation can get quite stressful. It’s important not to
get flustered in such a situation. More importantly, expect the unexpected.

CASE 14

Candidate: Utsav Giri

Case: Market entry strategy in F&B Sector by multiplex chain

(This was the final interview. The interviewer was a McKinsey Director so it was a make or break kind
of interview. The interviewer asked me about myself and I dictated my “About myself” monologue.)

Interviewer: The client is a national level multiplex chain. The client has decided to diversify into the
FMCG sector. What products should the client start manufacturing?

Candidate:
How I approached the case: Since none of my prep cases were helping me, I decided to approach
this case in a little unorthodox manner. My tree in this case divided the FMCG sector into all its
different products (This was more of a brute force kind of approach). I then listed down factors that
could be used to select the suitable FMCG products – synergies with existing products, distribution
channels envisaged (internal at multiplexes or externa through grocery stores) and competition. The
interviewer asked me to focus on competition. Ultimately, with the help of the interviewer we were
able to narrow down to energy drinks as a possible market product.

Key Takeaways:
Never be afraid to ask the interviewer questions. Unlike the previous interview, in this
interview the interviewer was willing to help out. The final answer of the energy drinks was
given by the interviewer himself.

If it’s a completely new problem don’t be afraid to apply brute force. It’s not necessary to
have an efficient solution to the problem at hand. It’s more important to have a solution.

Always structure the problem, even if you apply brute force. Always think of ways of pruning
the tree, i.e., reducing the number of possible solutions.

Lessons Learnt Overall:

The “About Me” monologue is very important. Use it not to tell anything about yourself that
is already there in the resume. Use it to tell the interviewer about your passions, your
hobbies and your extra-curricular activities. As an example, I started my monologue with
this line- “I am passionate about 3 things in life- quizzing, automobiles and fine arts…” and
then went on about these things.

Structure the problem and write it down well on the A4 sheet. Try to make the tree as neat
as possible. Practice drawing trees and writing in a good handwriting. Your entire problem
solving approach should be understandable to anyone who reads that piece of paper.

68
 Be prepared for a lengthy interview process if you desperately want to get into a particular
company

CASE 15
Candidate: Koustav Dey

Case: Healthcare industry- Hospital facing increasing customer dissatisfaction

(Interviewer: Mandar Vaidya, Partner)

(General discussion in beginning, gave introduction. The overall case interview was more like a
discussion rather than a Q&A session. So I asked the interviewer for his inputs at various points.)

Interviewer: There is a hospital in Mumbai which is facing increasing customer dissatisfaction, what
could be the reasons behind this?
Candidate: (Started off well, asked relevant questions) What is location of hospital? Are the
complaints and dissatisfaction from out-patients or inpatients? Is there a particular segment of
patients facing the problems?

Interviewer: Customer dissatisfaction is with OPD patients

Candidate: (Asked some good questions) Since OPD is taking an appointment and consulting a
doctor, is the problem faced on certain specific days?
Interviewer: Yes, the issues are mostly on Mondays and Wednesdays

Candidate: What could be the reasons for there being complaints on these days? Could it be due to
the doctors present on these days?
Interviewer: Yes, there are specialist doctors who sit on these days. They are very busy and have a
large influx of patients.

Candidate: So the problems faced would be in terms of long waiting time and cancelled
appointments. Also since these are working days, people must be suffering from traffic in Mumbai
(Thought that case is over since problems have been identified.)

Interviewer: What could be the solution?

Candidate: Could we ask the doctors to change their schedule? Then we could distribute these
specialist doctors on other days of the week

Interviewer: Changing the doctors’ schedule will not be possible.

Candidate: Okay, please tell me what is the process for admission at this hospital?
Interviewer: Patients call up the customer service no. and book an appointment. Sometimes calls
are not picked up. Also sometimes appointments are not given correctly. Patients may take an
appointment and come to hospital but then have to return back due to no appointment available.
After this, patients arrive at the appointed time. Then they have to register at the registration desk.
There are typically long queues there.

Candidate: So we can increase capacity at the customer service department. We can have an app
through which patient can book appointments. Thus, patients can know well in advance whether
they have an appointment scheduled or not.

69
Interviewer: Where will you get this extra capacity from? How can we improve the overall service
levels?

Candidate: (after discussion, took time here) Extra capacity can be sourced from nurses and staff
working in other departments/areas who were underutilised. Can have staff rotation and multiple
shifts of staff. Design staff incentives such that they are rewarded for this.
(Hardly 15 minutes had passed when interviewer asks to summarize the case.)
Candidate: Summarizes case.

Interviewer: How do you think the interview went?

Candidate: I think it started off well however towards the end I could have done it better.
Interviewer: Don’t worry you did fine for the amount of time available.

(We usually practice long interviews which last around 30-40 minutes. However, this one as well as
the others were short interviews which ended abruptly. So do practice cases which are of a shorter
span of time.)

CASE 16

Candidate: Koustav Dey

Case: Guesstimate- Market sizing for new product

(Initially asked HR Questions. What drove you at IIT Kanpur? How would your friends describe you?
Lasted for 10 minutes)

Interviewer: US based company has launched an automatic insulin injector. This is a new product
with an innovative technology. Traditionally you have to go to a hospital to get yourself injected.
What would be the market size of this product?

Candidate: Do you want me to estimate the market size of people who suffer from diabetes and
would need insulin injections or the market size of this specific product only? Interviewer: Good
question. Please estimate the market size of this specific product only.

Candidate: Can this be sold over the counter, without a prescription, at any store? Or can it be
sold only in medical stores, with prescriptions?

Interviewer: Initially sold only with prescription.

Candidate: (Took India’s population. Assumed family size to be of 4. Found the total no. of families.
Divided this into urban and rural areas. Then did segmentation by income by dividing the no. of
urban and rural families into income brackets. I did not take low income families in consideration due
to lack of affordability for the product. I took that in urban areas there would be x no. of diabetic
patients per family while in rural areas there would by y no. of diabetic patients per family. X would
be greater than y as in rural areas many diabetes cases are not diagnosed. Using the assumptions
made calculations to arrive at the answer. Made some calculation mistake and got an answer in
billions)

Interviewer: It’s okay, now tell me what should the price of the product be?

Candidate: What is the competitive landscape? What all competitors are there?

Interviewer: There are two major Indian competitors but our product is better than them. (Gave
details of the two products). Tell me the rationale behind pricing the client’s product.

70
Candidate: Sir could you tell me about the manufacturing costs? Are they significant?
Interviewer: The manufacturing costs are very low so don’t use base your price on the costs.

Candidate: Okay, our product is much better than competitors, but functionally it is comparable to
the third product that you mentioned. Since we are entering the market, our prices should be less
than the comparable product so as to achieve market penetration. We can increase it gradually after
we have gained market share. So it should have a market price of $10.

(The reasoning behind this was as follows:

Our product could be used for around 20 insulin injections. Competitor’s product could be used for
around 5 insulin injections and had a market price of $3. This was given by the interviewer.
So based on this I said that it should be prices at $10 instead of $12 even though it has 4 times greater
usage. When people get to know about the exact utility of the product we can raise the price.)

Key Takeaways: I felt that that the interview was okay since I made a silly calculation mistake which
should not have been done. The best part of the interview was the initial 10 minutes talk which I gave my
introduction and talked to the interviewer. So the key takeaway is to have a good conversation with the
interviewer. The initial part of the interview was about my life goals, how friends described me, the best
feeling in life etc. Also whenever you are doing guesstimates or a numeric case, always pause in between
and verify the numbers. Try to ask the interviewer if you are going in the right direction or not. Do not
forget this while under interview pressure.

Case 17

Candidate: Koustav Dey

Case: Market entry of Flipkart into Financial Services

(Interviewer: Sameer Shetty, Principal in the Financial Services vertical)

Interviewer: I have to take a decision in the next 5 minutes whether to take you or not. So we will go
through a very short case. So tell me if Flipkart or some company like it wants to go into financial
services what recommendation will you give it? Candidate: What do you mean by financial services?

Interviewer: (Sort of misled me.) What are the products you use in the financial services space, think
about them.

Candidate: So when I think of financial services I think of a bank, I think of a credit card, deposits etc.
So maybe it can go into the payment gateway business. It can even get payments bank licence from
RBI and accept deposits from customers.

Interviewer: Very good question, but farfetched. Think of something else.

Candidate: (Thinking along the same lines as before.) Sir I don’t understand how Flipkart can become
a full-fledged bank or a credit card company. What do you say?

Interviewer: Think harder. This is not the only kind of things in financial services industry. You have
financial products also like loans, insurance etc.

Candidate: (Should have thought of this.) Sorry, I was thinking about banks only. But even in this
case how can Flipkart give loans without becoming a bank?

Interviewer: It can extend loans to its suppliers that is the merchants which transact on Flipkart.
Thus by giving loans to small sellers it can increase its suppliers base.

71
Candidate: Okay, also since Flipkart does not have any core competency in selling insurance or loans or
other financial products like say LIC has in giving insurance. It should, instead of specializing, become an
aggregator of financial products. This will be something on the lines of policybazar.com but much wider
in scope. Thus it can give people good deals on buying financial products. People can search for the
products they want. On choosing the product they get redirected to the site of the seller of the
financial product. Interviewer: Welcome to McKinsey, you are hired.

Key takeaways: You have to manage to do well under pressure. You should have the ability to think
on your feet. Give examples like those of payment banks and policybazaar.com given in the
interview. Take help from and discuss the case with the interviewer. Think of it as a team project,
don’t think of it as only a Q&A session.

ROLAND BERGER

CASE 1
Candidate: Smriti Priya

Case: Cost Reduction

(I was around 6th or 7th to be interviewed. There were 2 rounds of interview. Round 1 was technical
and Round 2 was Org fit + Aptitude. Both lasted around 20 mins.)

There were 3 panels on 2 people in each panel. My first round interview was with a panel of 1 male
and 1 female interviewer.

Interviewer 1: Give us a short introduction of yours.

Candidate : I am Smriti from Muzaffarpur district of Bihar. I had my under graduation from NIT
Allahabad and then worked as an Assistant Manager in NTPC for 3 years.

Interviewer 2: Do you think you are intelligent?

Candidate: Yes I believe so

Interviewer 2: Okay I am giving you a small case to solve. It is an easy one but will depend on you if
you find it so. There is an electricity producing company which wants to reduce it’s per unit
electricity cost significantly. Can you suggest some ways in which it can do so?

Candidate: We can arrive at the solution in different ways. The electricity charges we pay comprises
of a significant component for amortization of fixed cost and the rest is variable component for
variable costs such as operating and fuel costs plus desired margin.

I will start with different cost inputs which go into the final electricity charges. 1st and foremost factor is
the set of fixed costs which incur before an electricity generating unit starts producing electricity. Since
huge fixed costs are involved in various processes starting from acquisition of land to
erection/construction and procurement of heavy-duty machines, a memorandum of understanding is
signed between State Government and the utility company. As per this the State Government agrees to
pay pro-rata based fixed cost over certain number of years. If a utility major is able to get land at
reasonable cost and finalize good contract deals for say for Steam Generator, Turbo Generator, Cooling
Towers, etc. and do reasonable cost saving without compromising on quality, it can reduce the fixed cost
component of cost. Besides these contract deals, how efficiently and effectively the project execution

72
team manages different construction and erection activities in project phase also decides how fast a
plant will be set up and hence plays an important role in deciding the fixed cost. Since I was working in
project execution I can tell you that this is also a deciding factor.

The variable cost components are mostly cost of coal, water and operating cost. Cost of coal is a
major component and transportation cost is a big addition to that. If a plant is close to coal mines, its
variable cost reduces significantly. An electricity major can also go for captive mines or alternatively
strike good long-term deals for procurement of coal at reasonable prices. Percentage of time a plant
is operational of reduced no. of shutdowns i.e. operational efficiency also has a significant role to
play in deciding the cost.

Further grilling on intricacies on production of power, engagements with vendors, contracts &
procurement and operational aspects of power plant which were very subjective to my profile and
resume.

Interviewer 2: That will be enough (impressed).

Interviewer 1: What is your favorite subject here?

Candidate: Financial Accounting

Interviewer 1: Tell me the formula for Return on Capital Employed

Candidate: Net operating profit / (Total assets – current liabilities)

Interviewer 1: What is quick ratio?

Candidate: (Current assets – inventory on hand)/ Current liabilities

Interviewer 2: What improvements do you expect from your 2 years at IIM Bangalore?
Candidate: I would want to emerge as a more confident individual at the end of 2 years

Interviewer 1: That will be all. Thanks a lot.

I waited for few minutes outside and was called for Round -2. Round-2 panel consisted of India
Partner of RB and the HR Manager. Partner was sitting in the balcony and he invited me there. Most
of the questions were asked by him only. So I would refer to him as ‘Interviewer’ here.

Interviewer: (After glancing through my resume.) You have scored high all your life, did you study all
the time?
Candidate: No I had many other hobbies too (spoke a bit about them)
Interviewer: If you want to change something about the placement process, what would you
recommend?
Candidate: I would probably make the process more staggered i.e. extend over more no. of days.
Interviewer: Describe yourself in 3 words to give me a reason to hire you.
Candidate: I am smart, intelligent and diligent.

Interviewer: You switched on the light of a room but it didn’t light up. Give me 10 reasons for that.

Candidate: May be the filament is damaged or there is city blackout or the mains is switched off or
the light is so bleak that I am unable to observe or I just entered from bright sunlight therefore find
it dark……(gave 8 such reasons). I cannot think more

Interviewer: How many other shortlists you have for the day?

(There were 2-3 more HR questions before the interview was concluded)

73
 STRATEGY&

CASE 1

Candidate: Khizar Sheriff M

Case: Market Sizing

(The candidate got a sneak peek into the interview room. Waiting at the desk was the Director at the
firm – about whom the candidate had done his research. He knew the case would most likely be from
the Consumer & Retail Industry.)

Interviewer: Hi. Is this the first interview for you?

Candidate: Yes, sir.

Interviewer: Great. Let’s get started. Our client is a Japanese beverage manufacturing company with
global presence. They manufacture & sell jam/marmalade. They want to explore the idea of sourcing
ingredients from India. What do you want to know? Candidate: What are the ingredients of the
marmalade?

Interviewer: Gave a rough break-up of the ingredients

Candidate: Is there any particular ingredient they want to source from India?

Interviewer: Yes - Orange oil extract.

Candidate: Where are they currently sourcing it from, and why not from there?

Interviewer: Good question. They are currently sourcing from Mexico. There is a widespread
agricultural disease which has affected the quality of oranges, and there are other issues like the
drug mafia.

Candidate: Okay. What is the yearly requirement of the marmalade?

Interviewer: 2 million tonnes of marmalade.

Candidate: And what is the percentage of orange oil extract in volume terms?

Interviewer: 5%
Candidate: So that’s 100,000 tonnes of orange oil extract to be sourced from India.

Interviewer: Right.

Candidate: What is the yield? (Had to rephrase for easier understanding – how many oranges per
unit of orange extract?)

Interviewer: 1 tonne of orange will give you around 4 kgs of oil.

Candidate: (Did some calculations: (100,000,000 X 1,000 / 4). Arrived at 25 million tonnes of orange
as the requirement.)

Interviewer: Alright, let’s stop here. Do you have any questions for me?

74
Candidate: Yes. (The candidate had read an article that the interviewer had authored – asked a
couple of questions based on that. The interviewer appreciated it.)

Key takeaways:
Do your research diligently about the top people at the firm

Sometimes there need not be a set framework to apply. Just ask the right questions, sequentially

Calculations can be slightly tricky during the D-day. Don’t mess up in conversions - tonnes to kgs &
millions to thousands etc.

CASE 2

Candidate: Khizar Sheriff M

Case: Guesstimate

(This was with a Partner at the firm. It was a 40 minute interview, divided into 3 parts.)

Part 1 : A 15-20 minute Q&A session solely about candidate’s work experience at TVS Motors.
Questions from specific projects - how I went about doing them, etc. The candidate was able to
answer all the questions here.

Part 2 :

Interviewer: Here’s a ball point pen. Tell me how many days it will serve you before the next refill.

Candidate: Sure. (Paraphrased the question just to be doubly sure.)

Interviewer: Yes. Tell me when you will come to me for a refill.

Candidate: I’m going to take a week in my life as an IIMB student.

I knew there were two parts to the solution –

The rate at which ink is consumed

Total no. of pages consumed by an IIMB student in a certain time period.

I attacked the 2nd part of the problem first.

Made some assumptions, and came up with the following table:
Days in a Class Notes Home Prep Notes
week Total Pages Total Total Pages Total
no. of consumed no. of no. of consumed no. of
hours per hour pages hours per hour pages

Monday 3 2 6 1 1 1
Tuesday 3 2 6 1 1 1
Wednesday 3 2 6 1 1 1
Thursday 3 2 6 1 1 1
Friday 3 2 6 1 1 1
Saturday 0 2 0 3 1 3
Sunday 0 2 0 3 1 3

75
 Total / week 30 11

Total pages consumer per week = 30 + 11 = 41

The candidate took the partner through the assumptions in the table. He was ok with it.

Now, for the 1st part of the problem. Take a scale and measure length of ink in refill. Assume it is
15cm (150mm). Write an entire page and check the reduction in length. Assume it is 3mm. We’ve
arrived at an equation i.e. 1 page consumes 3mm. Therefore,

No. of pages before refill runs dry = Length of ink in refill / Consumption per page (150/3 = 50 pages)

So, if you give me the pen on Monday, I will come back to you the next Monday night for a refill.

Interviewer: Great. Sounds alright.

Candidate: Do you want me to further refine it by including the impact of quizzes, exams and other
miscellaneous purposes?
Interviewer: No, this is good. We will stop the case here.
Part 3: 10 minute discussion on Auto Industry Key
takeaways:

Identify the variables in an equation quickly. Arrive at the variables by presenting it legibly. (No
matter how simple the case might seem)
If you have work experience, know all the points in the resume very well - to the point you can
defend it to nth level.
Be up to date with your industry of experience.

CASE 3

Candidate: Kottana Naveen Kumar

Case: Guesstimate (Abridged version)

Interviewer: Shall we get started?

Candidate: Yes, Sir.

Interviewer: Describe three aspects from your resume that I should remember. You have 30 seconds
Candidate:
The patents that I filed & the self-initiated projects that I did demonstrates my motivation to do
something new.
The National and International competitions that I won in technology domain indicates the
expertise that I built in my area of interest.
The multiple musical instruments that I learnt within span of two years, indicates my focused
approach and self-learning abilities.

Interviewer: Good, let’s quickly do a guesstimate. Estimate the current users of fountain pen in IIM
Bangalore.

Candidate: (Repeated the statement for cross checking) Can I have 30 seconds to structure my
thoughts sir?

Interviewer: Sure, go ahead.

Candidate: (Thought about the methodology as given below and asked for his approval to proceed

76
further)

Method:
Categorize people as per their profession
Drill down to second level of categorization
Quantify strength of each category

Come up with individual characteristics of each category from which a probability proxy can be
assumed.

Compute the overall number using both strength and probability.

Can I go ahead, sir?

Interviewer: Seems fine. Please go ahead.

Candidate:
Classified all the people staying at IIMB and quantified with available information and reasonable
estimations. Examples: 800 PGP students, 200 faculty members, 100 faculty families (remaining stay
outside or visiting) etc.

Students Teaching staff Non-teaching staff Faculty families Recruiters

PGP Senior faculty High level admin Age > 50

positions

EPGP Mid-level Mid-level admin Age 20-30

positions

Others Associates Workers Age < 20

(Try to be exhaustive and ensure mutual exclusivity across categories)

Interviewer: You can neglect faculty families and recruiters.

Candidate: Sure, sir. Now I will try to assign probability of fountain pen usage in each sub category.
Broadly we can assume that the probability of using fountain pen is a function of

Personal habits- Someone who is into literature will have more chances of using fountain pen.
Position -A senior faculty who is also a board member of various companies will have high
probability to maintain such pens. On the other hand, non-teaching staff and someone not in
administrative positions will have very low probability.

(Wanted to go further, but the interviewer stopped).

Interviewer: Ok, got the approach. Tell me if you want to find out how many students are inclined
towards literature, how will you arrive at that number?
Candidate: (Took a while to think) On campus, there are different clubs and students join these clubs
according to their interest. We can take the relevant club membership number as a proxy to
represent such people and a small fraction of them might be using such pens

77
Interviewer: Yeah, that can used. But, don’t you think you are missing a platform where you can get
data for few sub categories like students & Professors?

Candidate: (Thought for a while) I think class room is one place where I meet both professors and
students. But, I am not able to come up with what kind of data we can get there.

Interviewer: Have you observed any student or professor using a fountain pen in this due course of 2
terms?
Candidate: So sir, do you mean that direct observations like this can represent as a sample of that
sub category (population) and we can use that for extrapolation?

nterviewer: Exactly. Anyway, enough of this. Do you follow news regularly?

Candidate: No sir, not after coming to IIM Bangalore.

Interviewer: (Started laughing.) Ok tell me “If you become the Prime Minister of India, what will you
do to promote business in this country”?
Candidate: To my knowledge, Indian tax system is complex and is not business friendly. If I become
the prime minister, I will try to implement GST bill as early as possible.

Interviewer: Don’t you think Land bill is more important than GST bill? So many projects were stalled
because of this.

Candidate: Yes sir, that is true. This is also a major issue that has to be resolved.

Interviewer: Thank you Naveen. Please wait outside. We will let you know about the second round.

Candidate: Sure. Thank you.

Key takeaways:
When you get such vague guesstimates, don’t panic. They might be just checking whether you can
structure the problem or not, whether you can think of decent data proxies for arriving at a number
or not etc.

CASE 4

Candidate: Kottana Naveen Kumar

Case: Profitability Analysis

Interviewer: Quickly tell me why your intermediate score is just 93%. I saw several people from
Andhra scoring above 96%.

Candidate: I took a two month break just before board exams due to health reasons. And also, those
were transition years for me. Before that I used to study in Telugu medium that too in a local
government school. But, I agree that I could have done better.

Interviewer: Is that a chronical health issue?

Candidate: No sir, it was severe jaundice which took me down.

Interviewer: Oh, okay. You seem to have decent work-ex in steel industry. Let’s do a case on steel
industry itself. You met Mr. Kaushik Basu, CFO Tata Steel Limited (TSL), in a conference. He said that

78
he is observing significant decline in TSL’s profits and asked you to analyse about the same. How you
want to go about this?

Candidate: Can I take 30 seconds to structure my thoughts?

Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: Can you please tell me how the other steel companies are doing?
Interviewer: They are doing fine. Only TSL is suffering.
Candidate: Okay. So, it is not an industry problem but a company specific problem.

Interviewer: Yes, absolutely.

Candidate: Were the profits declining over a period of time or it was just a one-time decline?

Interviewer: They were dropping for the last 4 years.

Candidate: Okay. So, can I conclude that it is some kind of chronical issue specific to Tata Steel?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Okay. I would like to start analysing the profit equation of Tata Steel.
Interviewer: Do you want to consider entire Tata Steel or you want to narrow down further at this
stage?
Candidate: (Stuck for a while.) Sir, I think we can narrow down by geography. Is there any specific
geography which is not performing well?

Interviewer: Tell me what all geographies Tata Steel is operating.

Candidate: India, Europe, South East Asia. If I can use the factual information, it is very well known
that Europe division of Tata Steel is not doing well. (Then there was a discussion on a few things
about Tata-Corus deal. The case went slightly off track but it was an interesting discussion.)

Interviewer: Okay. Come back to the profit equation. Let’s analyse profit equation for Europe
division.

Candidate: Sure. (Explained the standard Profit equation also given below)
Profit = Revenue – Cost
Revenue = Market Size * Market Share * Price
Cost = Raw Material + Labour + Inventory + Transportation + Maintenance + Finance +
Marketing + Others

Since we have already established that the problem is specific to Tata Steel, I won’t be analysing
Market size and prices. Is that fine? (Prices can be firm specific. But in Steel industry, that too in
Europe, there won’t be much difference in prices across firms. So, for other industries, you can’t
assume price to be industry specific)

Interviewer: Yes, seems like a valid assumption. Go ahead.

Candidate: Was there any gradual decline in market share of Tata Steel Europe division?

Interviewer: No.

Candidate: Okay. From the above analysis it is safe to conclude that revenues are not the problem
for the firm. So, I would like start analysing the cost side of the equation. Is that fine? Interviewer:
Sure. Go ahead

Candidate: Started with each cost head. Was there any increase in raw material costs?

79
Interviewer: You tell me. What is happening outside?

Candidate: Global Iron ore prices are dropping. Coal is kind of stable. (Discussed a while about global
scenario of steel industry, china role etc. Again the case went slightly off track but we came back
quickly.)

So, raw materials are not a problem as per actual scenario. Can I assume the same for this case?
(Never mix your outside knowledge with case until unless they allow you to do so. Because most of
the time they want to check your structure, approach and comprehensiveness rather than what you
already know)

Interviewer: Yes. Anyway, I don’t think we have much time left. Just analyse the maintenance cost
head.
Candidate: Okay. So, I am assuming that the maintenance costs are going up over a period of time
and leading to decrease in profits. Is that correct?

Interviewer: Yes. How can you measure the performance of maintenance department? Candidate: %
machine utilization, recovery time, Spares inventory turnover ratio are some the metrics which can
be used.

Interviewer: Do you know what MTBF means?

Candidates: Yes, Mean Time Between Failures. This can also be a good metric to measure
maintenance performance.

Interviewer: Assume that MTBF is going up. Come up with possible recommendations.
Candidate: Sure. Please give me a minute to think.

Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate:

For immediate action, analyse all the failures, apply Pareto rule (80-20) and identify the major
contributors. Form cross functional teams and assign these problems/failures as DMAIC or DMADIC
projects.

For long term, study the maintenance philosophy that the firm adopted (Predictive/ Preventive/
Proactive) and assess what modifications are needed.

Interviewer: Thank you very much Naveen. It was a nice conversation. Do you have any questions for
us?

Candidate: No, I don’t have any questions. Thank you very much.

Key takeaways: Be prepared about the industry/company that you worked for. Make the interview
more like a conversation. If you stuck somewhere, don’t panic. They will help you out.

All the best!

80
 CASE INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES – SUMMERS 2015

CONTRIBUTORS' PROFILES

Resume Spikes(not in
Graduation Work Experience
order)
Name Company
Duration
Branch College Company (months) One Two
Awards/
Gaurav Accenture Mechanica IIT Philips,
60 Work Ex Extra
Chauhan Strategy l Eng. Guwahati Think3
currics
Int’l
Shrirang Accenture Mechanica Acads &
RVCE RIL 11 internshi
Chilapur Strategy l Eng. PoRs
p
Coimbatore Well
Harini Rao AT Kearney IT EMC 30 Acads
Inst. of Tech rounded

Rushil Kaul AT Kearney Electronics NSIT Delhi ZS 20 Work Ex Extra-

& Comm Associates curricular
Kapil Bain & Civil Eng. IIT Kanpur SOM LLP 34 Work Ex Awards
Mathur Company
Nidhi Rai Bain & Civil Eng. NITK Credit 36 Work Ex PoRs
Company Suisse
Ankur Chemical Opera
BCG IIT Kanpur 9 Acads Work Ex
Agrawal Eng. Solutions
Diamond
Kshitij Chemical Extra-
BCG IIT Delhi Consultin 22 Acads
Chaudhary Eng. Curricular
g
Vishwas ZS Dept
Sharma BCG Civil Eng. IIT Kanpur Associates 22 Rank 1 Publication
Meenakshi GEP Biomedical NIT Sony India 35 Dept -
Singh Eng. Rourkela software Rank 1

Issac Jojy McKinsey & Civil Eng. IIT Madras ITC 36 Work Ex Extra-
Company Curricular
Ishita McKinsey & BA (Econ.& St. Xavier’s - - Acads -
Kayastha Company Stats)
Irunway,
Karthik McKinsey & Electrical
IIT Madras Teeyenaar 56 Acads PoRs
Krishna Company Eng.
Foods
Mohit McKinsey & Mechanica Social start-
IIT Delhi Citigroup 36 Work Ex
Aggarwal Company l Eng. up

81
Swapnika McKinsey & Engineerin IIT BHU ZS 12 Awards PoRs
Nag Company g Physics Associates
Sabre
Sumedh Mechanica
Vidwans Roland Berger l IIT Madras Airline 40 Work Ex Publication
Sol.
Utkarsh Mechanica IIT Caterpilla
Strategy& 22 Acads Work Ex
Rustogi l Kharagpur r

82
 ACCENTURE STRATEGY

Gaurav Chauhan
Interviewer: Hi. How are you?

Candidate: Good morning, sir. I am fine. How are you?

*pleasantries*

Interviewer: So, please tell me something about yourself?

*And I did*

Interviewer: Let’s talk about a case. So there is a tyre manufacturing company that wants to know
whether it should enter India? So how would go about consulting this client.

Candidate: Sure, sir. Before I begin, our client is an international tyre manufacturer and wants to
know if they should enter the Indian market. We need to formulate a plan for the same. Sir, do we
have a time frame in mind? Also, can you tell me a little bit more about our client and its objective in
entering Indian market?

Interviewer: You can assume it is a big manufacturer with the necessary wherewithal. They want to
be a big player in India in the next 5 years.

Candidate: Sure, sir. I would begin by doing a market sizing to gauge market attractiveness.

Interviewer: Please go ahead.

Candidate: I am assuming, the client operates in personal automotive segment and hence I would
try to do market sizing for 4 wheelers in India. Is that a fair assumption?

Interviewer: Yes, that is fine.

Candidate: I will assume India’s population to be roughly 1000 million (eases calculation) which
translates to roughly 200 million families assuming a family size of 5. Now, I would break this
number equally among the 4 zones, North, West, East and South.

Interviewer: Do you think that is a fair assumption?

Candidate: Not really. Since, north and east have different population densities. Do you want me to
assume different numbers?

Interviewer: No, go ahead.

Candidate: So assuming roughly 50 million families per zone. Based on census, 30% of our
population lives under poverty line and hence can be excluded from this calculation. From the
remaining 70%, I would assume that 50% people would only be able to afford 2 wheelers which
leaves us with 20% which is roughly 10 million. Assuming, similar number for all zones, I would
assume 40 million cars pan India.

83
Interviewer: Don’t you think that is a little too much?

Candidate: Yes, sir. I still have to amortize purchase over the lifetime. So assuming a lifetime of 10
years since in India people keep cars longer, I would assume that 40 million / 10 = 4 million new cars
are purchased every year. This means a market size of 16 million tyres per annum. Is there a specific
market share we are looking at in 5 years?

Interviewer: Okay, so that’s our per annum requirement in India. You can assume any market share
that a dominant player would aim.

Candidate: Assuming market competition and the time it take to grow business, I would assume a
market share of 2% in the first year when we start operations, which would linearly reach 20% in the
5th year. This will make us one of the big players in India.

Interviewer: Okay. What other things would you consider in this analysis?

Candidate: I would also look at the capital requirement for the company – whether they are going
for Greenfield or taking over some plant. I would also look at tying up with car companies because
they are the ones who would be our main customers. For this, I would look at their current contracts
and timelines and look at offering them better deals.

Interviewer: And what else?

Candidate: I would also look at suppliers for raw material, rubber etc. And see if good deals can be
struck at the onset.

Interviewer: Any other things?

Candidate: I would also look at the regulatory aspect since transport and regulatory associations are
active in this area.

Interviewer: Good. I think we have covered decent ground.

Candidate: Thanks sir.

Some questions on resume, post which I was asked to go for the second round. This round was
about resume and personals and was taken by the HR head and Partner.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Shrirang Chilapur
Interview 1

(The interview was a market entry problem with real names of the players, so some industry knowledge
was essential. The interviewer was a consultant at the firm. It went on for 45 minutes)

The interview starts with pleasantries, the tension of day zero, etc.

Interviewer: Let’s start with the case. What do you know about the civil aviation industry in India?

Candidate: The civil aviation industry in India is one of the largest in the world, probably the third or
fourth largest market. The modernisation of airports, the increase in business and corporates, travel
preferences moving towards air travel, and the advent of low cost carriers has led to the boom of
this industry.

84
Interviewer: Can you think of a couple of key business drivers in this industry?

Candidate: On top of my mind, hassle free booking of tickets, availability of tickets on all common
sites, providing good passenger experience, competitive rates, connectivity between cities,
adherence to schedule, etc.

Interviewer: You spoke about the advent of low cost carriers in India. Can you tell me how it has
changed the industry?

Candidate: Before 2000s, we had few players, like Deccan and Jet, and a couple of other local
carriers. Most of them were expensive to travel with, and flying was for the elite. After that, players
like Kingfisher, Indigo, SpiceJet have come in and are providing services at highly competitive prices.

Interviewer: How do they do that?

Candidate: As per my knowledge, these are the reasons:

Ease of regulations have decreased costs to enter the market compared to pre 2000s
Cost savings on frills – food is paid for separately, baggage costs separately, cramming up
more seats leading to lesser leg space, etc.
Availability of aircraft renting options – many investment banks are getting into this. This
reduces capital investment needed. I think Kingfisher has mostly rented aircraft.

Interviewer: Does Kingfisher fall into the cost saving category?

Candidate: No. It falls under the premium category. They differentiate based on service provided,
and their prices are higher.

Interviewer: What categories of players are there in the market?

Candidate: Please allow me to think for a minute.

(Doodled with a price vs. service 2x2, that looked somewhat like this and explained the positioning
of each airline briefly)

85
Interviewer: Are you aware of the latest entrants in the airline industry?

Candidate: Yes. Tata’s Vistara and AirAsia are planning to enter (they were in induction phase at
that time)

Interviewer: Supposing the Tata group is your client. How would you advise them to enter the
market?

Candidate: (After thinking through for a minute’s time) I would like to analyse the Company, the
industry, the competitors in that segment and the customer segment it wants to target to start with.

Interviewer: We have spoken about the industry. Please elaborate on the rest.

Candidate: OK. Firstly, the Tata Group and Singapore Airlines bring together the best capabilities.

Here I knew some facts of the Tata group and how it has excelled in most of the businesses it has
ventured into, the synergies of the group companies and its inspiration to come in the aviation
industry. However, I did not know much about SIA, so I requested the interviewer to help me out,
which he did. I then elaborated on how the two companies could have synergies.

Interviewer: What strategy do you suggest to tackle competitors and gain customers?

Candidate: I have heard that Vistara wants to enter the premium segment. Is that true?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: In that case, the only competitors are Jet and Air India (KF is no more a player). Shall I go
ahead?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Let us look at the services Jet offers and the customers it caters to. Jet charges higher
prices, but it offers a premium flying experience. It gives free meals, offers quicker check-in times,
has India’s best frequent flyer program called Jet-Privilege, and it has a very good footprint. It
attracts the business traveller and the wealthy traveller. People look at travelling in Jet as a special
experience (compared to the service of Indigo and SpiceJet).

So Vistara will be catering to almost the same customer segment. Hence, providing all of the above
will be just the first step in building the brand. (I then provided a few additional ideas the carrier
could offer, which the interviewer seemed to like)

Interviewer: I like your ideas. But do you think it will be enough? Tata has always been associated
with lower prices. How about reducing the prices to the level of Indigo/SpiceJet?

Candidate: I think lowering the prices will have the following effects:

Financial burden on the firm, immediately after it launches. It is manageable as Tata has
deep pockets, but not sustainable in the long run

Users may get confused with Tata’s offering (premium or not-premium)

The price point in the minds of consumers will get set at that level for Vistara. So if they
increase it later, it may have a negative effect and reduce customers.

86
Interviewer: So what do you suggest?

Candidate: Start off with promotional offers so that the actual prices are visible and the consumers
know that it is discount and that the actual prices are similar to Jet and Air India. Sway them with all-
round excellent service. Give offers to fly again. (Add 2-3 more minutes of suggestions)

Interviewer: Ok that was a great interview. As a personal opinion, do you think that Vistara will do
well?

Candidate: With the current price war and increasing fuel and airport costs, almost no player is
making profits, except probably jet. If anyone has the deep pockets to enter the industry, it is the
Tatas. Even then, I don’t see them making any profits for the first few years.

Interviewer: OK thank you.

(Interview 2 was with a Partner on the crude oil market; the case was on a public sector firm’s future
expansion strategy: expanding in India vs. expanding abroad. This was asked because of my
experience in the oil industry)

(Overall takeaways: Industry knowledge is very important, at least to an extent where you can have
a decent discussion. Prepare for this in groups. Especially know your relevant industries

the ones you have an undergraduate degree in, or worked in) like the back of your hand. Always ask
questions when you assume. Let the interviewer know if you don’t know a particular piece of info,
it’s not a crime. He will gladly provide the relevant information. Structuring your answer is as
important as the answer itself. It helps you get brownie points, especially if your answer is slightly
out of track)

____________________________________________________________________________

AT KEARNEY

Harini Rao
Interview I – Numbers Case

Caselet: A Hypermarket chain is planning to open a store in Bannerghatta. Estimate the expected
monthly sales in the first month.

(This is a quant based hypermarkets case. They were looking at the breadth of factors considered,
not the depth)

Candidate: First I would like to estimate the demand. This can be approached at by considering the
population of Bangalore , which is about 4.2 million people. We can now narrow this population by
splitting it in 3 ways: Area Split, Age Split, and Income Split. Should I continue with this approach?

Interviewer: Yes, please go ahead.

Candidate: Considering the area split first, Bangalore can be divided into 10 major localities,
including Bannerghatta. Assuming an equal distribution of population among these 10 localities,
Bannerghatta will have 1/10th of the population, i.e. 0.42 million.

87
Now, assuming the same age split statistics apply to this region, as those of India, I would consider
the 18 to 60 years old population segment. This makes up about 50% of the population. I am not
considering people below the age of 18 years, because they either have no money, or don’t spend it
in hypermarkets. I am not considering people above 60 years, because they generally make their
purchases from nearby stores, instead of hypermarkets. Are these assumptions good to go with?

Interviewer: Sure, we can work with these.

Candidate: Okay, so this leaves us with a population of 0.21 million. Now, using the income split,
40% of this population will be in the middle and higher income group, which should be the relevant
consumer base for a hypermarket. This brings it down to 84000 people. Dividing this number by 4,
we get the number of families (assuming 4 to be the average size of a family). Thus, 21000 families.

Now, assuming that a family spends about Rs.2000 – 3000 on groceries in a month.

Interviewer: Let’s work with Rs.2000.

Candidate: Sure. We should also consider that people buy only those groceries from a hypermarket
that can be stored at least over a week, for example, vegetables, pulses, sugar, etc. They would
typically not buy milk or bread from a hypermarket. Also, they purchase other products like
electronics.

(The interviewer concluded the analysis here)

Interviewer: Okay, that should give us a good estimate of the potential demand. What else would
you consider?

Candidate: We should look at the footfall to the store. Are there any other hypermarkets in the
area?

Interviewer: Yes, there is one another hypermarket. It is a comparable brand.

Candidate: Then we should divide the target group by 2. However, we could also consider that during the
first month, the new hypermarket would conduct several promotion activities. People

will be attracted by these activities and also by curiosity to check the new store. Thus, for the first
month, I would split the target group 60% to 40% between the new and the old hypermarkets
respectively.

Interviewer: Great job. That should sufficient to estimate the sales.

Interview II – Creative Game

Interviewer: I will give you a statement, a situation. You have to come up with a back story that
explains the situation. You can ask me 20 questions, to which I will only answer in a Yes or a No.

Statement: There is a naked man in the middle of the desert with a straw in his hand.

(I approached it by dividing the statement into 3 parts:

Why is the man naked?

Why is he in the middle of the desert?

Why does he have a straw in his hand?

I asked questions trying to solve the above parts step by step)

88
Candidate: Is he alone?

Interviewer: Yes

(I tried to then answer the question, why is alone?)

Candidate: Was he there with a group before?
Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: Was he left behind by force?

Interviewer: No

Candidate: Did he lose a bet?

Interviewer: No

(I realised this may be related to the straw)

Candidate: Is this piece of straw short?

Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: Were these people in some difficulty, where they picked straws, and the person with the
shortest straw stayed back?

Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: Did they have a mode of transportation, and did the rest of the group leave in the same
vehicle?

Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: Thus, N came and (N-1) left. Is that correct?

Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: Did the vehicle have a technical failure?

Interviewer: Yes, but this information might be misleading.

Candidate: Was there anything else around him? Like other people’s clothes?

Interview: Yes, but again this information could be misleading. You have solved 90% of the case.
What is your hypothesis of what must have happened?

Candidate: There is a group of people who came in a car. The petrol tank must have started leaking.
So, they needed clothes to stuff the tank, to stop the leak. They must have picked straws to decide
whose clothes that would be. Probably, the weight of the passengers was also a factor, so they had
to leave the guy behind.

(Now I think the situation must have been this:

The problem wasn’t with the fuel tank, but may be a tire was losing air. They must have decided to
offload weight from the car. So they offload some weight every few kilometres. First, the suitcases,

89
then, the clothes that they were wearing. Then finally they picked straws to decide which guy should
be left behind.)

Interview III – Hypermarkets Case (not quant based)

Interviewer: The sales of a hypermarket have tanked. Could you think of the possible reasons?

(I thought this meant that the sales have decreased. However, this in fact meant that the sales have
stagnated.)

Candidate: Have the sales decreased only for us, or for others as well?

Interviewer: No, the sales have not gone down. They have stagnated.

Candidate: Have the sales stagnated only for us?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Have the sales stagnated only for this branch?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Have there been any major changes in the last one year that led to this?

Interviewer: No. Don’t think of the typical, obvious reasons. Can you think of something else?

Candidate: Have there been more competitors that have sprung around us?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Has the footfall stagnated, or have the purchases gone down?

Interviewer: The footfall hasn’t increased year on year.

(I concluded that this means that competitors are setting up in newer malls with high footfall)

Candidate: Is customer service a problem?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Is the industry as a whole losing out?

Interviewer: No.

Candidate: Is the variety of the stock a problem?

Interviewer: No.

Candidate: Is inventory planning a problem?

Interviewer: Yes, the store is experiencing frequent stock outs.

Candidate: Is parking a problem where the store is located?

Interviewer: Yes.

90
Candidate: Is promotions a problem? Is the store not promoting itself enough?

Interviewer: No. Okay, these problem areas are well rounded. Thank you.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Rushil Kaul
Case 1: Your client is an Indian automobile manufacturer. They have recently doubled their
production capacity...but are not happy with their sales in the Indian market. Their market share has
fallen from 20% to 12% in the last few years and India is a stagnating market. Please suggest what
factors you would look at while expanding to overseas markets.

Approach: The problem statement was pretty long but the case was a simple market entry analysis
really.

Candidate: Our client is an Indian automobile manufacturer. Despite doubling their production
capacity, they are faced with stagnating sales and their market share has gone down by 8% (down to
just 12%). Now they want to expand to overseas markets and would like our help in analysing which
markets are attractive. Is there any other objective?

Interviewer: Nope that is the only objective.

Candidate: Alright. I just need a few clarifications regarding our client. What kind of automobiles do
they manufacture?

Interviewer: For the purpose of this case, only consider commercial 4-wheelers.

Candidate: Okay. And in the Indian market, are there any particular regions where they have a very
strong presence (North, South etc.)? I’m asking this to understand if expanding in India is also an
option for reviving sales.

Interviewer: They have a strong national presence. And no. I don’t want you to think of ways of
expanding in India. Just focus on expanding to foreign markets. What are some of the factors that
you will consider? Give me a generic approach first.

Candidate: Sure. Just give me a minute to structure my thoughts.

Interviewer: Of course. Take your time.

Candidate: (after about a minute). Alright to assess the attractiveness of any market, I would want
to look at 4 key things:

Understanding the Market: i) What is the size of the market?

What is the growth like?

Are there any trends?

Customer Analysis: i) Which segment am I going to target?

What is my value proposition and what are the possible substitutes?

Competitor Analysis: i) The number and size of all competitors

91
 Barriers to entry: Government Regulations, Suppliers, distributors, Capital required etc.

After that I’d also want to look at how I’m going to enter:

Whether I want to start from scratch

Acquire a smaller player

Have a Joint Venture

Interviewer: Good. Now assume that we have market data available (population, number of
automobiles sold, trends in the automobile industry, regulations) for all the major countries in the
world. How will you go about identifying the right country to enter? Assume that the client only
wants to enter one market/country right now.

Candidate: (after thinking for 5-10 seconds): So the first thing I’d want to look at is the size of the
market. In the sense I would want to know whether the demand in the market is large enough for us
to enter. Can you tell me what our current production capacity is and how many cars are we looking
to sell overseas?

Interviewer: Assume that 2 million cars are sold in India every year. And that our initial production
capacity was 200,000 cars a year.

Candidate: Alright. Can I assume our market share will stay constant at 12%?

Interviewer: Yes we expect it to stay at that level in the foreseeable future.

Candidate: Okay. So that means 12% of 2 million. We should be able to sell some 240,000 cars in
India. Our production capacity is now double and stands at 400,000. Would it be fair then to assume
that we wish to sell around (400,000 – 240,000) = 160,000 overseas?

Interviewer: Yes. How will you proceed further?

Candidate: Since we’re an established player in India and have 12% market share, optimistically,
even if we capture 5% of a new market, we would have done extremely well. So I’d only look at
markets that are greater than 20 times 160,000 (automobiles sold per year).

Interviewer: 5% is a little too optimistic but I like the approach. Okay now assume only 5 markets
are big enough. – U.S. UK, China, Japan and Australia. How will you decide now?

Candidate: We should look at our target segment of consumers? What kind of price range do we
want to play in. Also look at what competitors exist in that segment? (went into a bit of a monologue
here about how we should assess customer preferences in different markets)

Interviewer: Assume that we sell cars in a variety of price ranges and all markets are equally
competitive. Would you want to consider anything else?

Candidate: Okay I’d take a closer look at barriers to entry. What kind of government regulations
exist and what are my supplier options.

Interviewer: Okay the U.S. and Australia have left hand drive vehicles only and we don’t want to
modify our production lines to accommodate for that. In the U.K. , you have to set up your own
manufacturing facility is you want to sell cars. In China, there is no such restriction but you have to
procure 50% of the parts from local Chinese suppliers. In Japan it’s the same except you only have to
procure 20% of the parts from local Japanese suppliers.

92
 Candidate: Hmm. I guess that rules out U.S. and Australia completely. I guess it doesn’t make too
much sense to set up a completely new manufacturing facility just now right after we just doubled
our capacity so that rules out U.K as well (interviewer nods). Procuring 50% parts from China may
just bring down our manufacturing costs (if we are fine with the quality) but it might upset our
relationships with suppliers in India. I guess with this information, Japan seems like the most feasible
target market right now.

Interviewer: Very good. That’s correct. Now just go through all your notes, take some time to think
and tell me if you had to solve the case again, would you change the order of the questions you
asked me to get to the answer.

Candidate: Yes I would first begin with barriers to entry (especially government regulations first).
That’s the first and most important filter that should be applied I guess because it could completely
rule out some markets that are probably big enough or have the correct target consumers but are
just not feasible to enter because of regulations. So we won’t waste any time analysing size and
trends when it’ll eventually be pointless. Then I’d go with the order of questioning that I followed.

Interviewer: Very good!

__________________________________________________________________________________

BAIN & COMPANY

Kapil Mathur
Interview 1 – A Numbers Case

Caselet: This case is about a tech startup in 2009. The target customer segment is the ageing
population in the developed world (US, UK, Australia etc.). Our client will provide tech support for
laptop users in these countries by setting up a call center in India. We will market our service on the
internet and the clients can call us on the toll free 1-800 number listed on our landing page. We will
help them to fix the issue with their laptops over the phone. How will you go about pricing this
service?

Candidate: [I asked a few questions about the company, its business model and value prop., existing
competition etc. to understand the context for further analysis. Interviewer gave general
information about what kind of services Dell provides when you buy a laptop from them and for
how long. He also explained the kind of issues we can tackle over the phone – say someone
accidentally uninstalled a driver, we can help them fix it.

Then I listed down three ways to price the service – benchmarking with comptt., cost-based, and
value-based – and asked for relevant numbers].

Interviewer: I want you to focus on cost-based pricing. Here are the numbers, listen carefully.

Search engine marketing will cost us $0.5/click each time someone clicks on our ad. that
shows up in search results.
This click will take you to landing page which provides our toll-free number to call on.
1/10 people who visit the page will call us.

93
 When someone calls us for the first time, we will follow a ‘serve to sell’ strategy, which
means that we will solve their current problem for free and then we will make a pitch to
them to buy our service. Each call of this kind will last 1 hour long on average and will cost
us $12/call (everything included). 1/10 first-time callers will subscribe to our service.

Once a caller subscribes to our service, he will call us 6 times a year on average. Each of
those calls will be around 1 hour long and will cost us $10/call to serve

Candidate: I quickly calculated the cost of serving one subscriber annually:

[0.5*100 + 10*12 + 1*10*6] = $230/subscriber/yr. [The interviewer specifically asked me not to

write down any calculations and just do mental math]

How much margin do we want to keep on revenue/subscriber?

Interviewer: 20%

Candidate: Ok then we should charge $287.5/subscriber/yr for our service

Interviewer: Good. Now, say Dell sees us providing this service and has decided to soon (in a year or
so) enter the space and provide the exact same service at $225/subscriber/yr. To compete with
Dell, you’ll need to bring down your price to $200/subscriber/yr. How do you stay profitable now?

Candidate: [Profit = Revenue – Cost]. I can start looking at cutting down my costs first.

Interviewer: Of course, assume you are barely able to meet your costs at this price. What else?

andidate: I’ll start looking at revenue then. [For a start, Revenue = price x vol. x variety. I started
jotting down several ideas, thinking out loud and rejecting them if they didn’t make sense. Narrowed
down to 2 ideas]. Variety brings to mind product mix. We should look at alternate revenue streams
i.e. cross-selling

Interviewer: Exactly. What would you cross sell?

Candidate: Anti-viruses, other software that enhance performance of laptops [gave several
examples.]

Interviewer: Cool, What else?

Candidate: Well, the other idea in my mind is that we should focus on renewal or repeat customers
– making them stick with us.

Interviewer: [Smiling] Why?

Candidate: Cost of serving them will be lower – no need for initial clicking cost or ‘serve to sell’. In
fact, the cost of serving renewed subscriber will be just $60/yr. [ Then gave several ideas about how
we can make them stick with us and not move to Dell. Some more mental calculations on pricing for
renewed subscriber].

Interviewer: Great, can you summarize?

Candidate: [I did the same. The focus here was on mental math and ideation]

_________________________________________________________________________

94
Nidhi Rai
Case: PE Client – BPO Industry problem

Interviewer: Hello Nidhi. How are you doing today? First case interview of the day. Are you
nervous?

Candidate: I doing very well. A little nervous but I think that’s a good thing. How are you?

Interview: I am doing great. Very excited to be back on campus after almost a decade.(Continues
with a lot of small talk about himself). So tell me about yourself.

Candidate: (Give my rehearsed introduction.)

A little cross questioning about my hobbies is done.

Interview: OK. So let’s get started. I have a case for you. The problem statement is - A PE Client
wants to start a 2 week project based in the US. They are keen on investing in a BPO in Gurgaon
which is the 2nd largest player in its space (Commercial dealing and Finance). The general concern is
about the macro economic conditions in the country. They believe that man power is going to be an
issue wrt to quality and numbers. They believe that this is a risk. Evaluate the risk and return.

Candidate: (I repeat the main points of the problem for clarity and ask for a minute to think over the
issue)

Candidate: Could you tell me a little more about the PE client?

Interviewer: Sure. The PE firm is a mid-sized firm. This is their first investment in India and for the
next 3-4 years they plan to turn their focus to the IT industry.

Candidate: Could you tell me a little more about the BPO they are looking to invest in?

Interviewer: This is a diversified firm. They generally recruit graduates and have a thorough training
program.

Candidate: Thank You. Could you also tell me how the BPO Industry is doing in India.

Interviewer: So currently the industry requires 1 mn graduates annually. 20% is met by lateral
recruitments and the rest are fresh graduates.

Candidate: So I understand that if we can size the market of the fresh graduates and highlight the
risks that the PE client may have and allay their fears we will be able to convince the client to invest
in India.

Interviewer: Correct. So can you size the market for me?

Candidate: Sure. So I would like to work with sizing the fresh graduate market first. I would like to
assume that the total number of metro, tier 1, 2 and 3 cities in India is 25. I would like to take the
city of Bangalore because I am comfortable with it and to simplify it I will divide it into North, South,
East and West. From this I will pick South Bangalore.

Interviewer: That sounds good. Now how will you estimate the graduates?

95
Candidate: I would like to assume that there are 5 big colleges with a graduating batch of 500 each
and 15 medium and small sized colleges with a graduating batch of 300 each in South Bangalore.
This gives me a total of 7000 fresh graduates in South Bangalore.

Interview: Alright. That sounds like a fair number. How will you proceed?

Candidate: Would it be safe for me to assume that of the big colleges only 20% would be interested
in a BPO college.

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Ok. So that gives me 500 fresh graduates will to join the BPO. From the small and
medium, we can assume that 60% of the graduates are engineers, 20% of the graduates are doctors
and others make up the rest of the category. I would like to assume that 50% of the engineers may
be interested in joining, 20% of the medical students might be interested and the BPO recruiting
team will be interested in only the top 20% of the other colleges. This gives me a number of 3000
people in South Bangalore. This would give me a total number of 3,00,000 graduates available for
recruiting by the BPOs.

Interviewer: Ok. That sounds right. Now can you tell me what we can tell the client?

Candidate: So with 3,00,000 fresh graduates available, we can safely assume that the crème de la
crème will be interested in joining the top BPOs. Since our client is interested in the 2nd largest player
in the market, they should not face any issues with regard to the quality and headcount of
employees.

Interviewer: Alright. Sounds good. So how do you think this case went?

Candidate: (After some thought) I think it was okay.

Interview: I think it was very good. We’ll see you in the next round. Thank You

Candidate: Thank You

___________________________________________________________________________

BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP

Ankur Agrawal
Here is the detailed dialogue I had with the BCG recruiters during the 3 case interviews in Summers.
I have tried to produce a narrative of the events that occurred on the D-Day to highlight the overall
experience and also in between I have pointed out the key takeaways for someone who is preparing
for case interviews.

Interview 1

I first interviewed with a Senior Principal in the firm. Given it was the first interview of the day, I was
both excited and anxious, however the interviewer was friendly enough and made sure I was at ease
in the beginning itself.

Interviewer: Hi Ankur! Have a seat, how are you feeling? Would you like some tea?

96
Candidate: No, Thank you. I am fine.

Interviewer: Ankur, I can see in your resume that you have been academically very bright
throughout. So, what is the secret to that?

Candidate: Sir, I have always been very hard working and I have always enjoyed performing better
than others. Also, my school teachers have been instrumental in shaping up my confidence that I can
go way ahead in life.

Interviewer: Okay. I have heard about your school, CMS. What is so special about it?

Candidate: Sir, there is a lot of focus on providing value based education which instils leadership and
confidence in the students. Also, the school aims at holistic experience including international stints.
(Proudly) It has the record for the largest number of students in a single city..!

Interviewer: That’s great! So, Ankur tell me one thing you remember about being Head Boy of your
school.

Candidate: Sir, of all the activities I remember my active involvement in the International
Mathematics convention which saw our school winning lot of competitions, something that was
unprecedented.

Takeway: Be prepared to speak about each and everything mentioned in your resume.

Interviewer: Okay Ankur. Should we do a short case analysis? If yes, which sector would you like to
work on IT hardware or Defence?

Candidate: Sir, I would prefer IT industry.

Equally clueless, I chose one of them. Usually, such choices are not given by interviewers.

Interviewer: Our client is an IT service provider and they have hired us to cut down on their costs.
What all can be done to improve the situation?

Candidate: Okay, to be clear our client is a major IT service provider and their costs have to be
reduced. Sir, just to get more perspective, is there any reason behind the client’s strategy to reduce
costs. Have the costs increased in the past or the industry has become price competitive.

Interviewer: That’s right, in the recent couple of years, many competitors have increased and the price
points have gone down. The client is looking to bring down costs to maintain its margins.

Candidate: Okay. That is helpful. Major costs in software development include hardware costs,
employee costs, SG&A costs, rent/lease etc. I believe hardware and employee costs form the major
portion of the company cost sheet.

Interviewer: Let us look into the employee costs.

Candidate: Sure sir. I would like to ask if some analysis has been done to assess if the client has
optimum number of employees in the organisation basis the number of projects in pipeline.

Interviewer: The CEO communicated to me that there are 60 projects already in pipeline and they
are falling short of bandwidth to complete them.

Candidate: Interesting, so to summarise the client has a pipeline of projects which it is unable to
take up and it is also hurt by high employee costs. (Thinking aloud)

97
Interviewer: Precisely.

Candidate: Is the company able to deliver projects in time. If no, then there is some issue with the
productivity of the employees.

Interviewer: Good! The client has faced significant delays in its project delivery.

Candidate: Sir, can I assume that manpower utilisation as the metric to evaluate productivity of
companies in the sector? Also, I wanted to know if other competitors in the industry are facing a
similar issue with delay in projects. If it is a client specific problem then by improving the utilisation
cost per project can be controlled and more projects can be completed per year.

Interviewer: No, the industry is in its growth stage and there is no delay of projects. The productivity
of our client is lesser than competitors and our client wants to know how they can improve the
utilisation and churn out more projects annually. Yes, you can use the utilisation matrix to analyse
the productivity.

Candidate: Sure sir. Do we have any information on the current productivity levels of the
organisation?

Interviewer: I would like you to estimate that for me.

Candidate: Sir, I would need data on the # of employees in the organisation and the time required to
complete each project.

Interviewer: Here is the data you need for the analysis.

He showed to me a sheet of paper with the below information.

# of hours per # of hours per # of hours per

project (S1) project (S2) project (S3)

Design 60 70 80

Development 60 80 110

Testing 50 70 70

Cost per hour 100 80 60

Team size 10 20 30

Projects completed in 130 150 90

2014

98
Candidate: Sir, couple of observations here - It appears that S1 is the senior-most class of employees
since they are able to complete the same project in lesser hours. Also, the S1 class of employees
seem to be much more efficient than the S2, S3 class. There is only incremental difference in the
performance in the S2, S3 class of software developers.

Sir, I would like to ask if the employees are specialised in either of Design, Development or Testing.
And the # of hours in the sheet given is the ideal time or the actual time taken by the employees?

Takeaway: HR cases can in involve calculations too…

Interviewer: No, the employees are well versed with each stage of software development and all 60 of
them can take up any task. Each project is allotted to either of S1, S2, S3 class of employee.
Aforementioned gives the ideal time which an average an employee takes to complete a project.

Candidate: Sir can I take a minute to calculate the total capacity of projects that can be completed
by the employees given their performance levels. Based on the actual projects done, we can arrive at
the utilisation level.

Interviewer: Sure, go ahead.

Candidate: Assuming 10 working hours for each day and 250 working days in a year, the total man
hours available is 2500 per employee.

S1 S2 S3

Time for 1 project (hours) 170 230 260

Projects per employee ~15 ~11 ~10

Ideal no of projects 150 220 300

% utilisation (based on completed 90% 70% 30%

projects)

Total cost per hour 1000 1600 1800

Cost per annum(INR) 25 L 40 L 45 L

Overall utilisation ~60%

Candidate: Based on the above calculations, it is clear that the overall utilisation of the company is
hurt by the inexperience and under performance of the S3 class of employees.

Interviewer: So, what would be your suggestion to the company at this stage?

Candidate: I would give 3 recommendations to the company:

Invest in the training of the S3 class of employees to improve their efficiency and reduce the
time taken by S2, S3 employees in completing a project.
Hire better talent through campus recruitments, job portals.

99
 Allocate projects based on the competency of individuals to increase efficiency of the
employees.

Interviewer: There has already been significant investment done in training & development of
employees. What else can we do here? The employees are trained extensively in each aspect of
software development.

Candidate: thinking with a pause…

Candidate: May be the company should switch from a project based model to a functional model
whereas the employees are focussed in a particular stage of software development and develop a
competence over a period of time.

Interviewer: Can you draw an organisational structure for the same?

Candidate: The organisation structure will be as drawn.

Based on initial evaluation and interest, the employees can be ask to involve only in either of Design,
Development or Testing stage. Working on design of multiple projects for the same function would
exponentially improve the learning curve of the S2, S3 employees thus reducing the time in which
they complete their task. Also, the more experienced S1 employees can be utilised in the project
management and they can oversee the effort of the developers involved in design, development and
testing phase of a project. Job enhancement based on experience would be an incentive for
employees to work hard and perform better.

Interviewer: Thanks Ankur. You can wait outside.

Interview 2

Note: This case experience rather than practice should be taken as reference as to how to handle the
situation when you are really grappling with the case

This one was with a Senior Partner in the firm in the practice area of Financial Services.
Interviewer: Good Morning Ankur, take a seat. How has the day been for you so far?

Candidate: Thank you sir! The day has been good so far. This is my second interview of the day and I
think my first interview went well.

Interviewer: Okay. You have been editor to college magazines. Do you also write?

Candidate: Yes, sir I write sometimes however, mostly that is for my own sake. I kind of use it as a
medium to give vent to my thoughts.

100
Interviewer: Good. Ankur, do you use a debit card?

Candidate: Yes sir. I do have a SBI card. I use it quite often.

Interviewer: And do you have other savings bank accounts apart from SBI?

Candidate: Yes, sir I have an account with PNB, however I do not use it that often.
Little did I realise that the case revolved around the above statement of mine.

Interviewer: Our client is a large PSU Bank and is losing out on profitability. We have been hired to solve
the problem for me. They have currently 20 million savings/fixed deposit account.

Takeaway: Take very careful note of each and every data thrown at you.

Candidate: Sir, is this an industry wide phenomenon or only our client’s profitability has declined?

Interviewer: No. Let us just focus on the client only.

Candidate: Sure. So, can I assume that the interest rates and CRR regulations etc. are same for
competitors and there have been no major changes?

Interviewer: Yes, absolutely.

Candidate: Sir, since this is about profitability I would like to first look at the revenues and then the
costs to understand what could be troubling the company.

Interviewer: ok.

Candidate: Sir, give me a moment to lay down the revenue and cost drivers for a bank.

Candidate: (showed him the paper), Sir these are the areas I would like to inspect to assess the
profitability.

Interviewer: (little unsure…) Okay, let’s go ahead with your approach.

Later I realised it was a cookie cutter not at all suitable for the context.

Candidate: Sir, I am trying to understand if the interest income from our investments/loans has
declined or there is a decrease in the brokerage income in the past few years. This might have
affected the company’s bottom line.

101
Interviewer: I don’t think that has been a problem for us. In fact, our loan portfolio has increased
with the launch of the loan advisory portal.

Candidate: Sir, have the overall revenues declined over the past year or it has increased? I
should have asked this first before jumping onto the revenue drivers.

Interviewer: I think our top line has been steady. Look, Ankur I think the case is not really going in
the right direction. Can you rethink about it!

I thought he is just trying to create pressure so wanted to complete the analysis of cost drivers as
well.

Candidate: Sir, should I look into the cost drivers? I might find something there.

Interviewer: (almost uneasy….) Go ahead!

Candidate: Sir, has the default ratio increased, have we written off more debt this year than
previous years?

Interviewer: Look Ankur, I think we have spent a lot of time and we are not really going anywhere.
Would like you to take a deep breath and think of an alternative approach. If it helps let me tell you
that the total money currently deposited lying in the savings bank account of the client is INR 5000
Cr.

Candidate: Okay… Can I take a minute to pause here…..

Though the interviewer was calm and supportive, I guess I was now under a little pressure (okay may
be I was totally clueless and nervous as to what I should do!) I spotted the no of accounts opened
written in the corner of the page and suddenly realised I had not used that information at all.

Candidate: Sir, INR 5000 Cr deposits and 20 million accounts that makes INR 25000 deposit per
person.

Interviewer: (same uneasiness…) Ankur, are you sure of the figure!

Candidate: (checking the math...) Sorry, sir it is 2500 per person. Now that I am looking at this
number, I think I completely went wrong on my approach.

Interviewer: okay! Now that you have realised that can you quickly tell me where we went wrong,
what would be the new approach and what would be your hypothesis. We don’t have much time
left.

Candidate: Sure sir, I think I missed out on the customer perspective totally in the beginning and our
how our services might have affected our old/new customer base. My alternative approach in that
would have been to understand the various customer segments and see if we are losing out on our
customer share either the existing ones or the new ones.

Interviewer: Customers is fine but you still haven’t got it completely. What if I tell you that new
customers are daily opening our account?

Candidate: In that case, as I calculated earlier INR 2500 per month means that they are not saving enough
money in our bank. To further diagnose the problem, I would like to isolate accounts which have been
dormant for more than a year. Some of the possible reasons for this could be:

Poor service as compared to competitors

Low Interest rates

102
 Poor income of a certain set of customers

Alternate investment options for customers

Interviewer: Now we are talking sense. Can you also tell me how dormant accounts could be hurting
the bank?

Candidate: Sir, this would happen in three ways:

This might hurt the liability side of the balance sheet of the bank. Less deposits would require
the bank to look for alternate sources of funds for asset management.

Bank’s liquidity and solvency would also be affected.

The bank would unnecessarily bear the cost of carrying dormant accounts.

Interviewer: Thanks Ankur. You can go now.

I was fairly confident that the interview could not have gone worse. The confident admission of
wrong approach and laying down the alternate one would have been possibly my saving grace
because I was asked for a third interview.

Takeaway: Do not lose temper and never let nervousness come on your face. It is not really
necessary to crack the case, most of us don’t manage that in 20-25 minutes. Important is to keep
your calm, use your common sense and keep looking for hints from the Interviewer. Also, try to think
aloud so that the Interviewer can steer you in the right direction if required.

Interview 3

After waiting for about 10 minutes, I was escorted to meet a Partner in the firm. I was told he was from
IIM Bangalore and had recently made a Partner. Also, I was given a feedback that I need to buckle up on
my quantitative skills and I was always mindful of that during the interview.

Interviewer: Ankur, Good to see you! Without wasting any time let us get to business immediately.
Our client is a pharmaceutical major in and is looking to enter the snow melter liquid chemical
market in US. They need us to estimate the market size and how they should enter the market.

Candidate: Sir, to make sure I have understood the context clearly, our client is a pharmaceutical
company and they are considering expansion into snow melter liquid chemical market in the US. I
am required to estimate the markets size, analyse the current market players and decide whether to
enter or not enter the market.

Interviewer: That’s correct!

Candidate: Sir, if I may inquire any particular reason why they want to enter the market.

Interviewer: They think that there is a large opportunity in the market since the market share is
quite fragmented, however they are not sure how big the opportunity size is.

Candidate: Okay. I would like to first like to take a shot at estimating the market size and then think
of the business opportunity. I would like a moment please to jolt down.

Interviewer: Sure, go ahead and let me know what information you need.

A minute’s pause…

103
Candidate: Sir, I would first understand the market area – regions where there is regular snowfall
and the product is most likely to be used. Areas with scanty snowfall are less likely to use the
product as the weather would self-clear the snow (Demand side estimation). Then, based on the
average snowfall in these locations (thickness * volume) I would estimate the amount of snow that
needs to be thawed. Based on the frequency of usage per year and the amount of liquid needed to
thaw per unit volume of snow, I should be able to estimate the volume of chemical needed in the
market. Please let me know if this approach is correct.

Volume of liquid needed = Area * snowfall amt. (height) * frequency (per annum) * Liquid /unit snow

Interviewer: Okay. How do we reach to an approximate area where it snows heavily?

Candidate: Well I am aware of approximate area of India and I would assume that USA is roughly 3-4
times our country’s size. Further I would need a weather report indicating areas with above average
rainfall.

Interviewer: So, can you calculate the area for me.

I knew it was coming!

Candidate: Sir, assuming India is a double triangle shaped body,

Area = 2* (1/2*base*height).

Base = East to west length = 2500 km

Length = (North *South length)/2 = 1200 km

Area of India = 3,000,000 km2

Area of US = 10, 000,000 km2

Sir, do we have the reports or should I assume a fraction of the area would be our target market?

Takeaway: Due to paucity of information, you may have to take assumptions, however before
assuming make it clear you know the real source of data. In some cases, interviewers do carry
necessary reports and date.

Interviewer: Assume 70% area is under consideration. The snow is thawed 20 times in a region on an
average, average rainfall is 100 cm and per unit (metre cube) snow 10 mL of liquid is required. Can
you quickly estimate the volume needed every year?

Candidate: Sure sir.

=7000000*1000*1000*1*20*0.01

=7000 billion *20 * 0.01 litres

= 1400 billion litres

104
Sir, what is the cost per litre of this liquid.

Interviewer: 6$ per litre.

Candidate: Okay, that makes the overall industry roughly 10$ billion in size.

Interviewer: You sure, the industry size is this big. Check for the zeroes.

Candidate: (Checking the calc. for moment) Yes, sir I think I am right.

Interviewer asking you to recheck your calculations can be either a check of your confidence or you
might have actually fluked. In my case, I knew he was checking my confidence.

Interviewer: So, Ankur what is your understanding should our client enter into the market or not?

Candidate: Sir, I would like to understand the current distribution of players. Who are the major
players and what is the industry growth rate?

Interviewer: The industry has 8-10 players currently and none of them have a share of more than
8%. There is not much happening in the industry, margins have also saturated.

Candidate: Okay. Interesting! I am trying to understand that given a fragmented industry, our client
might want to consolidate its position and emerge as the market leader. However, I am bound to
think otherwise given the industry has reached its maturity.

Interviewer: That is correct.

Candidate: Sir, I think I need to take a pause to assess if I have analysed the complete situation.

Interviewer: Sure!

Takeaway: Be prepared to apply frameworks in between of the case. In this situation, I had talked
about the industry and the companies but forgot to ask about the Product because I did not propose
any framework while discussing.

A possible structure to think about market entry could be as follows:

Candidate: Sir, I am trying to think why the company wants to enter the industry. Is the product that
they are offering any different?

105
Interviewer: There you are, so our client has come up with a patented solution in an independent
research which thaws snow using lesser amount and this would bring down the cost of thawing. So,
given the scenario, how should the client enter the market?

Candidate: The client could either enter independently, acquire small sized players in the market, or
do a joint venture with one of the major competitors. I would suggest given the inexperience of the
client and the Industry and the strong R&D support, it would be better if the client goes into a Joint
Venture with a couple of the existing local players using their B2B local distribution network and
building strong product capabilities through its R&D focus.

Interviewer: Great! Ankur. That will be all. You can wait outside.

_________________________________________________________________________

Kshitij Chaudhary
Interview 1:

I had heard that the interviewers generally start with some chit chat to reduce the candidate’s stress
level. This is generally true but in my case, the interviewer decided to directly start with a case. So
one should be mentally prepared for this. The case was a profitability case for a hotel franchisor.

Interviewer: So Kshitij, I have gone through your CV. Let’s assume we know each other and directly
get started with the case.

Candidate: Sure. (It was a little unnerving to not get a chance to introduce myself)

Interviewer: The client is the CEO of a hotel franchisor with revenues close to $600 mn. They are
seeing declining revenues. The client wants us to find out why the revenues are falling and what can
be done to revert this.

Candidate: (I confirmed the problem statement and then went on to get some information to
understand the context better). I would like to ask a couple of questions before I begin to solve the
case to understand the client and the context.

Interviewer: Sure Kshitij.

Candidate: Is the client the owner of a hotel who has taken a franchisee or is he the franchisor?

Interviewer: He is the franchisor.

Candidate: Where is the client located? And what kind of hotel segments are we looking at? I mean
Budget hotels, 5 star hotels, 4 star etc.

Interviewer: The client is located in the USA and the franchise deals in budget hotels and the lower
end of the spectrum at that.

Candidate: Thank you. Since when has the client been facing declining revenues?

Interviewer: 2-3 years.

Candidate: I would like to take a couple of minutes to structure my thoughts

Interviewer: Sure Kshitij. Take your time

106
Candidate: (I thought for a couple of minutes and then came up with a simple structure). So the
revenues for a franchisor are a function of Average Revenue earned from a franchisee and the
number of hotels it has signed a franchisee deal with.

(I drew the above structure and showed it to the interviewee).

Interviewer: Ok

Candidate: The revenues can decline if the average revenue per franchisee falls or if the number of
franchisees signed fall.

Interviewer: That sounds right

Candidate: So have we seen a decline in Avg. Revenue per franchisee?

Interviewer: No

Candidate: So no. of franchises signed up with us must have fallen. Have we seen that happening?

Interviewer: Yes. Many of our hotel partners have decided to terminate the contract with us.

Candidate: Ok. So, now this can again happen due to three reasons. Either the market itself is not
doing well. Or the hotel franchisees might be going independent. Or they might be switching to
competitors.

Interviewer: We do see hotels moving to a competitor franchisor. What might be some of the
reasons?

Candidate : The hotels are typically looking for more profits. They would like to take the franchisee
of a chain which helps them get more profits.

Interviewer: That is right. So hotels have been complaining that they can earn 10$ per room more if
they tie up with a competitor.

Candidate: Ok. Can I take a couple of minutes to think.

So revenue generated by the hotel is a function of the Avg. Price of the room, no. of rooms the hotel
has, occupancy levels, number of days the hotel operates in a year and % revenue shared with the
franchisor. No. of rooms and No. of days are not dependent of the franchisor that the hotel has
signed up with. So, somehow the competitor must be able to give the hotels a better deal at Avg.
Price and occupancy or they might be giving a better revenue sharing deal.

Interviewer: Good. Average Price and occupancy are related factors as you might have guessed.

If Price is increased then occupancy will fall.

(After this there was a discussion on how the franchisor helps the hotels by training the managers on
how to handle different booking portals such as Makemytrip. A more skilled manager may be able to
go for better dynamic pricing on these portals leading to higher profits. So the problem was that the
franchisor had a centralized training system for hotel managers. As a result the hotel managers
missed a lot of training sessions as it was a hassle to travel far. The solution is to go for a
decentralized training system).

Above are the offerings that a franchisor offers a hotel. Training was the issue in this case.

107
Interviewer: So let us do a simple guess estimate on this case. A training session costs $200,000. In a
centralized training system, 1 trainer can train 200 hotel managers in a session while in a decentralized
training system, a trainer can train 50 hotel managers. Which one would be more profitable for the
franchisor given that there are 5000 hotel partners with 100 rooms each?

Candidate:

Centralized training system: Cost is 1/200 * 200000 * 5000 = $5 mn

Decentralized training system: Cost is 1/50 * 200000 * 5000 = $ 20 mn but there will be additional
revenue of 10% * 10$ =$1 per room per day (mentioned above that training can increase revenue
for hotels by 10$ per room per day. 10% of this is shared with the franchisor)

Additional revenue: $1 * 5000 * 100 * 300 (Assuming that a room is occupied on 300 days in a year
on average) = $ 150 mn. Clearly, decentralized training system is more beneficial.

Interviewer: Good. The numbers are all cooked up but essentially we did a very similar calculation to
recommend the decentralized training system to the client. Now suppose that you want to present a
summary of your work today to the CEO of the client in 2 minutes. Can you take a shot?

Candidate: (I summarized the case going through the main points and assumptions)

(It was a pretty long interview, about 45 minutes. In summary, I was tested on structure, ability to
handle pressure, quant skills and communication skills in just one interview)

__________________________________________________________________________________

Vishwas Sharma
Interviewer: Hi Vishwas, how are you?

Candidate: I’m good. Thank you sir.

Interviewer: Let’s start with the case, shall we?

Candidate: Sure

Interviewer: Ok, so our client is a mining firm in South Africa, who are looking to improve their
profits. Simple enough, right?

Candidate: Got it. But I would like to ask a few questions.

Interviewer: Go ahead.

Candidate: Since I am unaware of the general background of this market and the firm. Could you
please tell me more on the market trends, market positions of various players etc.?

Interviewer: Sure. So the market is currently stagnant with a mere growth of ~1% YOY. There are
many players in the market but no market leader. Each player has 7%-15% market share overall.

108
Candidate: Ok. Next I would like to have more information on our operations. What metal is it that
we mine?

Interviewer: Assume it’s Mica.

Candidate: Ok. Next I wish to know whether we own the mines or are we an intermediate player in the
value chain. Could you please let me know more about what processes are we involved in?

Interviewer: Good question. So we own the mines ourselves. There are numerous processes
involved in the business, which are as follows in this order: Drilling, extraction, purification, trucking,
transportation and selling.

Candidate: Got it. May I ask if it is a B2B business model where we sell the extracted ores to other
firms, or directly to customers?

Interviewer: Why do you ask?

Candidate: I ask because there may be some revenue side levers such as pricing, and cost side levers
such as marketing etc. which may be explored.

Interviewer: I think we can safely ignore the selling efforts as a part of this case.

<This was a cue for me that the opportunity lies somewhere within the operations efficiency and
cost structure of the firm>

Candidate: Please give me a few mins to structure my thoughts.

<I took a few minutes. Meanwhile the interviewer went out and came back with a cup of coffee. By
that time I had drawn the typical cost structure and diagram of the value chain>

Interviewer: So Vishwas, where are we?

Candidate: Yes. So I would like to begin by analysing costs incurred in the value chain. I think that the
operations efficiencies should be looked at first. There may be some fixed costs such as machinery,
administrative costs, salaries, as well as some variable costs such as the manufacturing costs
themselves like electricity, fuel, transportation, cleanup costs etc. Do you want me to look more
deeply into these?

Interviewer: Ummm… That may be one way but let’s start by analysing the value chain itself.

Candidate: Sure. Let me start with drilling and extraction. Are we using the most efficient processes
designed to reduce costs?

Interviewer: Yes we are. Actually all of our processes are up-to-date with respect to technology.

Candidate: Ok. So then in order to enhance profits, is it possible to increase the extracted volumes
by increasing the workforce or run-time for the mill?

Interviewer: Good point but no. Carry on.

Candidate: Ok. Next we have purification. Since you mentioned the technology is not an issue, is it
fair to assume that purification processes will also be robust enough?

Interviewer: Ok. You can assume that.

109
Candidate: Alright. Next we come to the transportation. I would like to know how the extracted ore
transported to the purification facilities. Is it through trucks? Also, in what form is it transported?

Interviewer: Yes. We used trucks. Regarding the form, it is just like any other rock or pebble form

Candidate: Ok. Next I would like to question the no. of trucks and their run-time frequency. Do we
own these trucks as well? Or are they acquired on a lease basis?

Interviewer: Good question. So we have leased these trucks from a local contractor, on a fixed
contract basis.

Candidate: Ok. Does it mean that he provides a fixed number of trucks per day etc.? Or it’s a flexible
limit?

Interviewer: The contractor provides his trucks to many other players in the market. Terms of the
contract are the same for all.

Candidate: Ok. Then I assume it would be difficult to negotiate any different contracts. Next,
regarding their run-time frequency, have we seen inventory pile-ups at extraction zones, because of
delays in transportation?

Interviewer: Yes, that has been the case.

<That was the catch of this case>

Candidate: Ok. In that case, I believe that removing the inefficiencies in transportation due to over-
reliance on the services of this external contractor can help us in generating more profits. I would like to
advise the firm to either negotiate with a different contractor or buy their own trucks. Buying own trucks
would be advisable in the longer run, to remove external dependencies.

Interviewer: Good. Any other suggestions?

Candidate: The firm may also look to revise the terms of contract to increase the no. of available
trucks to get a higher run-time frequency, though it may be a difficult proposition.

Interviewer: Good. That would be all, thank You. All the best.

Candidate: Thank You.

________________________________________________________________

GEP

Meenakshi Singh
What is the potential market size for cab services in Bangalore?

Sir, I would like to approach this problem by dividing the customers into two broad categories:

Business Travellers: Regularly use cabs for commuting to office

Leisure Travellers: Book cabs for travelling to malls, restaurants hospitals (basically anywhere
other than office)

110
The demand of cabs for the former stays relatively stable over a workweek, whereas, it is variable for
the latter category.

Business Travellers:
From my limited knowledge of Bangalore, I would like to divide it into 5 major business districts:
Electronic City, Outer Ring Road, (BTM, JP Nagar, Jayanagar), Indra Nagar, Kormangala. Assuming the
average no. of organizations in each of these areas is

Total Area of Bangalore 750 km2 (approx.)

Assumption The 5 biz. dist. cover half of Bangalore’s area

Average Area per biz. district 750/2*5 = 75 km2

Assumption 15 organizations per biz. district

Average Area per Organization 5 km2

Population Density Interviewer gave me some no. (X ppl. per km2)

Assumption 40% of the office goers commute by cabs

No. of business travellers in Bangalore 0.04*5*X

Assumption Every traveller books an individual cab

No. of cabs used for office travel Same as no. of business travellers in Bangalore

The interviewer stopped me from continuing with the Leisure Traveller category. He later explained
that he was expecting the answer to be in terms of the average no. of trips taken by the driver per
day however, this approach brought in a fresh perspective.

NOTE: The panel is not concerned with the accuracy of the figures (The same is reflected very
well from my intermediate figures☺): They want to understand if a candidate can break a bigger
problem into smaller no. of structured problems. The logical flow of thought and a structured break-
up of the problem is what they look in a candidate. Ensure that you confirm your assumptions with
the interviewer, as and when you make them.

_________________________________________________________________________

MCKINSEY & COMPANY

Issac Jojy
Interviewer: A bank is facing reduced customer satisfaction. Can you please tell me what could be
the possible reasons?

Candidate: Is this a retail bank or a non-retail bank?

Interviewer: Retail Bank

111
Candidate: Can you please tell me how customer satisfaction is measured?
(Thinking – Always quantify the problem first. Do not jump into the solution)

Interviewer: We have been receiving a lot of complains in the customer feedback register placed
near the Bank ATM

Candidate: Can I reduce the problem to customer’s journey to ATM and out? Are you ok with that
approach?

(Thinking – Always get the buy-in from the interview about your approach)

Interviewer: Yes that is ok.

Candidate: Can I take a couple of minutes to think?

Interviewer: Sure

Candidate: So these are the possible reasons I think could cause the customer to complain. (MECE)
Are there any other elements to be considered?

(Get Interviewer buying again)

External Internal

Car Parking ATM Process

- ATM location very congested - Complicated process
- Bad User Interface

Outside Ambience Ambience

-Dirty - AC not working
-Noisy - Smelly

Security Guard
- Behavior

Interviewer: No, this looks fine.

Candidate: So have four options. Do the customer complains show any trends in relation to these?

Interviewer: You can exclude the external parameters. I just wanted to see if you cover all options.

Candidate: Ok. Now I am going to proceed by restricting the scope to internal parameters only. Is
that ok? (Create a connection to solve the case collaboratively)

Interviewer: Yes

112
Candidate: Do we have any data to show problem with any internal factor?
(Do not ask about particular aspect. First ask the data availability) Interviewer:
Ambience is not an issue.

Candidate: Then it looks like an issue with the ATM process. Can I drill down further on that?

Interviewer: Ok

Candidate: I need a minute to think please.

If I was the customer these are the 3 main steps I follow:

Insert ATM Card

Make transaction
Get cash

Is there any issue in any of them?

Interviewer: Yes getting cash is a problem.

Candidate: So cash availability should be the issue. This could be because of no cash or
denominations.

Interviewer: Correct. A lot of times cash is not available and customers get an error. Give me some
recommendations to solve this issue

Candidate: Can I understand what the current system in place is?

(Whenever you are asked for recommendations ask for current system in place to avoid repetition of
solutions that might already be there)

Interviewer: The bank does weekly data analysis, based on which vendor replenishes the cash twice
a week.

Candidate: Is the vendor putting in cash according to contact terms?

Interviewer: No he is not. He sometimes misses replenishing the cash.

Candidate: The following are the recommendations:

Get a new vendor

Multiple Vendors so you have backups
Ensure current system enforced by imposing penalty based contract

Do you want me to think on other lines?

Interviewer: No these recommendations sound good. Thank you.

_________________________________________________________________________

Ishita Kayastha
Interview 1

The first interview was with Noshir Kaka, the MD of McKinsey India, over a Skype call. It started off
with him asking me to introduce myself. This went on for a good 5-7 minutes.

113
Interviewer: Let’s give you a case outside your comfort zone, something you haven’t experienced at
all?

Candidate: Sure! I’m always up for a challenge.

Interviewer: There are 3 large companies in the IT space – say Cognizant, Infosys and Igate with
annual turnovers of $8.5 bn, $6.5 bn and $2 bn respectively. They service large banks for technology
systems. Their sales productivity figures are $16 mn, $ 8-10 mn, and $6-8 mn. What is causing this
difference in sales productivity? Why is one company able to get twice as much?

Candidate: Firstly, how is sales productivity calculated? Per person or per hour of work?

Interviewer: Sales Productivity = Revenue/ Salesperson

Candidate: Okay. Since I have no prior knowledge about this sector, I would like to know a little
more about the functioning and revenue models of these firms.

This conversation went on for a while, and I asked him basic questions about IT services. Realizing that
this would take a little time, he decided to change the case question. I kept remained calm.

Interviewer: What sector would you be prefer?

Candidate: Anything that I have been exposed to would be fine – Retail, Hospitality, Tourism

Interviewer: Okay, let’s pick a retail case.

(At this point, someone walked in to the room to tell us that time was up. The interviewer asked for
5 more minutes)

Interviewer: Zara has been experiencing a 2 – 5% loss of sales in India over the last year. What could
be the possible reasons? You have 2 minutes.

Candidate: I can think of 3 possible reasons, from the time of manufacturing to the time of purchase
by the customer. First - customization of products for the Indian consumer. They need to have the
right styles and colours, that will appeal to the Indian market. The fit of the garment and sizes need
to be tailored as per Indian requirements. Second – Availability of products. This will depend on the
method of procurement, i.e. whether products are manufactured abroad and shipped to India, or
manufactured in India and distributed within the country. Third - management at Zara stores. There
should be uniformity across the country. Bad management in a particular city or circle could be the
reason for drop in overall sales.

Interview 2

The second interview started off with brief pleasantries, and chit-chat about how the first round
went, after which we started off with the case.

Interviewer: There is a Telecom company in the Philippines, in South East Asia. It has done well in
the past, growing at a rate of 5-10%. However, it has stagnated in the last 1-2 years.

Candidate : Firstly, is it a Telecom Infrastructure company or Service Provider? And is this the
company’s primary source of revenue?

Interviewer: Service Provider. Yes, it is the core business.

114
Candidate: I would like to break this down into external and internal factors. External factors would
cover the overall environment of the Telecom industry in Philippines, while internal factors are more
specific to the company, such as revenue streams, pricing, and customer segments.

Interviewer: Okay, go on.

Candidate: I would like to know if other competitors are experiencing the same problems. If so, it
could be an industry wide-problem, which can be attributed to external factors.

Interviewer: Yes. The market has declined. What could be the reason for this?

Candidate: I would like to explore this in the following aspect:

Demand Supply

Changes in macroeconomic Increase in the number

environment leading to decrease of competitors
in purchasing power Government
Sudden shift in consumer regulations imposing
demographics – lesser people restrictions on service
using telephone services Substitute services
entering the market

Interviewer: New competitors have entered the market. The government has banned promotions.
There has also been a trend towards mobiles, with fixed lines decreasing.

Candidate: Okay, and are these competitors local or international companies?

Interviewer: Local.

Candidate: I would like to look along the following lines:

Product – Do new competitors offer better network coverage, more packages and VAS
Service – Better customer service? More payment options?

Pricing – Are they priced lower?

Interviewer: The new entrants are offering services at a 20% discount.

Candidate: That would force the other companies to lower their price, leading to Price Wars. As a
result of this, the industry is declining. Our client is experiencing stagnation due to declining market
share and revenues due to the low prices.

Interviewer: Good. How can they now improve their position?

Candidate: With such low prices, competing on prices is difficult. Thus, the company should aim to
differentiate itself.

Provide incentives to customers through long-term contracts

Tie-up with companies like Apple (phones sold on discounted prices only on specific
network)

115
 Acquire a smaller telecom company with different reach
Increase Value Added Services, Online features.

_________________________________________________
_______________ Karthik Krishna
<Opening chat for a few minutes - we got on quite well and it helped. If you have the right rapport
and attitude interviewers are happy to help you along! ☺ >

Interviewer: We are short on time, so let us jump into the case. There is a public sector bank, which
is facing service issues in its branches. What will you do?

Candidate: What sort of complaints is the bank facing?

Interviewer: Long waiting time at the branches

Candidate: Are the number of customers of the bank comparable to other similar sized banks?

Interviewer: Yes customer size is comparable but service is bad.

Candidate: (Thinking that I need some more context) Can I understand the bank location and the
customer profile?

Interviewer: It is a typical branch in a city. Assume that the customer profile at a branch is similar for
all banks.

Candidate: (Thought I had enough to visualize the problem, so done with opening questions)

Could I have a minute to think about it? (Thinking)

I have some possible reasons that could lead to bad customer service:

Bad processes as compared to other banks

Poor computer systems or technology
Poorly trained staff
Complicated branch layout

Interviewer: The reasons you have given are good but none of these is the problem as these are all
standard in the banking industry

Candidate: OK … (Realized that I had obviously not understood the problem yet)... I want to take a
step back. What are the customers complaining about?

Interviewer: (Looking more attentive) that it takes them a long time to get anything done at the
branch.

Candidate: (He just repeated the same thing from earlier – from this and non-verbal cue I got the
sense that I should probe better) Is it the time required at the teller window which is long?

Interviewer: No.

Candidate: So it is the footfall that is higher as compared to the other banks!

Interviewer: (Smiling) Yes. Why do you think that is?

116
(Was thinking that I could have structured this more eloquently into the previous question itself.

Total Wait Time = Time per customer X No. of customers, or something like that.

“Damn It!”)

Candidate: (thinking hard…silently!)

<While writing this now I realize that I choked because I wasted time self-evaluating during the
interview.>

Interviewer: (Prompting me) What are the different ways banks serve customers?

Candidate: Oh… Maybe the other services are not so good so people are forced to visit the branch.
For example, online banking and phone services – are they comparable to other banks?

Interviewer: No, not many customers use the online services. Why do you think that is happening?

Candidate: Maybe it’s a technology-related issue, or not enough advertising, or the processes are
too cumbersome?

Interviewer: Let us look at the technology, how will you solve that? Why do you think people are not
using the online platform?

Candidate: Maybe it’s not user-friendly?

Interviewer: That can be fixed, what could be a more fundamental reason? … Do you use online
banking?

Candidate: Yes.

Interviewer: Do your parents use internet banking?

Candidate: Hardly. (Could not figure out where we were going with this…beginning to panic)

Interviewer: Do your parents use Flipkart?

Candidate: Yes ... but Flipkart started with cash on delivery and eventually built trust. … (I was
wondering whether he fed this to me! Thank you, kind Sir. Meanwhile, interviewer is looking at me
like “So…?”) So, here the bank’s customers are yet to trust the security of the online services. The
bank will need to strengthen security measures and ensure that the customers are aware of its
online services and that they are secure.

Interviewer: (Big smile) OK. We are out of time. Can you quickly synthesize our discussion?

Candidate: A public sector bank is providing poor customer service because too many customers are
visiting its branches in person. The main reason for this is that their online platform is not being used
by their customers as they do not perceive it to be secure. Therefore, there is a need to strengthen
and communicate the safety of their online platform.
<Didn’t think I synthesized it too well. Came out wondering whether I botched the whole thing up.
But it was slightly rushed was it not? And the interviewer was smiling a lot at the end, so maybe I did
OK?

This is typical mental chatter going on at this point. It never helps! ☺

_______________________________________________________________
__________________

117
Mohit Aggarwal
Interview 1

Interviewer: Tell me about yourself in not more than 2 sentences

Candidate: After graduating from IIT Delhi, I worked with Citigroup Markets in Mumbai and London
for three years. I have been actively involved in social entrepreneurship in the education sector for
the last 7 years and would like to go back to social entrepreneurship after a couple of years’
experience in consulting.

Interviewer – If I look at your resume, it looks like you are lying!

Candidate: What????

Interviewer: It nowhere says you have worked in London!

Candidate: Can I please take a look?

This is not my resume! This is the other Mohit Agarwala from our batch!

(All sorts of questions were flashing in my mind. Did they shortlist the other Mohit? Am I wasting my slot
1 here? In the meantime the interviewer figured out that they somehow got the wrong resume and
indeed, I was the one they had shortlisted. He tried to calm me for a couple of minutes after this fiasco.
The point is irrespective of whatever happens don’t lose your calmness!)

Interviewer: Shall we start the case? It is a very simple case.

Candidate: Sure

Interviewer: My client is a telco player in Middle East and the profits have been declining for the last
two years.

Candidate: Just to ensure that I got the problem, we are looking for the reasons for decline in profits
of our Middle East Telco client.

Interviewer: Yes

Candidate: Before starting the case, I would like to get some more information about the market
and the player. I will first seek information for the external environment and then go to internal
environment.

Interviewer: Fair enough. Go ahead

Candidate: How is the overall market doing? How has the trend been over the years for the industry
overall?

Interviewer: The demand has continued to rise at a steady rate. The market seems good.

Candidate: Is the market very fragmented or concentrated? Who are our competitors and how are
they doing?

Interviewer: There are quite a few players in the market. In general all the players have taken a hit in
the last few cycles.

118
Candidate: Ok! So, the market demand is overall good and still the players are losing profits. Is there
any particular segment in which telco players are losing money – calls, internet, VOIP etc.?

Interviewer: No, they are losing money in all the segments.

Candidate: Ok! So almost everyone in the market is losing money in telco business though the
demand is not decreasing.

(Repeating the statements helped the interviewer understand my line of thought and gave me time
to think of the next step)

Candidate: There can be two plausible reasons 1) Prices are in general decreasing and 2) The costs
are increasing, ceteris paribus.

Interviewer: Indeed the prices seems to be decreasing. What can be the reasons for this?

Candidate: I will list down a couple of points and then we can go into details of any of those. Can I
take a couple of seconds to list down the points?

Interviewer: Sounds good.

Took 30 seconds break

Candidate: 1. Number of customers are same but people are switching to cheaper products like
VOIP, internet rather than calls

Competition in the industry is increasing

There is a price war going on in the industry

(Cut- in between by the interviewer)
Interviewer: Bang on!

OK, Can you elaborate a bit on point 2 and 3?

Candidate: 1) Given that you mentioned there are quite a few players in the market, most of them
would be trying to undercut each other.

The industry seems lucrative in general, because of which a lot of new players are entering the
market.
There have been changes in Government regulations because of which barriers to entry have
reduced.

Interviewer: Good job. Thank you

Interview 2

Interviewer: (Looking at my resume) All good Mohit?

Candidate: Yeah. By the way this is not my resume. Here is the correct copy.

Interviewer: This is the one we shortlisted. Don’t know how did this happen. Apologies

Candidate: No problem

119
Interviewer: I don’t like to get directly into a case, but given the paucity of time do you mind doing a
case? Actually, it is not a case. I am meeting a CEO day after tomorrow and would just like to have
your inputs for my meeting.

Candidate: Sounds interesting.

Interviewer: I am meeting a CEO of a big FMCG company. Everything is good, apart from the fact that the
CEO is taking a lot of time in decision making. I have to advise him on what should he do.

Candidate: So, the company is doing well financially. The right decision do get taken, but the
decision making process takes a lot of time. Is that what is happening?

Interviewer: Yeah, the company is financially doing well. The problem is with the CEO. The overall
decision making process is fine.

Candidate: OK! As the problem looks quite open-ended, can I ask you a couple of question to get
more info about the case?

Interviewer: Shoot

Candidate: Is the problem with all the decisions the CEO makes – including the ones he decides on
his own and those that are made by his subordinates, which only requires a green signal from him?

Interviewer: Almost everything.

Candidate: (Not sure how to start and trying to take time) So the decision making process is fine and
the CEO is a problem. Can you tell me a bit about the CEO – his education background, his past
experiences, how is he as a person?

Interviewer: Education background is irrelevant. In term of work, he has been in FMCG industry for
the past 34years and know in and out of the industry. He is very highly respected in the industry and
has joined our client a year back.

Candidate: Cool. So has his performance been like this even before or just after joining our firm?

Interviewer: He was really good in the old firm. He takes a lot of time in this firm. Give me five
reasons for this.

Candidate: 1. He is not yet accustomed to the systems and processes of the firm

Cultural mismatch 3. He wants to live upto his past record and is being over-cautious.
Interviewer: Lets discuss more on points 3 and then 2.

Candidate: Ok, for point 3) He doesn’t want to take any wrong decision and thus wants to double
check each and every thing he and his subordinate are doing – someone like Bezos.

Interviewer: and point 2

Candidate: I will list a couple of points for this 1) Atmosphere: Very fast moving vs laidback culture

Organisation structure: Highly mechanistic vs organic

Trust: There was very strong trust culture in his previous organization. May be in the current
organization there are norm like that every decision needs to be passed by a senior or something
like that

120
 Coordination: Lack of co-ordination between different departments.

Failures may not be taken very negatively in the previous organization – something like Google

_________________________________________________________________________________

Swapnika Nag

Interview 1

[The interview was supposed to be a video conf., but due to connectivity issues happened on a call]

Interviewer: Hi Swapnika, I’m Kshitij – a partner with the McKinsey Gurgaon Office.

Candidate: Hi Kshitij

Interviewer: So, have you had any interviews before this?

Candidate: No, it’s the first interview of the day.

Interviewer: Good. Tell me a little about yourself.

[Talked a little about my background – college, work-ex etc. He was quite interested in the pharma
consulting experience in ZS– hence the pharma case.]

Interviewer: So Swapnika, let’s strat with the case. Say a new player wants to enter the US pharma
market – how should the company proceed with the same?

Candidate: Understood. Do you mind if I take a few minutes to jot down some thoughts?

Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: I solve all my market entry cases in the following way :

Understand the objective of our entry – geographical expansion?, profitability?

Divide the structure into - Should we do it ? & How should we do it?. The first is to understand if
the market is attractive & the next is the implementation strategy

Should I do it – This is further subdivided into - Attractiveness, Expected Returns,

Feasibility/Risks, Synergies

Attractiveness – Understand Customer segments (size of segments, customer trends etc),

Frequency & Volume (durable/non-durable good?), Influence factors (affordability,
awareness, pre-requisites etc)
Expected Returns – Would the product be profitable?
Feasibility/ Risks – Further divided into Internal, & External.

Internal - Impact on current products (cannibalising?), Manufacturing capacity (is there

enough to handle new markets?), Finance (are we funded properly?), Technology (if tech
heavy, do we have the expertise?)

121
 External – Market (are there any entry barriers?, what is growth, size & life cycle of the
market?), Competition (how heavy is competition?, how is their product different? etc),
Substitues/Complements (does our product have any substitutes/complements), PESTLE
(Political, Economic, Social, Tech, Legal & Environmental issues if any)
Synergies - Are there any synergies with my existing markets, distribution or products that
can be exploited?

How Should I do it – Address risks, Exploit synergies, Entry Strategy (Quite extensive again –
wasn’t discussed in the case)]

Candidate: Kshitij, is the company still gauging the attractiveness for entry, or has it decided on
entry & is looking for an implementation strategy?

Interviewer: Let’s say it’s still gauging the attractiveness. Can you take me through the structure you
have in mind?

Candidate: Sure, this is how I’d go about it [took him through all the steps of the “Should we do it?”
part, highlighted below are the points he really liked]

(While discussing customer segments) For an organized market like US, the customers for a
pharma company are doctors, & not the patients directly. And a doctor’s prescriptions are heavily
influenced by the insurance companies. Insurance companies cover the cost of some dugs fully,
some partially & don’t cover the cost of a few. So it is essential that the tie ups with insurance
companies be strong for the drug to take off

(While discussing the L of PESTLE) Another important feature of US pharma markets are the price
caps on certain drugs. If the client’s drug falls in the category, then the profitability could take a hit.
Have to keep this in mind.

Interviewer: Thanks Swapnika, you did well. Candidate: Thanks Kshitij, hope you have a good
day. [P.S - Not all parts of a structure are relevant to all cases. Use your judgement for the
same]
_____________________________________________________________________________

122
 ROLAND BERGER

Sumedh Vidwans
Interviewer: Our client is an airline who is making a decision on whether to introduce paid in-flight
Wi-Fi or not. How would you go about making this decision for the airline?

Candidate: Ok, so the answer will depend upon different factors: country in which the airline
operates, domestic or international operations, low-cost and full-service. Shall I make assumptions
and move forward?

Interviewer: No, you ask me questions and I will tell you the required information

Candidate: Ok. Is this a low cost airline or a full service airline?

Interviewer: Umm, this airline is still in the planning phase, they could go either way.

Candidate: Ok, do we know if they will be based in which country and will they be domestic of
international?

Interviewer: Yes, they will be based in India and they will be running domestic flights only.

Candidate: Ok, are they going to be focused on metro cities or smaller cities?

Interviewer: Mixture of both.

Candidate: What will be speed of the Wi-Fi and will there be any download limit?

Interviewer: As fast as your home internet, no download limit.

Candidate: Will it be based on satellite or based on a carrier (Vodafone / Airtel) or some other
technology?

Interviewer: It is not decided yet.

Candidate: Okay. Can you give me a minute?

Interviewer: Sure

(After a slight pause)

Interviewer: Remember it is about paid Wi-Fi

(This was the interviewer giving hint to me. I was focusing on Wi-Fi not so much on the paid part).
Candidate: Okay, how much will be the per hour charge?

Interviewer: Okay, we have some data for this, we know it will charge 100,000 INR per hour for this
system to run.

Candidate: Okay, thanks for giving me the variable cost. What about fixed cost of the equipment and
hardware to be given?

123
Interviewer: Don’t worry about fixed cost

Candidate: Ok. Can I assume that the number of seats on the plane are about 180 as is the case of
most Indian carriers – 30 rows x 6 seats?

Interviewer: Yes.

Candidate: Ok, then even if we consider a best case scenario of all seats being filled and all
passengers decide to avail the service, then the cost per passenger per hour will be almost Rs. 520.

Interviewer: Ok, what is your conclusion based on this number then?

Candidate: I think the cost is prohibitively expensive. Most of India domestic flights are about 2
hours. Few are about 2.5 hours. I think there is a very small segment of people who will feel the
need to check their email in that 2.5 hours. Most people will be ok with using their mobile data
packs before and after the flight. Also, the cost of Rs. 520 is assuming a best case scenario. In a more
realistic scenario, the cost will increase even more.

Interviewer: So, in what scenarios will such a system likely succeed?

Candidate: I think on longer duration flights, say 6 hours or more, more people will likely avail such a
service. Also, the type of planes used for such long flights are also bigger and hence cost will also
reduce per passenger.

Interviewer: Okay thanks, you can go have your second round interview now.

_________________________________________________________________________________

STRATEGY&

Utkarsh Rustogi
Case 1:

Interviewer: (breaking some ice) How have you been since morning? How many interviews have you
faced till now? How was your first interview?

Candidate: It has been all pleasant. Hope this one goes well too.

Interviewer: Let’s start with your case for today. Let's say we have to set up a new airport in
Bangalore. What is the estimated number of parking spots that would be required?

Candidate: Looking at the current space availability in the city, I think the new airport would be
located outside the city and it would take about 1 hour to reach the airport from the city. Also,
assuming that the airport is of the same size of the existing airport, it would be handling about 350
flights in a day. Are these assumptions correct?

Interviewer: Yes, please continue.

124
Candidate: With 350 flights per day and about 160 passengers per flight, the airport will serve about
56,000 passengers per day. Among these 56,000 passengers, I would assume 70% of the passengers
to require taxi services, 20% passengers to have their friends and families drop them off and the
remaining 10% passengers to be travelling on a day trip to keep their cars in the parking. Also, I
would assume that the flight arrival and departure are uniformly distributed.

Interviewer: Looks ok. Go on.

Candidate: First I would like to estimate the parking requirement from taxis. 70% of 56,000 is about
39,000 people which translates to about 1600 passengers per hour. Let's assume that out of these
1600 passengers, about 600 people will share a cab with 2 people per cab, 150 people with 3 people
per cab and the remaining 850 people with single person per cab. This takes the total cab
requirement to 1200 cabs per hour. Day trip passengers would account for another 230-250 cars.
Hence, total parking required would be for about 1500 cars.

Interviewer: Sounds good. Let’s stop here.

Case 2

Interviewer: For every student that gets placed, IIMB charges a price and on differential basis. How
are the prices decided?

Candidate: Well, the institute provides a lot of services to companies during the placement time.

It provides for rooms and infrastructure, basic necessities such as tables, chairs, water bottles etc.

It also takes care of refreshment needs of the recruiters.

Interviewer: Do you know how much the institute charges for every student placed?

Candidate: it's about 1 lakh per student selected on Day 0.

Interviewer: Do you think that amount is justified over a set of chairs, tables, rooms and
refreshments?

Candidate: No sir, but the institute must also look at how competing institutes charge for their
students. I would expect Ahmedabad and Calcutta to also charge similar amounts.

Interviewer: But why is there a differential pricing?

Candidate: Well sir, it is believed that the students who get placed on day 0 are better in comparison
to the ones that are left out. Hence the institute charges a premium to the companies based for the
privilege of hiring earlier.

Interviewer: Yes, this sounds logical.

____________________________________________________________
_____________________

125
CASE INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES – SUMMERS 2014

CONTRIBUTORS' PROFILES

Graduation Work Experience Resume Spikes

Name Company
Duration
Branch College Company (months) One Two
NITK Goldman Extra-
Venkat Iyer AT Kearney CSE 11 PORs
Surathkal Sachs Currics
Akanksha Electronics Nvidia
Bain & Co IIT BHU 22 PORs Awards
Trigun Engg. Graphics

Ekansh Nayal Bain & Co Electrical & BITS Pilani KK Birla 10 Acads Awards
Electronics Group
Extra-
Saumya Misra Bain & Co ECE NIT Bhopal BHEL 24 PORs
Currics
Int.
Electrical Well
Ankit Agarwal BCG Engg. (Dual) IIT Delhi NA NA Internship rounded
s
Industrial IIT
Gireesh Gera BCG Nestle 24 Acads Work Ex
Engg. Roorkee

Jincy James BCG Civil Engg. NIT Trichy Mu Sigma 12 Extra- Acads
Patrick Currics
Loveenia Acads
Gulati BCG Civil Engg. PEC CH2M Hill 36 Work Ex
(M.S.)
Mech.
Amit Rao Booz & Co Engg. NITK Mahindra 22 PORs Work Ex
Surathkal
Kumar Dhruv Booz & Co Electrical IIT Bombay Ericsson R 11 PORs Awards
Soni Engg. &D
Halliburton
Electrical (26), Int. Publicatio
Vinit Gawande Booz & Co Engg.(Dual) IIT Bombay Schlum. 50 Experience N
(24)

Karthik Ram Deloitte BBA Symbiosis KPMG(13), 36 PORs Awards

Pune TFI(23)
Ranjani NIT DAAD
Deloitte Biotech. Wipro Tech 22 Work Ex
Rajagopalan Warangal Schol.
Coimbator Mu Sigma
Sujitha Deloitte Information e Institute (12), 35 Acads Awards
Paramasivan Technology of Tech Dell(23)

126
 McKinsey Chemical BITs Pilani Wells Fargo
Akshay
Goenka & Co Engg. (Goa) (12), Oracle 36 PORs Work Ex
(24)
McKinsey
Rupali Jain Commerce SRCC Deloitte 9 Awards PORs
& Co
McKinsey
Sonali Jain Commerce SRCC Deloitte 9 Awards PORs
& Co
Schlum. (8),
McKinsey Electrical
Vivek Yelisetti IIT Delhi Auronova 21 Awards PORs
& Co Engg.
(13)
Roland Architectur
Soumya H. NIT Trichy L&T Const. 22 Work Ex Awards
Berger e

AT KEARNEY

Venkat Iyer
Interview 1:

[The interview was a guesstimate problem and the interviewer was a Manager with the firm]

Interviewer: Let’s get started, we’ll do a market sizing case. I want you to predict the
market size for premium biscuits in India.

Candidate: I would like to get a clearer understanding of the problem at hand before
I start. Should I solve for market size in terms of monetary value or number of
consumers?

Interviewer: Let us solve for the monetary value of the market say for a month.

Candidate: I am assuming that by premium biscuits is any biscuit which costs more
than Rs. 30 per pack. Is this a fair assumption?

Interviewer: Yes, go ahead.

Candidate: I would like to segment the population based on rural/urban divide.

Then segment based on income of the households and then based on age
distribution

Interviewer: Alright, sounds good, go ahead.

Candidate: The population of India is approx. 1.2 Bn, with a rural urban divide of
70%: 30%. I would like to focus only on the urban population and neglect the rural
population for the problem at hand.

127
 Interviewer: I don’t think you should completely ignore rural population. Let’s say
2% of premium biscuits are consumed by the rural population.

Candidate: After this, I would segment by income into 3 buckets. (up to 1Lakh, 1-
10Lakhs and 10+ Lakhs) and this split up is approx. 15%, 75% and 10%.

Interviewer: This is not exactly true, but go ahead.

[At this point for each income group, I got the number of Indians who fall under
each group for urban, and there was the 2% for rural]

Candidate: I would like to do an age profiling of the Indian Population. The population distribution of
India is like the shape of an inverted funnel. Can I go ahead with this? [He corrected me saying that it
isn’t exactly like an inverted funnel, it is wider for the younger ages and tapers quickly as the age
becomes greater than 30-35.]

I made a tree with three levels, segmented the population and calculated how much of premium
biscuits each of the segments would use and the rate of consumption using necessary assumptions.
What he was trying to test here was the structure of the approach and what all aspects I considered. He
didn’t have any idea of the market size for premium biscuits either.

[Takeaways: Be methodical, explain each step and correct them if he mentions so. Listen carefully to
what the interviewer says, they always speak something useful. Be neat with the approach and quick
with numbers.]

Interview 2:

[The interview was with another Manager of the firm. It was very open ended.]

Interviewer - If you were the CM of Karnataka, tell me a 3 bullet point agenda of what you would want to
change. [The interview was more focused on me having to defend whatever stance I took]

Candidate: I request you to give me a minute to think about this. (Later) My three point agenda would
be improve the healthcare situation in the state: in the line of what Jayalalitha had done for TN. Second,
provide better agriculture/irrigation equipment/financing, etc. facilities to the farmers. Thirdly, speed
up infrastructural changes and proactively improve on them on a speedy basis.

Interviewer: These are good points. But why not boosting the IT services industry more since that is the
prime business in Bangalore? Also, I think a very pertinent issue is that of corruption. Do you think this
should not feature in your agenda?

Candidate: I feel that the IT services industry is already very prominent in Bangalore and things will
expand on its own with companies wanting to set up offices in Bangalore. And IT services is
predominantly urban, I took a more holistic stance for the state as such. Secondly, I totally agree to
your concern about corruption. It is something that cannot be eliminated completely with me being the
CM. I can enforce certain check points but people will definitely find ways around it. When you asked
me the questions, I thought of implementable issues and prioritized them. Corruption came to my mind
too.

[The rest of the interview was just debating about the issues that he raised and the ones that I did. I
hadn’t thought that such an interview would happen, but must say was better than a regular case
interview.]

128
Interview 3:

[Again not a regular case interview. Tell me about the current state of the global economy. It was a 20-
25 min discussion on different countries and the problems facing the global economy at that time.]

_________________________________________________________________

BAIN & COMPANY

Akanksha Trigun

Interviewer: So here is a problem I faced recently. A client who is a big ‘women apparel’ retailer came
to us with this margins problem. They saw a constant sales growth but there was a cost problem in the
retail side. How would you look at the problem and identify it?

Candidate: Well, first I would like to understand more about this retail chain. Where does it operate
what does it specifically sell and what is the retail side model.

Interviewer: What do you want to know first?

Candidate: Please tell me about the geography of operation and the products.

Interviewer: Ok. They are a chain in the USA, they sell women merchandise and they are present in the
entire country.

Candidate: Do we sell only through our own stores or we display in other super markets?

Interviewer: Good question. But let’s just assume that we ONLY sell through our stores.

Candidate: Ok! I would take a minute and think through this.

[I understood that he wanted me to look at the cost side of things. So, I made a cost breakup structure
of fixed and variable costs. Listed down the few fixed costs like Land lease, electricity, machinery,
design, sale, salaries and a few variable costs like raw material, transport, etc. The interviewer was
constantly studying my drawings]

Candidate: Ok, to look at where we are losing money more than usual I would look at these cost
components.

Interviewer: I would want you to concentrate on the salary part of it.

Candidate: Perfect! [I sensed that he wanted me to ask questions now]. So, first, I would like to
understand the structure of the retail side of this business as in where all do we pay salaries. The few
things that come to my mind are – the retail shops service staff, maintenance staff. I would want to go a
level up in the value chain and understand the salaries that we pay.

Interviewer: Ok, So there are 4 layers in the value chain. The regional sales heads (4), divisional sales
heads (10), territory heads (16), shop sales heads (60).

[Drew a pyramid like structure to show hierarchy at each level]

Candidate: Do we have data about the salaries at each level?

129
Interviewer: Yes. Regional sales heads ($350), divisional sales heads ($300), territory heads ($280), shop
sales heads ($100)

Candidate: [drew the salary cost incurred at each level]

Regional Sales head 1400

Divisional sales 3000
Territory sales 4480
Shop sales 6000

I see that the Shop and territory level salary expenditure is higher. I would look at this part.
Interviewer: How would you look at it?

Candidate: Well I would try to determine if these are fair. To do that I would like to see how the
competitor in similar business is doing? To compare efficiencies I would look at ours and their revenue
per head. I would make my processes lean and I would also asses why I need so many levels of sales
personals. Maybe prune out the layer which do not add value.

Interviewer: Indeed, in the real case we looked at the competitor and saw that they had 5 people
manning per store were as we had 6 people manning each store. What would you do with this
information then?

Candidate: Then I have zeroed in on the problem. The problem could be in the efficiency or in the
training. I would analyze why we needed six instead of 5 in the 1st place and asses my capabilities in
training my employees, number of hours they put etc. I would look and see if the customer volume we
handle is the same, more or less and take appropriate actions.

Interviewer: That’s good. Thanks! Can I hold on to this sheet you have been working on?

Candidate: Sure! Pleasure meeting you.

___________________________________________________________________

Ekansh Nayal

Caselet 1: HP is our client which is a major player in the laptop business in the US. Currently, it largely
depends on laptop sales for its revenues. An average user in the US replaces his/her old laptop in 4-5
years. However, the company has information that due to voltage fluctuations, improper handling and
other such reasons, the consumer demand for servicing and spare parts is increasing. It is also known
that only 5% of HP users contact HP for repair services. Others prefer to go to local service centers.

Interviewer: Could you list the types of repairs/services a user could need?

Candidate: Sure sir. I would first categorize the repairs/after sales service into: software and hardware.

I could further categorize them as:

Hardware – Service post accidental damage, Replacement of malfunctioning parts, Service post damage
due to overheating/power fluctuations

Software – Antivirus related issues, Software freeze issues and issues related to software activation

130
Interviewer: In which of the two types of services mentioned do you think the profit margins would be
higher?

Candidate: I believe the margins are higher in software services. Because once completed, the software
only requires periodic updates. A small team of software experts work on it and capital investments are
low compared to the hardware end. Moreover, I do not believe HP manufactures all the laptop
hardware pieces and the share of 3rd party vendors would also eat into the hardware profit margins.

Interviewer: Can you think of any other reason why software services would be convenient and
profitable for HP?

Candidate: Sir, many of the software related issues can be handled online by trained servicemen using
technologies like remote desktop connection, skype etc. For this reason software services could be
more convenient for HP.

Interviewer: Yes, that is right. Now can you suggest two new revenue streams for HP?

Candidate: I would recommend the following:

Annual Maintenance Contracts (If not available already)

Online antivirus/ scanning services

Interviewer: Assume AMC already exists. Keeping in mind that the storage capacity of a laptop is
limited, what other revenue streams would you recommend?

Candidate: Yes sir. Since the storage capacity is limited, the company could provide online storage
services similar to Dell’s online backup, Dropbox or Google drive.

Interviewer: Can you give me a common name for this technology?

Candidate: Sir, I believe it is called cloud storage or cloud computing.

Interviewer: Ok. Thank you.

Caselet 2: A company has 5 brands. Previous year’s financial performance has been given below for
each brand. Currently, the company spends Rs. 50 crores on each brand as “marketing expense”. It is
known that an increase of Rs. 1.5 crore on marketing (of a particular brand) increases the revenue from
that brand by 2%. [Unavailability of original data from the case. Numbers chosen for ease of
explanation]

Brand 1 Brand 2 Brand 3 Brand 4 Brand 5

Sales(cr) 100 150 125 75 100
COGS (as % of sales) 25 50 40 5 10
Other expenses (cr) 25 10 25 22 40
Marketing expense (cr) 50 50 50 50 50

a) On which brand(/s) should the company increase its marketing expenditure?

On calculation, we see that the only Brand 5 shows an increase in profit with increase in marketing
expenditure. The other brands either show no increase in profit or show a decrease in profit. Hence the
company should increase its marketing expenditure on Brand 5.

131
 Company cannot generate funds from outside. How can the company fund the additional marketing
expense (analyze the table)?

After calculations, we see that only Brand 2 has positive profit currently. This profit from Brand 2 can be
utilized for marketing of Brand 5.

c) Mention any one learning on business decision making from the case.

A diversified firm should shut down brands/ products that are not profitable and invest more in the
ones generating profits.

__________________________________________________________________

Saumya Misra

Caselet 1: Case about a telecom infrastructure provider whose profitability was declining. The objective
was identify the reasons for this decline.

Candidate’s approach: By discussing the state of the industry, recent trends, technological changes,
competitors etc., the reason was identified as the introduction of new routers in the market which
could serve both 2G and 3G networks in contrast to earlier ones which were either 2G or 3G models.

Caselet 2: Case about an IT giant where although employee strength had increased, the cost incurred
currently was lesser than that incurred in previous years (which is a positive sign) and the objective was
to find the reason behind this change.

Candidate’s approach: Upon asking pertinent questions, I discovered that the reason was better
planning in deployment of employees to project, matching skill sets of people with projects and
deploying more people on site

Caselet 3: Case about market entry by a telecom services provider in India introducing machine to
machine (M2M) technology.

Candidate’s approach: This was a general discussion over which consumers would benefit the most,
how will commercial firms use this technology and why would they be interested. What way should it
be priced?

Caselet 4: Case about a software solutions provider (basically an agency that resolves software issues in
personal computers over phone).

Candidate’s approach: This was a calculation intensive case to determine the pricing of service. The
discussion further extended to ways in which this company can retain its customers.

___________________________________________________________________

132
 BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP

Ankit Agarwal

Caselet: The client is a global consumer electronics manufacturer with a strong presence in India. They
intend to start a new business model of direct selling of consumer electronics like TV, home theatre,
etc. Design a pilot for their national rollout.

Candidate’s approach:

Identify current methods of sales o Self

owned

o Retailers

Identify the target customer segments o Wide

consumer base

o Targeting premium electronics to up-segment consumers by direct selling

Identify representative place for conducting pilot

Tier-1 – eg. Delhi

Large number of target customers

Better feasibility of conducting pilot
Location – eg. up-segment locality (say, in South Delhi)
Retail selling happening in Delhi

Easy to compare with existing methods to take a decision

Understand profitability of existing and new method

[Evaluation narrowed down to a 1 month pilot on direct selling of TV]
Price – 30,000

Distributor Costs – 10% o

Dealer Costs – 15%

o Cost of TV – 15,000
o Expenses for direct selling

Salary costs per person = 15000

Other selling expenses per person = 5000

Define evaluation metric to decide on national rollout of direct selling

Aim of pilot - Higher profitability from direct selling o Metric – No of monthly TV sales per employee
(“N”)
Profit per TV from traditional method = Price – Dealer costs – Distributor costs –
TV costs = 7500
Profit per TV from direct selling = Price – TV Costs – Direct Selling Costs = 15000
– 20000/N
For direct selling to be profitable, N>3 (decision criteria to be checked

133
 after pilot for national rollout
Risks

Direct seller becomes face of the brand – premium nature needs to be ensured
– better sales force - salary costs may increase – N may increase

% conversion as opposed to no. of sales should also be high – skilled sales team
– salary costs may increase – N may increase

__________________________________________________________________

Gireesh Gera

Interviewer: A truck manufacturing company has a new truck in development. Help it decide if it should
launch the truck. If yes, what is the price premium it can charge over competition? And assume there is
enough demand for trucks.

Candidate: Sure. Sir can you help me with the description of the truck and its usage?

Interviewer: It is a standard 20 T truck, same as competition and is designed to carry refrigerators from
the warehouses to nearby dealerships.

Candidate: Ok Sir. Could you tell me the differing features of the truck and it what aspects is it different
from the standard truck of competition?

Interviewer: Well, this truck has many advantages over the existing trucks of the competition. First, it
has an air conditioned cabinet, a music system and a bed for the driver to sleep. All these are absent in
the current trucks of the competition. Also, it requires minimal effort to drive, so only 1 person is
enough per truck.

Candidate: OK Sir. I’ll begin with quantifying the various benefits that the new truck has over
competition. Sir, is it safe to assume that the current trucks run for 16 hours a day with 2 persons
(driver and helper) operating the truck. And that they sleep for the remaining 8 hours.

Interviewer: Yes, that is correct.

Candidate: In that case, we can potentially run this truck for 24 hours with 2 drivers. Each driver can drive for
12 hours and the other can sleep comfortably on the bed in the AC cabin. They don’t have to stop on the
road to sleep in the night. This means 50% more capacity utilization.

Interviewer: OK well, what else?

Candidate: Could you help me with the dimensions of the new truck’s loading area and if they are
different from the current trucks?

Interviewer: The new truck has 20 ft X 10 ft X 15 ft (length, width, height) loading region vs 18 ft X 10 ft
X 8 ft for the current trucks.

Candidate: Also, could you help me with the weight of each refrigerator? Interviewer:
Weight is not an issue. Refrigerators are filled basis space available.
Candidate: Ok. Assuming a refrigerator size of 2 ft X 2 ft, we can fit 5 more refrigerators per truck in the
new trucks. Assuming we can’t stack refrigerators on top of each other, the greater height of new truck

134
won’t be of use. Could you tell me how many times on an average a truck would go from the warehouse
to the dealers and the distance covered?

Interviewer: A truck has 5 trips every day with one way distance of 50 km on an average.

Candidate: Ok. [Then showed annually how many extra refrigerators could be transported].

Interviewer: Also, there is a difference in the mileage. The new truck is 14 kmpl vs 12 kmpl for the
existing truck. Also, the tyres in the new truck last for 15000 km vs 5000 km for the existing truck.

Candidate: [Showed him the annual savings per truck on fuel]. Could you let me know the difference
between the cost of each tyre during replacement?

Interviewer: Current tyres cost Rs. 5000 each. The new truck tyres will cost Rs. 10000 each.

Candidate: Is it safe to assume that the life of the truck is 10 years and that there are 6 tyres per truck?

Interviewer: Yes, that is fine.

Candidate: [Then showed 10 years savings on tyres]. Sir is there any other difference between the 2
trucks?

Interviewer: Yes, the new trucks are faster. They drive at 40 kmph vs 30 kmph for existing ones.

Candidate: So this would mean faster delivery and more number of round trips. [Then showed how
many more return trips each truck could make annually].

Interviewer: Any other thing?

Candidate: Sir there are the intangibles like comfortable cabin, air conditioning, music player, etc.
which will improve the efficiency of the drivers.

Interviewer: Ok. Now you have all these numbers. How do I decide truck pricing basis these?

Candidate: You see the savings under each of these heads annually and multiply by the life of the truck.
That is the maximum premium that the company can charge over the price of the standard truck by
competition.

Interviewer: Would the company be able to charge such a premium? What are the hurdles?

Candidate: No they won’t be able to charge the exact premium as calculated as the entire value is not
visible to the customers who would mainly be the transporter companies giving services to refrigerator
manufacturers. The upfront cost is very important to them. However with educating them and showing
them the value, the company can charge a premium somewhere in between the value created.

Interviewer: Ok. Thank you.

[Basically, the interviewer was giving me more and more factors to work upon and wanted to see how
quickly I could find out & calculate the value implications of those features.]

________________________________________________________________

Jincy James Patrick

135
Interviewer: A mine in South Africa wants to improve its revenue. They mine an ore which contains lead
and zinc. They currently export to East Asia. But competition is increasing and so is demand. How will
they go about increasing their revenue?

Candidate: How is this product sold – as in what is the cost, concentration and in what form.

Interviewer: Cost is irrelevant. It is sold in a concentrate form which usually has 20-25% zinc.

Prices are fixed for this concentration.

Candidate: Can we charge a higher price after increasing the concentration – say make it 40%. We can ask
for almost double the price. How expensive would it be to increase the concentration?

Interviewer: It would be difficult to attain that level of concentrate with the current facility. Up to an
increase of 5% is possible but that will not improve the price significantly.

Candidate: Alright. Can you draw the process? The process of extraction and concentration. All the
steps involved and the resources used.

[Interviewer draws a detailed diagram. Explosives being placed in the mines. Bombing. Drilling
equipment. Followed by trucks to transport. And then chemical process to extract.]

Candidate: What is the capacity of each of these and what is the current utilization?

Interviewer: The trucks and the drill are working at 100% utilization. The chemical process has unused
capacity.

Candidate: So basically the trucks and drilling machines are the bottleneck. How expensive is it to buy
this machinery?

Interviewer: Cost is not a problem but the equipment will come only after a year.

Candidate: In that case, the best option would be to rent trucks and drilling machine (if that is possible)
for now and commission a new drilling machine which will come later. The mine can operate on the
rented machine in the mean time.

As for the trucks, if it is more economical to keep using the rented ones, do not buy new ones.

Interviewer: Ok. Thank you.

________________________________________________________________

Loveenia Gulati

Interview 1

[The interviewer had a sheet with some data about a truck manufacturing company (Company X).
During the course of the interview, he suggested to refer to the sheet to answer questions.]

Caselet: Identify a market enter strategy [How to sell, in simpler words] for Company X [company
resembled Volvo]. The truck manufacturing market is a mature market with existing major players like
Tata and Ashok Leyland.

Candidate’s Approach:

136
The existing players cannot be competed against based on pricing and discounting strategies. Also,
trucks of Company X were not as fuel efficient. There is duopoly in the market with Tata and Ashok
Leyland having national pockets, strength and fleet.

Think what the customer wants - Provide him with more choices.
Possible offerings of Company X - Warranty, Value, Cost benefit, Extra sleeping berth, Wider axle
implying more load carrying capacity, after sales-service.

Follow-up question:

[Interviewer referred to his note with diagram and data]

Do a cost analysis for comparing two products, where Product A is from Company X and Product B is
from a major rival company (based on data given in sheet)

Candidate’s Approach:

Calculate both fixed costs and variable costs. While fixed costs are given, variable costs can be broken
down based on the following tree structure.

On calculating, it was found that cost was relatively same in both the cases.

[Part of final answer not covered: Product A may also have a resale value]

137
Interview 2

Caselet: Run a diagnostic of Bank X on the retail banking side. The bank has a growth rate of 10% in its
savings account segment where as the market growth rate is 20%.

Candidate’s Approach:
I broke down the problem into several sub-parts to identify what could be the possible reason. Below
is a tree structure of how the break-down looked like -

Key drivers
Current Scenario

Industry Customers External

factors

Market Competition Consumer Add Economy Technology

share _______ new
product

New Substitue
player

Interviewer: Can you probe into the branch of customers? [He showed some data from which it
could be interpreted that it wasn't the other two factors]

Candidate’s Approach: The structure shown below gives an idea of the reasons for drop in savings
by breaking it down further

Savings

Old

Number of Size of
customers Deposits
New

Brand Name Proximity to Bank

Marketing

138
Upon further discussion, the interviewer pointed out that the drop was actually because of
marketing reasons and their front line interfacing with customers had deteriorated.

The discussion pursued a while on how the issue could be fixed.

___________________________________________________________________

DELOITTE STRATEGY & OPERATIONS

Karthik Ram

Caselet: Deloitte is consulting an Indian health care manufacturing company who wants to enter the
US market. Design a market entry strategy for the company.

Candidate’s Approach:

I asked for the data points on states in US where the company is looking to enter.
[Interviewer gave growth data and the kind of markets prevalent in each state]

I chose state where there is less monopoly and the market is fragmented. These states also showed
some growth potential for new entrants.

Interviewer: What type of customers will you choose?

Candidate: Market has to be divided into segments based on the amount of usage. Within segment
choose individual groups.

[One interviewer played the role of a Government regulator with subjective questions on entering
markets]

Some calculation had to be done to find out growth potential. Data was provided for calculating
number of people in terms of usage and present penetration of competitors.

Interviewer: What should you consider about your client company before suggesting these ideas?

Candidate: We must know the life cycle of our own company. We must also know that their niche is.
[The company was a growing Indian player]

______________________________________________________________

139
Sujitha Paramasivan & Ranjani Rajagopalan

Caselet: Deloitte is consulting for an Asian company that wants to enter the heath care equipment
manufacturing market in the US. The client is new to both the country and the market segment. The
client has multiple product categories to choose from. [Data available on multiple product categories
for the company to choose from]

Which product should the company go with? Design a market entry strategy for the company.

Candidate’s approach: Sir, to design a market entry strategy, I would want to look some data on the
states in US the company is looking to enter, including the competitor data and competitor market
share for each product

[Interviewer gives data on kind of markets, competitors and growth for products in each state]
Interviewer: Any other parameters you would consider?
Candidate: Sir, I would also want to look at profitability of each product segment
[Interviewer gives data on profit margins for each product segment] Interviewer:
Anything else?

Candidate: Since we have covered market size, competitors & profitability, I would also want to look
at legal regulations specific to this market

Interviewer: Why do you think this parameter is important?

Candidate: Sir, since regulations & laws in Asian countries and the US are widely different and we
are looking at the healthcare segment, I believe data on legal regulations would be relevant.

[Interviewer gives data on legal regulations specific to each product in different states]
Interviewer: Anything else you would want to look at?

Candidate: Sir, I would want to look at internal capabilities too. Do we have the capability to
manufacture all these products with precision?

[Interviewer very happy with this new approach]

Interviewer: Why this approach?

Candidate: Sir, the equipment that the company is planning to manufacture are all high tech. If we
do not have the internal capabilities to get into a particular product segment, the analysis would be
pointless.

Interviewer: That is interesting. For now, we will assume that your client can manufacture all the
products/equipment with precision. Could you analyze all the data available and let me know which
product your client should choose?

Candidate: I analyzed the data – only one product has a clear cut advantage in all segments. It has
few competitors in high density states. It shows high profitability and the legal environment is
conducive to its launch. I suggested the same.

Interviewer: That is it. Thank you.

140
[Deloitte does not give you all the data upfront. They wait for you to ask for it. This is to understand
your approach. If you miss any parameter while analyzing, the data sheet will not be given to you. In
the end, the approach is more important than any amount of number crunching one would do]
__________________________________________________________________

MCKINSEY & COMPANY

Akshay Goenka

Caselet 1: You are the MD of a large firm that is looking to acquire a mid-tier pharmaceutical
company. How would you go about it?

Candidate: Could you help me answer a few questions like:

What kind of a pharmaceutical firm are we?

What kind of firm are we looking to acquire?

And why?

What markets do we currently operate in?

Are we looking to acquire firms internally or externally (in terms of markets)? [This was to
understand if the acquisition is for integration in terms of some capability or is it just money driven]

Interviewer: Ok, say yours is a private equity firm and not a pharmaceutical firm. How would you go
about it now?

Candidate: Could I take a minute to structure my thoughts?

Interviewer: Sure.

Candidate: Firstly, we should do an internal analysis of the firm and external analysis of the market.
And the same for the company we are looking to acquire.

Internal: What are our strengths and weaknesses? Are we currently in a position to invest? etc

External: Is this a good opportunity? , Do we have better investment opportunities currently? Etc

For the company we are looking to acquire:

Internal: Is the company growing? How is the management? What is the competitive advantage?

External: Is the market conducive for continuous growth?, How are the peers/competitors doing?

Secondly, if we believe the company is going to grow, we need to analyze what is driving the growth:

Is it the patents the company currently holds?

141
 Is it because it is ramping up production?

Is it in another country that is showing rapid growth?

Based on this we can come up with a valuation - an initial valuation and a projection for five years.

Thirdly, we should look at exit options. If we are looking to sell it how should we sell it & who should
we sell it to, when is the right time for exit?

Also once we sell it, what do we intend to do with the money, will we re-invest? [This was one step
more than they expected and the interviewer was really happy about it]

[It is best to give a comprehensive list of all the approaches you would take and then ask the
interviewer if it sounds good to go. In the interest of time, interviewers generally ask you to focus on
one approach/ lever]

Interviewer: That is a comprehensive list [sounds happy]. Can we talk about how you would go
ahead with the valuation?

Candidate: There are multiple approaches one could take

Valuate the company in terms of its market capitalization and stock price

Valuate it as a sum of its parts i.e look at all the businesses/sectors the company is in – separate
intellectual capital, separate property and assets and valuate them

Do a comparable company analysis. This information can be used to determine a company's

enterprise value and to calculate other ratios used to compare a company to those in its
peer group.

Interviewer: Would you dump the firm in the end? How would you evaluate exit opportunities?

Candidate: First approach - At the given point, when evaluating exit opportunities, I would look at all
opportunities to re-invest. If there is a better investment that would make more money, I would go
ahead with that without being emotional.

Second approach – A more emotional way of looking at it is if I feel that there is hidden potential in
the firm that is not coming out in the numbers, say because they have spent much in R&D and I
would expect it to show results only in a few years, I would stick with the company.

Interviewer: That sounds good. Let us get you to the second round.

Caselet 2 (with Director Rajat Dhawan): Estimating the cost of India’s Mars Mission

Interviewer: Have you read about the Mars mission?

Candidate: Yes, a little.

Interviewer: How would you go about estimating the cost of the mission?

Candidate: Ok. I would first look at different cost levers for such a mission

cost of equipment

142
 cost of personnel

cost of R&D

cost of operations

To estimate the cost of the equipment, I would first estimate the size of the rocket then look at different
parts on board (including what would be left behind in the orbits) [guesstimate number]

- Amount of fuel required [I asked the interviewer about the cost of jet fuel in the market -
guesstimate number]

Number of personnel - Is it a manned or unmanned mission, how many people in R&D, how many
people at the launch station? [guesstimate number]

Cost of setting up the launch station. [guesstimate number]

Interviewer: Don’t you think they have many of these already?

Candidate: Sorry, skipped my mind. If you don’t mind I would like to take a few minutes and divide
these into what they would already have and they would not have.

[I divided them into two verticals and started working out the costs. Along the way, I remarked that
the cost seems small. NASA spends like 20 times this]

Interviewer: [Gets excited & speaks about how he personally met Madhavan and how ISRO is doing
a remarkable job] Good. Let’s get together for coffee someday and discuss this further.

[More case interview related tips from Akshay Goenka can be found at:
http://www.gradstory.in/gradschool/consulting-consulting-10-tips-success-iim-student-akshay-
goenka/]

______________________________________________________________

Rupali Jain

Interviewer: How has the day been for you?

Candidate: It's been good so far. I am excited as I have got the opportunity to interview with the
company which topped my preference list.

Interviewer: Good. Let's begin the case.

Caselet: There is a telecom company which manufactures Base Station Antennas and its revenues

have declined by 30% over the past 2 years. You have to identify:-

Why the revenues have declined?

What shall be the future projections (say for 3-4 years) of the revenues?

143
Candidate: Began with clarifying questions like understanding the product (base station antennas),
the scope of operations of the telecom company, its position in the market, competition, industry
overview.

Interviewer: Detailed explanation about the product and the telecom company followed by facts
like- The company is a market leader with 60% share; the industry is growth oriented; onset of
competition from foreign players from China & Europe

Candidate: Is the declining revenue a trend across the industry & competitors or is it specific to the
client only? What is the setting of the case- Location & Time period?

Interviewer: Not an industry-wide trend. Specific to our client only. India and the time when 3G
licenses were issued.

Candidate: Broke the problem into two heads.

Decline in Revenue can be because of :-

INTERNAL FACTORS EXTERNAL FACTORS

Fall in Price Technological change

Fall in units sold Foreign Player's preferred

Contracts with buyers over
Modifications in existing contract
clauses/Terms with the buyers
Unable to tap new buyers
Renewal of existing contracts
Life of the antennas(Product Life cycle) Other competitor's Growing
Intrinsic Flaw in the antennas/Product quality Government Regulation changes/Taxes
Problem in distribution 3G License scam
network(Understanding Point-of-Sale for
antennas)
Product mix/types of antennae sold and fall in Better Substitutes available
revenue because of which type
Defamation/Tarnished Reputation of the
Client owing to some accidents/inappropriate
BOD decisions leading to fall in units
sold/prices

Interviewer: Understood all the mentioned points and gave inputs at places about whether that
point was relevant or not to solve the problem of the caselet. Asked me to give weights to the above
parameters on the basis of their importance in solving the case making use of the information he
provided. Also asked:-
How will you decide which among the two i.e. Price and Volume has a greater impact on the fall in
Revenue? Say prices have fallen by 10-15%.

Candidate: Let 10 units be sold for 10 rupees. Client's revenue= Rs 100. Since prices have fallen by 10%,
so the total revenue on 10 units will be 90 rupees. However, revenue has declined by 30% i.e. it is Rs 70.
Therefore the remaining fall of Rs 20 in revenue is due to fall in quantity sold.

Interviewer: Good. Thank you.

_________________________________________________

144
Sonali Jain

Caselet: Calculate the revenue of a Barista Lavazza store at Bangalore Airport from 6 to 7am at any
given day.

Candidate: Sir, I will first look at the factors/decision-variables that will influence the estimation of
revenue. They would be:

The time of the day for which we need to calculate the revenue (6-7am, as given)
The no. of flights taking off/ landing/ stationed during that period

No. of people waiting at the airport post security check(both passengers & airport staff)
Product mix at Barista

Pricing at Barista

The number & type of restaurants/ eating joints at Bangalore Airport

Interviewer: Yes, the parameters chosen are appropriate. Could you focus only on passengers and
not on personnel?

Candidate: Sure. I would split the problem further into that of volume and price. The price would
depend upon what a typical consumer’s basket of goods bought at a coffee shop contains. I will
assume an average price for the basket (say Rs.300). After this, I would want to estimate the number
of passengers who will visit that coffee shop.

And calculate assuming:

Capacity of the airport to station aircrafts(passengers for them could be waiting)

The number of flights which take off in an hour(assuming a flight takes off every 5 mins, so
12 flights in an hour)

Seating capacity of a plane- based on economy & business class, the number of rows in a
class & seats per row including seats for flight crew

Economy ~ (30 rows) * (6 seats per row) = 180 seats

Business: ~ 20 seats (assumption)
Total = 200 seats

I will then multiply the number of flights with the seating capacity. This number should be reduced
based on the occupancy rate (assumption) and further reduced based on the conversion rate of
people visiting Lavazza (assumption). The final number would be x.

Interviewer: That sounds like a reasonable number. Thank you.

[Interviewer understood all the mentioned points, kept on agreeing to clarifying questions and gave
inputs at places about whether that point was relevant or not to solve the problem of the caselet. All
in all, I was able to give an approximate number to the question and interviewer seemed satisfied by
the approach.]

_____________________________________________________________

145
Vivek Yelisetti

Interview 1

Caselet: There has been a good growth in the media industry. One of the companies is
diversifying into hyper local newspaper. It is planning to run a pilot for the same in Chandigarh.
How will you choose an area within Chandigarh?

Candidate: Before proceeding into the case, can you explain what exactly the hyper local
newspaper is for? Is the company already into the business or does it have to start afresh? [I asked
a few similar questions about the company and its business to understand the context for further
analysis].

Interviewer: The newspaper is primarily to cater to the local needs of Chandigarh. It would be a
weekly newspaper. The company is new to the business.

Candidate: This is how I would like to proceed into the case analysis. First, I would identify the
qualities that the company is looking for in its audience; identify various sources of revenue, the
type of paper to be launched and such existing newspapers if any. Starting, are there any specific
qualities that the company is looking for in its audience?

Interviewer: Nothing as such. What are the qualities that you consider are important?

Candidate: Weekly Newspapers are normally categorised by the affordability, the population reach,
their preferences and age - like retired people, housewives, and may be youth. As the revenues for
such kind of newspapers are through advertisements and they depend on the reach and circulation,
it is extremely important for the company to target such a sector where you maximise the revenues.
Is that assumption right?

Interviewer: Go ahead.

Candidate: Given the target audience of retired people and housewives, the revenues can come
from food supermarkets and restaurants in the area.

Interviewer: What do you think retired people and housewives look for?

Candidate: Housewives might look for offers on household items, recipes, for discounts on fruit
juices etc - jewellery, some coaching centres and tips regarding health and education for their
children. The retired people might be looking for events like concerts that they can indulge in during
their free time.

Interviewer: Alright, so which area to target.

Candidate: We shall identify the area which has a lot reach in Chandigarh, an area which has lot of
retail stands where the newspaper circulation would be maximum, an area which has good
infrastructure – good roads, restaurants etc where businesses would be maximum.

Interviewer: Cool, Can you quickly summarise the points?

I did the same. It was a short 15 minute interview.

146
Interview 2

[The interviewer was doing his own work sitting in a corner. I went into the room and sat but he was
busy doing his own work. A minute or so passed. I initiated the conversation – asking which office he
works in, which sectors etc. He said he has few mails to send and asked about Wi-Fi in campus and
campus life. Then he came to the table and then mentioned about his sectors etc. and that’s how the
case got started.]

Caselet: Our client is from the consumer space. It is a fast moving FMCG. The CEO is newly
appointed. He visited some stores recently and found low on-shelf availability of products. He
wants to analyse why is it so.

Candidate: Asked a few details about the FMCG company and the kind of products to get an
understanding of the type of business. Then I told him that I would analyse the supply chain to
identify the problem. He asked me to go ahead with it.

Candidate: I drew this regular diagram {Raw Materials – Plant – Warehouse – Distributors

– Retailers – Consumers}. Is there any problem with the availability of raw materials or
manufacturing techniques due to which there is a delay of distribution or any reent plant
failures or shutdowns?

Interviewer: No. Nothing like that.

Candidate: How are the products distributed – to warehouse and from there to distributors?

Interviewer: The products are sent daily to the warehouse and from there through small trucks
every month. The distributors DBSR’s – They go every week to visit all the stores in the area.

Candidate: How many stores does a distributor has to cater to?

Interviewer: Approximately 10-15 in an area. On an average a DBSR spends 3 hrs in a shop

taking orders etc.

Candidate: Assuming, a DBSR spends 25 hours in a week (5 days *5 hours) working on this

– client relations, taking orders etc, a DBSR would cover roughly 8 stores – there by not able to reach
out to all the stores – leading to a low on-shelf availability.

Interviewer: Good analysis. So what to do?

Candidate: The Company has two options – Increase the number of DBSRs’ if it takes that much
time for the order – or Reduce the time spent in each shop – In order to do this, incentivise the
DBSRs so that they cover all the stores in the area etc.

Interviewer: Thank you. How are the placements going on?

[It was a short simple case. But I felt they tested me on whether I could start off a
conversation with a random person and whether I could take initiatives.]

___________________________________________________________________

147
 ROLAND BERGER

Soumya H.

Interviewer: Hi, so could you please tell me about yourself?

Candidate: Hi, I am Soumya, an architect. [Gave basic intro about myself, work experience, extra-
curriculars, PORs, everything included]

Interviewer: That’s interesting, an architect, who worked on a project site. So tell me, do you know
how much were the profit margins for your company?

Candidate: Well, I could tell you how much they were for my project. We were working on a 12%
margin. I must tell you that, although I was a designer, I was also given the responsibility of planning
and billing and hence I had access to these numbers.

Interviewer: Good, that’s good exposure. So how big was this project did you say?

Candidate: INR 246 Crores

Interviewer: Ok. So, how much was the ROCE on your project? Do you know what ROCE is?

Candidate: Yes, ROCE is Return on Capital Employed. Could you give me a few minutes, so that I
could work out the numbers?

[Paused, worked out the numbers]. In terms of the capital employed, I would consider the assets; I am
not considering the liabilities because we worked with very small credit periods of less than 30 days with
their suppliers. [Gave the figures estimating the rent of plant and machinery on the project site, and the
cost of other materials on the site. I knew the value of the some of the resources on site, and used
industry standard thumb rules to assess the others, and stated all of these to the interviewer].

The ROCE measures the Operating Profit as a percentage of capital employed. [It’s very important to
walk your interviewer through every single step, every single assumption etc; they do not care about
your answer, but the process]

Interviewer: Ok now that you have a number, do you know what it signifies?

Candidate: It shows the efficiency of the use of the capital employed to generate profits.

Interviewer: And what is your conclusion, was your project making good use of the resources?

Candidate: Well Sir, I cannot say that without knowing what the industry standards are in the
construction industry.

Interviewer: Ok. So how many companies have you applied to?

Candidate: This is the only consulting firm that I have applied to.

148
Interviewer: [Smiles] Or is it the only one you got shortlisted for? I am just kidding. So what do you
want to do?

Candidate: Sir, I see myself in the marketing domain. I would like to be in the top notch marketing
companies such as HUL and P&G

Interviewer: Ok, and do you have any questions for me?

Candidate: Yes sir, the only thing I know about Roland in India is about the Jaguar deal. Your global
website spoke about consulting in the consumer retail sector which really interested me. However,
the Indian website seemed to be heavily focused on the automotive sector. Could you educate me a
little more about Roland, particularly about its India operations?

Interviewer: We came to India in 2012. We have worked with a few conglomerates, and are in the
process of growing our business. It just so happened that we could gain a great access into the
automotive sector. We are one of the top most consulting firms in Europe, and by nature not as media
savvy like our American counterparts, so you know much less. We have 3 offices, in India

Mumbai, Delhi, and one coming up in Pune. Your interest in the consumer retail is great but we
don’t know how fast we will be able to get there.

Candidate: Ok. Thanks for that.

Interviewer: Soumya, I think I really like you. Most importantly I like the fact that you are not
desperate for this job. I will put my best word for you, but I have another Principal coming to have a
word with you before we take the final call.

[Meeting with Principal 2 was a casual discussion where he asked only about me work ex, and my
strong and weak subject areas. I did not consider myself strong in both finance and analytics, and
conveyed the same. He asked me if I could make good PPTs, and I said I was very good at it. He
concluded by saying, that his partner had left him with little choice by putting in a strong
recommendation for me. I thanked him at the end of the interview.]

___________________________________________________________________

STRATEGY& (FORMERLY BOOZ & COMPANY)

Amit Rao
Interview 1

[The interview started with a lot of PI questions. We spoke a lot about my work experience and
thereby the case also was related to the company I worked for.]

Caselet: A multinational automobile company wants to launch its electric vehicle in India. How
should it go about it? How should it price it?

Candidate: First I would try to understand the company [Since I had worked for the company
anyway, knew everything necessary, I asked nevertheless to check.]. Then I would like to do a
customer & product analysis.

Interviewer: Yes that’s right. I want you to find out what car should they offer and to whom?

149
Candidate: [Did market segmentation and identified which segment is likely to buy] I will now
identify what this segment will want from this vehicle. Factors that they will look at include

Mileage
Price

Convenience of travel

Licence/ Ease of documentation

Environmental issues

Others

[Initially I had missed out the first point, but he hinted me at it and I got it]

Interviewer: Okay. You seem to have got all the requirements. Now how will I position my product
to meet these needs?

Candidate: Use promotions to state the fact that mileage will be substantially lesser for electric
vehicles, almost Re.0.5/km compared to fossil-fuel vehicles Rs.10/km. No maintenance. Do road
shows to grab people’s attention. Price it such that it replaces a smaller vehicle like Nano or scooters
like Activa. Give extra battery for emergency situations. Give boot space/ foldable seats options. Get
pumps to have charging stations. Launch it primarily in cities with good infra since these vehicles are
not made for rough roads. Touch the environmental sensitive aspect during promotions. [Gave a few
more options]

Interviewer: That’s sounds good. Now let’s look at the pricing

Candidate: I believe that cost based pricing is the best way to go about this.

Interviewer: That won’t be entirely right. Can you think of a better way?

Candidate: I will calculate how much an average family spends on a car of same size and compare it
with an electric car.

Interviewer: That would be the correct way to do this. [Gave data about average monthly travel,
maintenance costs, fuel charges etc.]

Candidate: After the calculations, it turns out electric car is expensive than a petrol car due to very
high battery replacement cost. Hence we need some government relaxations for taxes so that the
benefit can be transferred to the buyer.

Interviewer: Okay. That’s good. I will send you to the next round.

Interview 2

[Again a lot of personals were asked here for almost 15mins. Somewhat repetitive.]

Caselet: Our client is diabetes solution provider in Vietnam. Wants to increase market share. How
will he do it?

Candidate: I will want to do an industry analysis. [Did Porter’s 5 forces, took 2 minutes to write it
down and then explained each aspect]. Can you tell me more about the client?

150
Interviewer: Our client has 70% market share. Has the most effective remedy for diabetes currently.
All other players are fragmented and provide temp solutions which are cheaper and not that
effective.

Candidate: Okay. Essentially we will be selling these drugs to the doctors? Or do we sell them to the
chemists?

Interviewer: Well, that’s a good point. What do you think?

Candidate: Since, it’s a serious ailment I believe that these medicines will be availed through
chemists but only on doctors’ prescription. So we need to target this market. Since they are
knowledgeable themselves, it is easy to educate them about our product. Do we have any as such
direct substitutes?

Interviewer: That’s correct. Besides exercise and diet control nothing as such. How do you think will
the market expand?

Candidate: The market will grow as more people are made aware of the product. It doesn’t have to
do with more people getting affected by this disease.

Interviewer: Yes, that’s what I was looking for.

[Then we did further analysis on revenue streams and costs to see if we can increase the
profitability in some way. Turns out that they were importing some aspects of the drug and we came
to a conclusion that since we have a got market share its best to invest in a facility at Vietnam]

Interviewer: Okay. That will be all.

[Both interviews went for around 45 minutes. I was given the offer after 2 rounds itself. I believe PI
is as important as Case prep. They look at your clarity of thought, communication skills and passion
to do consulting.]

All the best!

-Team ICON

________________________________________________________________

151