Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow Placement Interview Questions

• Q1. Introduce yourself.
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• Q2. How has your day been so far?
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• Q3. Why consulting?
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• Q4. Explain the business impact of the project you have done as a part of Deloitte.
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How can we increase the profits for Zomato (Indian multinational restaurant aggregator and food delivery company)?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

I: How can we increase the profits for Zomato?

C: (Asked a few preliminary questions for better clarity) What is the target that we are trying to achieve and what is the timeline that we have in mind?

I: We want to increase the profits by 10% in the next 2-3 years.

C: As per my understanding, in order to increase profits, we would either have to increase our revenues or decrease our costs or adopt measures that are a combination of these two. Is there any particular aspect that I should focus on?

I: Let us focus on increasing revenues for now.

C: The multiple revenue streams for Zomato which we can consider are - restaurant fees paid by restaurants which have tied up with Zomato, advertisements and promotions, delivery fees and revenue through Zomato gold.

I: Fair enough, how would you go about increasing revenues.

C: We can look at all these revenue sources sequentially and adopt measures under each one.

1. There exist a few restaurants which have not tied up with Zomato yet, so it is possible to offer them incentives/roll out schemes to increase the number of restaurants listed on our platform.

2. We can increase the number of advertisements displayed on the app. We can also conduct some interactive and participative events online which shall increase our reach and attract new customers.

3. Zomato gold/pro is one of the major sources of revenue.

However, a large chunk of customers has not subscribed to it and share it with existing subscribers because of the price. We can reduce the subscription fees and introduce subscription plans for a shorter duration instead of one year to work around this issue. This shall lead to increase in the gold subscriptions.

I: I really liked your structuring. Can you also suggest some new avenues which Zomato can tap into increase revenues?

C: Zomato can also start taking bulk orders, not immediate delivery but for a later prescheduled delivery. This option can be used by people who are planning to have any gatherings in future with the convenience of doorstep delivery. Also, Zomato can tie up with home-operated bakeries/tiffin services/ food outlets to increase its offerings.

• Q1. Tell me about yourself.
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• Q2. Tell me about your family.
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• Q3. How are you liking Lucknow?
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• Q4. Tell me something about Amritsar.
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• Q5. You have already worked in consulting, so what brings you back?
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Assume that I am the MD of the bank for which you worked in your last organization. The targeted post merger synergies were not achieved. Kindly prepare a two-minute pitch to explain what could have possibly gone wrong and how can we improve.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

I: You can take 5 mins to prepare a 2-minute pitch and can also use internet if you need.

C: (Did not explore internet and tried to structure my thoughts in my mind. Took 2 minutes to structure and start with the approach).

The merger of two public sector banks has been successful to some extent. However, in order for it to be called a completely successful merger we shall have to focus on the deviations from targeted synergies and take relevant remedial actions.

The different categories of synergies which we wanted to achieve include Technological, Cost, Human, Operational.

It is possible that we have not been able to achieve these synergies for the following reasons:

1. Technological systems have not yet been fully merged and as a consequence customer data has not completely migrated from one system to another.

2. The cost synergies were not achieved because of duplication of processes. It might take time to completely shift to the processes of one of these banks.

3. Human synergies might not have been achieved because of the cultural shift that people are facing because the banks have been operating in different geographic areas.

4. The operational synergies might not have been achieved because the application portfolio demands some refinement as currently there are multiple applications offering the same products.

Hence, there is a need to rationalize them.

We can correct all these hurdles and accordingly target achieving the relevant synergy goals that we had set initially. We can target migrating the system in completion at the earliest and we can conduct bonding activities between the employees so that the work environment lightens up. We can also rationalize the application base.

• Q1. Tell me about yourself?
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• Q2. Why Consulting? Why Accenture?
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• Q3. Why do you want to pursue consulting after Deloitte USI?
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• Q4. How do you define success in consulting?
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• Q5. Have you faced a conflict at work? How did you resolve it?
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• Q6. Explain more about the work you did and how will you train yourself for Consulting? Do you think you are already there or is there something to learn? If yes, w...read more
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• Q7. How will you convince someone to use technology for cost optimization? What are the few suggestions that you might give the person specially in Covid-19? Give m...read more
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• Q8. MD Round: How is your day till now? What are your hobbies? How do you manage stress? What do you plant a tree? Why IB?
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Estimate the demand for Oxygen cylinders for the next 6 months for COVID-19 situation in a city or country of your choice?

(The question was triggered because I had covid-19 response written on my CV)
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: Since I live in Bangalore, can I estimate the demand for Bangalore city for 6 months?

I: Yes, go ahead.

C: Explained the pros of using Demand approach in this case as opposed to Supply approach.

I: Yes, makes sense.

C: I started giving the current cases in Bangalore and expected % increase and then % decrease in coming months. Then I divided the cases into Intensive Care and non-intensive care. Further, I divided the Intensive care also into those requiring extreme oxygen, some requiring medium oxygen, and some requiring less oxygen and assumed it to be 10, 5 and 2 cylinders per day.

Further I calculated the value by assuming cases to go down in 6 months and keeping a safe stock of Oxygen cylinders.

The interviewer expected me to talk the whole time and asked me to summarize. He also asked a few cross questions on my assumption.

I: I think it is a fair estimate. Good job on choosing the demand approach.

• Q1. Case: Client is Automotive Industry with both commercial and passenger vehicles. Their commercial sales are 65%. Their market share has been decreasing every ye...read more
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• Q1. Why Accenture?
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• Q2. Why not finance?
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• Q3. What was your McKinsey internship about?
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• Q4. What did you do in your 2 years at McKinsey?
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How would you increase ROE for an FMCG company?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate] 

I: Do you understand DuPont formula?

C: Yes. (Explained the same)

I: Which industry are you interested in?

C: FMCG.

I: Which aspect of the formula would you focus the most on to increase ROE for an FMCG company?

C: Utilization/Efficiency, given FMCG works on volumes.

I: Okay. How would you increase the sales volume for a soap manufacturer?

C: I would want to look at every point from the concept of the soap till the point it is finally used by the consumer. There can be improvements in design, more fragrances, increase in the life of the soap, or there could be better incentives for retailers to stock our product or have more shelf visibility.

I: Would an increase in life of the soap help increase the sales or reduce it?

C: It depends on the consumer research we've done before working on this feature. If the feature enhances the utility to the customer and consequently the price point at which you can sell the soap, then from a numerical standpoint, you can achieve higher sales even with lower volumes. So, despite lower repeat purchases in, say, a year, you'll make more money.

How would you increase sales for a CCD outlet located in CP, New Delhi?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: You can look at its sales as a function of number of customers and average order value per customer, if the time horizon we're looking at is a day.

To increase the number of customers, we need to either find people who'd come to CP and currently not use any food outlets, or we can look at customers who come to CP and use competitors' products.

Within the first bucket, we can play with our pricing, our in-store marketing, what other needs does our store help with (Wi-Fi, seating space for meetings etc.).

In the second bucket, we can try to penetrate deeper into the following customer segments (given I was based out of Delhi, I knew CP in a bit more detail)- CAT coaching students (weekend), businessmen, families, student groups that visit CP for meetings (given it's a central spot in Delhi).

If we want to enhance the average order value per customer, we can work primarily with our product mix- this could be basis benchmarking with our competitors' highest selling products, consumer surveys, finding patterns of food item + day + time of the day.

Once the customer is in the store, their order value is also driven by what else makes them stay in the store-charging ports, Wi-Fi (in case it's a student group took the example of CCD Square on Janpath in CP).

How was my experience in McKinsey?

What was my McKinsey internship about?

What are some of the most prominent problems with Indian banking?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate] 

C: Quality of assets and lack of digitization.

I: Let's talk about digitization.

C: (Built this extensively from my internship, addressing pre-credit disbursal analytics, absence
of predictive capabilities for delinquencies/NPAs, sector level trend identification, SOPs for dealing with loans in 0-90 DPD (when the loan is classified as a delinquency), lack of integration between in-house databases and software, paper-based approvals, and filings.

Calculate the income given to housemaids in India in a month.
I took the household approach and considered tier-1, tier-2 and tier-3 cities. I incorporatedthe income of households and number of maids required.

For each tier, I used my personal experience of living at different places (which seemed to work in my favor)

• Q1. Tell me something about yourself.
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• Q2. After all your experiences, was coming going for an MBA a conscious/planned decision or a chance one?
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• Q3. Why consulting?
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• Q4. Why Accenture?
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• Q5. Do you have any questions for me?
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The client is contract apparel manufacturer with 10 factories, with nearly $1 Bn sales. The client wants to double the sales in next 4 years. How to go about it?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: Where is the client based out of and what is the extent of the business (domestically or globally)?

I: One of Southeast Asia's biggest firms, and supplies all over the world to brands like M&S, Gap, etc.

C: Where does the client supply location wise and where are the competitors located, if any?

I: Client supplies globally. The competition is located in other countries like China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc.

C: The client can grow sales through two approaches, either through extending the production and promotion of current line of apparels. Other would be to extend the line to other clothes which cost less (requiring less variation in style and type) such as coveralls, uniforms, etc. which are required for operations all over the world.

The client can also target more brands, new developing markets where there is a rising branded clothing consumption.

The interviewer tried probing for more solutions. I tried thinking of other measures (cannot recollect all), but eventually, told him that I cannot think of more solutions at the time.

(I had forgotten to mention inorganic growth options like M&A, JV, etc.).

• Q1. The questions were based on HR and my previous work experiences.
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• Q1. Tell me about yourself.
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• Q2. Walk me through your CV.
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• Q3. What do understand by working capital financing and what is the ideal working capital ratio for FMCG companies.
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• Q4. Detailed discussion around work-ex and internships.
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• Q5. If you met the CEO of a big MNC in a lift. He tells you that they have huge amount of cash lying idle and what should they do with it. (You have only 2 mins).
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• Q6. If the funds are idle for short term (then equity or debt market, as per risk taking capacity) or if long term (current production expansion or acquisition).
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• Q7. 3 best things you learned in MBA.
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• Q8. Why Consulting?
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• Q9. Why Accenture?
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• Q10. 3 best traits of a consultant.
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If you were to open a food truck in Civil Lines Area of Jaipur. How would you go about it?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate] 

C: Do we have any time or budget constraints?

I: No budget constraints and the client want to start operations as soon as possible.

C: Ok, does the client has any other food truck or any other business?

I: No.

C: What kind of cuisine does the client want to serve?

I: You need to tell the client that.

C: Ok, is the client planning to target any customer segment?

I: What type of customers do you think will come to a food truck?

C: According to me, mostly it would be students. But, since it a sort of posh area, another set of consumers can come from offices and the people living in Civil Lines (mostly limited to children & elderly). How does the competition scenario look like?

I: There are no other food trucks in the area.

C: So, majorly the competition would be from cafes and restaurants.

I: Do you think high end restaurants can also be potential competitors.

C: Not directly, as high-end restaurants and food truck will have different customer segments. For high end restaurants, customers would be majorly going late in the evening and for their ambience & comfort. However, food truck will attract people looking for a break or passers.

(After this the case turned in a discussion.)

Points discussed: Timing of operation: early morning (time for students to go to tuitions) to late evening (when people leave the offices).

Peak timing: Early morning (majorly students), late morning (employees going to offices), noon (office employees going for lunch), evening (children & tea break for employees).

Cuisine: Fast food, which does not require any sitting; like Poha, Kachori, Samosa, or Chinese food (Noodles, Manchurian), Momos, Pasta, Pizza, etc.

The client is an FMCG MNC and wants to digitize their operations. How should they go about it?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate] 

I: The client is an FMCG MNC and wants to digitize their operations.

C: What is the objective of digitization, is the client looking to digitize any particular process?

I: The major objective is to increase the controls and improve efficiency of operations. The digitization needs to be done for all the processes.

C: Is there any time or budget constraint?

I: No.

C: I would like to get some more information about the client like for how long they have been in operations, which geography do they operate in?

I: The company is pretty old, and they operate PAN India.

C: What are the products they deal in and at what stage of value chain does the client lie?

I: The client is a manufacturer & distributor of household supplies.

C: What is the customer segment, being targeted by the client?

I: All type of customers.

C: How does the competition scenario look like?

I: The client is the market leader and has 3 close competitors.

C: Okay, so just to reiterate the problem statement, the client is a manufacturer of household supplies, operating on PAN India level and wants to digitize the operations. Am I correct?

I: Yes.

C: I have divided the entire operations into 3 broader segments: Manufacturing (includes raw material acquisition to storing of finished goods in the warehouses), Distribution & Selling, Other Administrative functions like Finance, HR, IT, Administrative staff etc.

I: What all is included in the manufacturing segment?

C: I would like to break down manufacturing operation by the customer journey approach starting with raw material acquisition & logistics, manufacturing (including machines & equipment’s), warehousing of finished goods & outbound logistics.

I: Okay, just tell me 3 areas where you would digitize the manufacturing process?

C: Digitize the maintenance and ordering of raw materials, using biometrics or cards for maintaining log of the labor, digitizing the machines to ensure fix composition of raw material and reduced wastage & defective products.

I: Okay.

C: Should I move forward with distribution & selling piece?

I: Yes.

C: What is the distribution chain & model followed by the client and does the client has any online presence?

I: The client sells the products through C&FA (Carry & forwarding agents) and sells its product on Amazon.

C: Okay, we can divide the distribution & selling segment into direct sales, distribution through agent & wholesalers, online sales, which could be further divided into own website & third-party platform.

I: Which technology would be helpful in generating online sales?

C: I am not really sure, which particular technology as such would be helpful, but I can make a guess.

I: Go ahead.

C: Search engine optimization, data analytics.

• Q1. What was your daily work management (DWM)?
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• Q2. Introduce yourself and don't stop till we ask you to.
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• Q3. What do you see yourself as? Marketer, consultant, HR person, what exactly?
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• Q4. Give us 3-4 values basis which you function.
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• Q5. Tell us of some instances wherein you handled people and a lot of people management was required.
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• Q6. Justification of numbers on CV.
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• Q7. In-depth questions on all work-ex section.
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Imagine a situation on a shop floor wherein you see a defect in functioning or something which is malfunctioning; help us out with a detailed root cause analysis (RCA).
I used a scenario of oil leakage from a CNC machine and used 3 RCA tools: 5 Why analysis, Fishbone diagram and FMEA.

Types of poka-yokes and explain how exactly you can implement at least 4-5 varieties of poka-yokes at vendors location.
I gave one example each of implementation (end to end) of poka-yokes such as

1. Elimination poka-yoke

2. Replacement poka-yoke

3. Prevention poka-yoke

4. Facilitation poka-yoke

5. Detection poka-yoke

6. Mitigation poka-yok

There is demand in market, but the manufacturer is not able to supply the goods. Find probable reasons (raw material, manpower, logistics and financials are not the reasons).
I used value stream mapping, 4M-1T conditions, process capabilities and all 8 TPM pillars such as JH, QM etc.

• Q1. Tell me something about yourself.
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• Q2. Tell me about your past work experience (mostly on numbers that I mentioned).
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• Q3. Why do you want to join Accenture and why do you think consulting is the best fit for you?
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• Q4. What did a typical day in your life look like, in your previous organization?
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• Q5. Do you have any questions for us?
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• Q1. Introduce yourself.
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• Q2. Why Accenture? Why Consulting?
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• Q3. In depth questions about internship and live project. They asked how those things can be applied to some real-world problems.
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• Q4. About my reading hobby and a few follow up questions about Khaled Hosseini's books.
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• Q5. How was your internship at Microsoft?
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• Q6. If you would have met Satya Nadella in a lift and he asked you that Microsoft has a lot of cash and wants to spend the money. Suggest 5 ways in which he can, an...read more
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• Q7. What 5 things did you learn at your internship at Microsoft?
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• Q8. Tell me something about yourself and your family.
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• Q9. Where do you see yourself in 15 years?
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• Q10. What hidden agendas do you have that Accenture can help you achieve?
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Guesstimate the market size for an e-tailer selling plants, seeds, and pots for domestic gardens in Delhi. Then after the Guesstimate they asked me to come up with products that the e-tailer should sell
Asked a few clarifying questions about the business. Then did a standard guesstimate. Divided the population based on income and worked my way forward.

For different products, I again used consumer insights and what are the requirements of the consumer. And based on that suggested an exhaustive list of products.

Mitsubishi motors wants to enter into the auto-finance market in India. Should they or should they not?
I started with the CPCC framework. Then followed the market entry framework and tried to explain everything because the interviewer could not see my page as the interview was online. She asked me various grilling questions and came up with counter arguments.

Try to give some logical explanation and if completely cornered accept your mistake and correct it as per the suggestion.

This shows your honoring other's opinions and accepting your mistakes. After a long discussion, I suggested that they should not enter the market, after analyzing all the aspects of the Market-Entry framework.

Guesstimate the number of readers of an English men's health magazine in India.
The guesstimate was straight forward.

• Q1. Briefly walk us through your professional life.
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• Q2. Tell me more about this academic research project that you have mentioned in your CV.
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• Q3. What were the variables considered, tools used, modelling done, and conclusions drawn?
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• Q4. I see that you have been a part of the Marketing Cell at IIM Lucknow. Shed some more light on this. Is marketing your primary domain of interest?
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• Q5. Tell us about some of your learnings from team projects and individual assignments that you may have taken up during the course of your graduation.
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• Q6. How has your IIM Journey been so far?
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• Q7. Tell us a bit more about your role in the PORs that you have mentioned. How do you think they can help you while you aim to pursue a role in consulting?
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A firm that has 2 divisions. Each division produces 2 products, A and B. The first division is more profitable than the other, what is the reason for this?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: Sure, so the firm in consideration has 2 divisions with 2 products in each of them and we wish to find the reason for a greater profitability of the first division. Could I ask a few clarifying questions in order to understand the problem in hand?

I: Yes, go ahead.

C: I would want to know a little more about the company? Is it a new company or an established one? And about the divisions, is any one of them more recent?

I: The company is an established one and both divisions have been operating since inception. You can move on; the divisions are similar in terms of their product designs. You need not take the revenue cost approach here; it is a customer-centric case. To add in some information, the customers of the firm are government as well as private sector companies.

C: Oh, I see. On those lines, is there any particular division that each of these segments focus on?

I: They do buy a mix but one of the divisions sells imported products and one sells local made products.

C: Understandable. Considering the difference in imported and private products, I believe this is quite important as government sector would prefer buying local made products over the imported ones. Is there a difference in the prices offered by the divisions as well?

I: Yes, you can assume that.

C: Okay. So, I assume that the division with local made products would be selling a greater quantity to the government sector customers at a significantly lower price while the imported goods and services are comparatively costlier and procured majorly by the private customers. Assuming the quantity to be the same, this difference in price would be one of the major reasons for difference in profitability. In addition, we could also look at other factors.

I: That's alright, you arrived at the major reason.

1. A company has a manufacturing plant in Pune while it serves the customers in Gujarat. It wants to shift the plant to Sikkim. Could you highlight some key implications of the same?

2. A company has its marketing activities running across television, social media, blogs, websites etc. How can it optimize their marketing spend?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

I: Let us solve some cases. First, a general one and then one in marketing. Is that okay?

C: Sure.

I: A company has a manufacturing plant in Pune while it serves the customers in Gujarat. It wants to shift the plant to Sikkim. Could you highlight some key implications of the same?

C: There are various implications that the company would have in terms of business, economic, financial etc. but I would also want to know what is the reason of this shift? Are they planning to venture into another market or any such plans?

I: No, everything remains the same. Just that there have been certain issues with the Pune plant and want to relocate.

C: Alright. Considering the two locations are quite different geographically as well, firstly, there would be financial implications in terms of the costs associated with buying the land, machinery etc. The governmental norms may be different for operations, the technological requirements.

I: That is perfect, tell me a bit more on the cost side.

C: In terms of cost, the company needs to probably purchase a land, the price for which may be different as compared to Pune. It would then need to purchase the machinery and equipment. New licenses to operate would need to be bought. The labor charges and training charges would be different. All these could either be disposed of at Pune and a new set may be purchased at Sikkim or the same may be transported, both may have different implications, positive/ negative. Further on production, the costs incurred would be different to transport the goods and services to Gujarat would probably be more from Sikkim due to the distance and as per the inventory, further logistics cost shall be considered.

I: That seems enough, great. A quick question now: A company has its marketing activities running across television, social media, blogs, websites etc. How can it optimize their marketing spend? Just touch upon the points, you need to delve deep into any.

C: Oh sure. In order to optimize the marketing, spend, the company must proceed in three phases- Analyze, Plan and Spend. It should first analyze if the current expenditure on various media and channels are effective to their target customers they plan to reach and the forecasted response. This can be done by checking the TRP for televisions, number of visitors on websites, number of clicks on display and search ads and the revenue earned from the same.

Using the results of this analysis, planning needs to be done on understanding the improvements, switching of channels.

• Q1. Tell me something about yourself.
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• Q2. Why MBA?
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• Q3. Why Consulting and Accenture?
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• Q4. What industries is Accenture into?
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• Q5. What projects did I do at Citi and their overall business impact?
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• Q6. My preferable domain to work in Accenture Strategy.
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• Q7. Why Accenture?
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• Q8. Consulting seems glamorous but it is generally not. Would you be able to cope up with pressures and different Client Expectations?
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• Q9. Extra-curricular activities I am interested in.
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• Q10. Tell us more about your academic project carried out in Germany. How are Balance sheet, Cash Flow Statements and Income Statements related?
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DSO reduction for a client. Cost Pressure on Automotive Client. How do you go about it?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: Can you please elaborate what is DSO and what exactly does the client do?

I: DSO is the Days Sales Outstanding. The client is an auto manufacturer.

C: What is the objective of the client?

I: Client needs to reduce DSO from 50 to 40. What benefits can you think of?

C: Qualitatively, the benefits I could be, extra interest income that client could earn in 10 days, leaner working capital, no cash shortages and so on.

I: Okay, Great!

Our client is facing cost pressures. Help them.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: (Asked various scoping questions, using CPCC.)

I: It is an automotive client, serving distributors and various geographies in India.

C: Could you tell me about the revenue trends and other income if any.

I: Let us just focus on costs.

C: Just give me a moment to lay out the complete value chain of Cost.

I: Surely.

C: The value chain is - Procurement of Raw Material > Inbound Logistics > Manufacturing > Outbound Logistics > Post Purchase services. (I Asked various question in each of the parts.)

I: That's okay. You understand Value chain. We can close the case here.