Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow
Your seniors at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow helped you with their notes. Now they're helping you with their placement interview questions. 🙏
Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow
Your seniors at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow helped you with their notes. Now they're helping you with their placement interview questions. 🙏
I applied via Campus Placement
Your client is a bank issuing thin file cards that wants to launch them in another geography. How will you go about it?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]
C: Asked clarifying questions, Geographical Location? New geography within the country or another country? Objective? More about the product- how are they different from credit cards? Other offerings by the bank? Launch for all the offerings or just thin file cards? Any specific location that the client has already in favor?
I: India, want to expand to some other country, objective was to expand and increase customer base. The card functions like a credit card except for the initial limit offered on a thin file card is quite less which is subsequently improved based on the usage. Mainly launch for only thin file cards. No specific location.
C: I drew the structure which had 4 components and gave a brief overview of each of the element relevant in each component-
a. Country Selection (PESTLE): Political factors, legal factors, technological factors, and economic factors,
b. Industry Analysis (Porter's 5 forces): Competition, Substitutes and Buyers,
c. Market estimation,
d. The logical sequence of events.
I: Reiterated the structure and was convinced with the flow. Asked me to focus on market estimation, what will be the main idea behind the estimation- can US be taken as an example.
C: Gave a brief that the main benefit will be in a country where income is sufficient that people do not opt for loans/ credits and it is thus difficult to ascertain the credit history of the population which will divert them towards thin file cards. A country like US would be the right way to go for it.
I: Was convinced with the reasoning and asked me to go ahead with the structure of the estimation.
C: Went ahead with the standard % division based on the income level with the focus on the upper level and middle-income group of the total population.
I: What excites you about Mastercard?
C: Talked about the focus on the booming payments industry.
I applied via Campus Placement
You are the consultant of a South Asian Company which provides different cards to companies, however, recently their profits in the travel card vertical are going down. How would you identify the potential clients which we can approach to increase our profits?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]
I: Travel card vertical is where they provide travel cards to the companies which distribute it to employees for their daily travels/ trips /business travels. How would you go about identifying potential companies where we can increase our revenues?
C: Talked about Macro factors based on which new trends and insights can be obtained and potential companies can be identified.
I: That's fine and that is for gaining new companies into the portfolio. How would go about identifying the potential companies from the current portfolio?
C: Talked about various aspects like financial insights and on the basis of size, revenue and growth rate of different industries clubbed together.
I applied via Campus Placement
A low-cost airline has 20% profit margin and 5 million as revenue. Their costs comprise of 2 components: fuel and non-fuel. The fuel component is half of the non-fuel component. Calculate the fuel cost.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]
C: Confirms that profit margin is (R-C)/R and proceeds to calculate.
I: Now if the fuel prices are set to increase by 10%, what would be the new profit margin?
C: Calculated.
I: Now can you suggest if the airline should continue operating or shut down because of rise in fuel prices?
C: Explained that since the airlines are still profitable, they should continue to run.
I: Let us look at ways they can increase their profitability.
C: Broke down the whole profitability framework and listed all possible options.
I applied via Campus Placement
Suppose you're a manager at Panasonic and the sales for the Panasonic hair straightener is falling. State the plausible reasons for the same.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]
C: I stated various marketing, demand, supply, online-offline mode and payment related reasons. I emphasized on credit/debit cards here to make an impression of my understanding of the industry.
I: Follow up questions related with each head and my opinion to overcome them. However, no specific emphasis was given on the card-payment system.