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

• Q1. Introduction and quick review of CV.
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• Q2. Why MBA after almost 3 years of procurement consulting experience at GEP?
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• Q3. Why shift to consulting after engineering?
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• Q4. Questions about my work-experience (projects, clients, domains)?
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Estimate the number of 2-Wheeler Electric Vehicles for last-mile delivery of e-commerce packages in a township near Mumbai.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate] 

C: Could you please tell me a bit more about the township and the demographics?

I: You can assume a township close to Mumbai: Approximately 1000 acres with around 1 million population who belong to the middle-income group.

C: Understood. In this case, I would first like to estimate the demand for online orders and the delivery schedule (no. of last-mile deliveries per day).

(Calculated the number of orders using the demand-side approach)

As the population falls in the middle-income group, we can assume that they order online regularly. 1 M population -> 250 K households -> 3 orders/ month -> 750 orders per month -> Lead time per order (~3 days) -> Calculate number of deliveries per month.

Now, I would like to calculate the electric bike requirement based on the number of deliveries per day.

Considering an electric bike can deliver up to 30 packages per day in a closed township, we estimate the requirement for the electric two-wheelers.

I: Sure, this approach works, but do you think you could have used the e-commerce penetration rate to estimate the demand?

C: Yes, we could explore alternate approaches to arrive at a more accurate figure. Would you like me to look into it?

(This was a small guesstimate and was largely conversational as an extension of the earlier
HR discussion.)

• Q1. Give me a quick introduction about yourself.
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• Q2. You said you are into sports. What is the learning in life which you gain from it?
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• Q3. What makes you apply to this firm, given that you left it after working for 2 years?
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• Q4. Explain the work which you did in Deloitte as an Analyst. What kind of challenges did you face working with US based clients?
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• Q1. 1. Guess the total no. of order complaints placed on the major online food delivery service in the location of your choice. 2. Guess the total no. of executives...read more
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There is a financial company with data centers across three countries (USA, France, India) and the cost of the data centers have increase by 10% over the past 6 months? Help us to know the exact reasons for it. As a consultant, what kind of solutions would you propose to tackle this situation?
Initially, I enquired about the cost distribution of the data centers across the locations. It was uniform. Then I created multiple buckets for the reasons of cost in a data center:

1. Fixed Cost (rent of land: I shifted it to VC with long term aspect with the assumption of one-time establishment of the infrastructure).

2. Variable Cost (employee’s salary, maintenance, upgradation, security patches for data centers, power consumption) I further discussed and asked questions on all of these.

Then I used PESTEL framework. They asked more on the IT part of the costs, more on security patches, software upgradation charges, storage capacity and scalability. After this, I was asked to discuss on the solutions given the problem was scalability and maintenance cost. I talked about storage data on cloud using 3rd party services like AWS/Azure. I discussed the usability of it for a large company daily, the costs that it cuts and the new costs and tradeoffs if any and the long-term feasibility of it.

• Q1. Asked me to elaborate on 3 work-ex pointers, providing a brief overview of my internship, followed by my experience as a freelancer.
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• Q2. Asked me to summarize myself as a person, including my likes and dislikes.
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• Q3. A brief about my family & their traditional occupation was asked.
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• Q4. A question on strengths and weaknesses.
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• Q5. Overview of academic journey - ups and downs.
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• Q6. Questions on situational questions like a moment when I overcame resistance to accomplish something significant and an instance where I followed an unconvention...read more
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Guesstimate the no. of masks disposed-off daily in the city of Mumbai.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

I: Commercialization of a pharmaceutical drug in a new geography: how to go about it?

C: Clarified about geographies to be targeted, drug type, the targeted disease, the prevalence of the disease, innovator, or generic drug.

I: Asked me to summarize my approach.

C: Demand, supply, regulatory and pricing to be considered for an economical & seamless commercialization

I: How to estimate the size of the market (demand)?

C: Through disease prevalence, population size and the severity of the disease.

I: What factors to consider in supply?

C: Raw material cost (API is expensive and inhouse development can reduce the procurement cost), manufacturing plant and its operations, warehousing and distribution channels

I: What goes in regulatory approval?

C: FDA reviews the product development report before approving the launch of a drug, preclinical and clinical trials data also required.

I: What other factors?

C: Pricing such that the incurred R&D cost can be recovered basis projected demand. Launch generic version of the same drug if unaffordable in underdeveloped countries. Covered product life cycle of an innovator drug.

I: Further cross questioning on drug patent and other stakeholders involved in the launch.

Commercialization of a pharmaceutical drug in a new geography: aspects to consider?
I covered demand, supply, regulatory and pricing aspects.

Quickly run me through your CV.

Tell me about a time when you were able to step into a group, take charge, get support, and bring about excellent results.

a, What information did you seek out to make those decisions in this project?

b, Did you receive any feedback or provide any feedback to the team members during the project?

Can you think about a time when you thought there could be a better way of doing things and you thought of an improvement to an existing idea or process that made it significantly better?

Give me an example of a time when you changed the direction of a project that resulted in a reduction of time or costs.

Give me an example of a situation where you had to overcome major obstacles to make something important happen.

What were the kind of results you were able to deliver?

Tell me about a time when you were able to develop and maintain productive relationships while working with others even though you may have had different points of view.

You have found a way to improve an important and difficult procedure that has been in place for many years in the organization. You would want to share this change which will improve the procedure but you sense that others will oppose this improvement. How would you deal with this situation?

Tell me about a time when you had to suddenly implement a change so as to get better results for the project.

Why did you follow this approach?

Tell me about a time when you had some conflicts in the workplace and how did you go about diffusing the situation?

Did you not have guidelines from HR? Did you follow those?

Give me an example of a time when you had to work on something new an innovative. How did you manage to perform in the situation?

What were the risks involved in your approach?

Tell me about a time when midway through the project, you had to go through a change in project objectives. How did you go about dealing with this change?

Give me an example of a time when during an assignment you had to go through a change in roles and responsibilities.

How will you go about achieving results for 4 separate projects due at different timelines – 1 is due tomorrow, 1 is due next week, 1 is due in 1 month and 1 is due in 1 year?

1. Do you perceive any setbacks in this situation which may deter you at all?

2 .How would you ensure a positive outcome to the situation?

You are working on a deliverable which is due in 1 week but suddenly your manager says that the deliverable needs to be ready by day after tomorrow. How do you go about in this situation.

• Q1. Why does P&G use a behavioral and HR based interview system in its recruiting process?
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• Q1. Give me a quick introduction about yourself. Why MBA? Why do you want to pursue a career in consulting?
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• Q2. What are the challenges that you have been facing in this virtual learning phase and how have you managed to overcome that? What would be your preferred work lo...read more
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• Q3. What were your roles and responsibilities at Mu Sigma? Walk me through a project that you have worked on during your tenure at Mu Sigma. Few questions around ch...read more
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• Q4. How did you on board sponsors for your college fest? What were the responsibilities you handled as the Secretary of Dance Club at NIT Warangal?
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State the effects, advantages, and disadvantages of teleportation. What industries do you think will be impacted the most by this?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: I think teleportation will have an impact on several industries. If the teleportation technology is inexpensive, it will have an impact on automobile industry, aviation, and hospitality. Teleportation can emerge as an alternate to conventional modes of transport and find applications in travel and hospitality.

I: Alright. What do you think will be the biggest challenge in this case?

C: The biggest challenge will be the application of this technology and how to make it inexpensive. The more expensive the technology is, the more difficult its access would be.

I: I agree to what you are suggesting. What are the major risks associated with this technology?

C: The risks associated with this technology include safety and security. The industries that will see the maximum impact will be automobile, travel, and hospitality.

• Q1. Tell me about yourself.
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• Q2. A question on my overall experience at both the companies I worked at previously.
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Client is global IT company who is facing problem with revenues from new client. Please help.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

After the initial introduction, there was a small conversation on industries which she works on.

I: I have given a case from the industry which I specialize. If you want, we can do a case from some other industry.

C: I can try. Can I ask questions about processes specific to the industry, wherever relevant?

I: Sure, I will help you with industry specific practices.

C: Reiterated the problem statement and asked Preliminary questions (CPCC), questions relevant to the case, how long the problem has persisted? The definition of revenue from new clients (First year revenue). Any particular geography which is facing the issue? Revenue generation from old client’s v/s new clients? Any particular service industry facing this problem and Competitive landscape.

I: Problem has been there for 6 years now. No specific location assumes any one region and team working there. The revenue generation is 99% from existing clients and 1% from new logos. Problem with every vertical (Industry served by the IT company). Company is growing with the market, but new client revenue is sub-par comparing with the major Competitors.

C: My overall approach would be look at the client acquisition team as a separate entity from the company and look at the structure and hierarchy of the team and the human resources (Ability and Willingness), approach followed by the team while dealing with the prospective clients, and lastly the integration between the both the teams.

I: Sounds fair. Client acquisition employees are generally called hunters. So, the team has Junior hunters, Senior hunters, and Team leader. The team leader reports to the vertical heads.

C: Talking about the division of work, I assume that the junior hunter generally research on the prospective clients, prepares pitches and the senior hunter leads the client interactions? Further, talking about the Ability in terms of qualification, job fit and attrition and also in terms of number of hunters & Willingness in terms of monetary and non-monetary factors. Do you want me to dive deep into either of the factors?

I: Junior hunters are involved in client interactions too. No problem with Ability. We can discuss about the willingness aspect later in the case.

C: Sure, Should I look at the approach followed by the team?

I: Can you elaborate?

C: I will try to analyze the buckets such as Lead generation and targets, vertical expertise of the hunters, resources allocation and sharing with the main team (Integration).

I: There is no set procedure for lead generation. The hunters get leads from farmers (Who have contacts and leads). The farmers are not formal employees of the company but are friends with the hunters. No problem with resource sharing, but the integration is a problem.

C: I could identify few problems here. 1) Lack of formal structure in place which leads to haphazard targeting. 2) Single channel of lead generation and that too informal, 3) Integration problem could be that the client acquisition team is neglected by the vertical heads as they might concentrate on the existing clientele since the revenue share is pretty high.

I: Right, these are few of the problems. However, I want to you to find the reason why the same is happening.

C: Okay, sure. (Confused, as the interview was going well and now the interviewer wanted me to change the course of thinking).

I: Think on a considerably basic level, one aspect which has led to the problems mentioned above.

C: Any particular aspect?

I: Revenue formula.

C: So the Revenue would number of clients multiplied by the average revenue. Has there been a dip in the number of clients through these years?

I: There has been an increase, in fact.

C: Bringing in the quality aspect here. New logos have been increasing but total revenue is not picking up which might be due to the ticket size from new clients.

I: Right, link it to the salary aspects of the hunters.

C: The salary of the hunters would be comprising of fixed, variable and bonus component. Starting with variable and bonus component. Looking at the trend and revenue generation from the new clients, I assume that the bonus component is linked with the number of clients rather than the size?

I: Great, can you give few recommendations?

C: Streamlining the process, information sharing from the teams working with the existing clients to know the industry trends which might help in targeting new clients, Salary structure, where bonus and also the variable component is linked to the size, progressive variable pay policy. (Tried explaining which would be applicable in the short term and long term but interrupted as the interview was already over 45 minutes)

Growth Strategy for a net manufacturer.

The case was more in terms of idea generation and also the approach followed during a guesstimate.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: Asked the Preliminary questions. The relevant facts were that the major product line was the fishing nets, and the case was about fishing nets.

I would approach the problem by looking at the equation, Revenue= Quantity sold X Average Price, I would first look at the Pricing Strategy in terms of demand elasticity of the agricultural nets.

I: Explain more on Elasticity.

C: If the demand for our product is inelastic, an increase in price would increase our revenue and if the demand is elastic, a decrease would increase our overall revenue.

I: Fair enough. Go ahead.

C: In terms of quantity sold, I would evaluate the options in terms of a 2x2 matrix, keeping product offering on one axis and market on another axis (Ansoff matrix). Further, I would analyze the value chain from production to distribution to check for any bottlenecks.

I: Why Value chain? Cost is never a problem; we just have to look at the top line.

C: Analyzing the value chain to see if there are ways to enhance production capacity to meet demands which are not satisfied currently.

I: Right, no problem with fulfilment of demand. And now we are talking about demand, can you estimate the market size for fishing nets in India.

C: Sure, I would first try to lay out the approach and look for reduction factors and come up with a number.

I: Okay.

C: Since our target audience are fishermen, from the 130 million population, I would eliminate half of the population looking at the geography of the country (southern half) assuming symmetry. Out of the remaining area, assuming 25% being the coastal region where fishing is done. I would add 20% of the fishing in coastal region to arrive at inland fishing.

I: You can ignore inland fishing.

C: Of the population, I would split it in terms of occupation. (Agriculture, Manufacturing, and Services). Around 60% of the population is involved in agriculture and similar activities. Out of which I am again assuming around 60% to be involved in Fishing and related activities. Now I would divide the population in terms of number of people per household and arrive at the households involved in fishing. Calculating this...

I: That is fine. We are short on time, summarize the case.

C: Summarized.

Client is Pipe manufacturer. We need to reduce the cost by 150 crores. A. Growth Objects: Historically, the company had 8 - 10% growth. New target is 5%.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: Before asking question would want to know which type of pipes and the base which we are looking at.

I: Good Question. We produce pipes to transport oil and gas to consumers and hence the costs are extremely high, around 6000 cr.

C: Asked the preliminary questions. No important facts as such.

I: What are the heads under which you would categorize the costs.

C: Material, labor, machine, production methods. Any particular category to focus upon.

I: Let us talk about material. Our raw material constitutes around 60% of the cost. Steel which we bend and make the rolls for our pipe is 95% of our raw material.

C: I will start looking at the procurement process currently and try to find potential optimization methods.

I: We procure for the entire year in one shipment currently.

C: Do we have possibility to alter this, as we might be saving on inventory costs.

I: Inventory is not a problem. But we can break the total order in multiple orders. Efficiency and utilization are an issue. But if we have the liberty to order as many times as possible, we like, what should be the number according to you. Like 1,2,3, 4 or maybe even more?

C: I would go with 2 as we can assess efficiency from the first order and order according and saving on transportation.

I: Great. Should I order 80% in the first or 20% in the first?

C: Should be 80% as would have safety margins and reduce stock out costs as it might disrupt the entire process.

I: Sure. Doing this we can reduce the steel cost by 2%. Can you come up the number?

C: Sure. 60% of 6000 would be the cost of raw material, which is 3600 and 2% of which is 72cr. (Instantly realizing that I missed the 95% part). Sorry, did not factor the 95%, factoring in would come to be around...

I: That is completely fine. Number is secondary.

• Q1. Tell me something about yourself, your biggest achievement.
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• Q2. Tell me something interesting in your life recently.
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• Q3. Tell me about your hometown.
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• Q4. Do you follow politics? Who's Guntur’s(hometown) MP? How did he win when he is not in the ruling party? If you are his upcoming campaign manager, how would you ...read more
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• Q5. What are the 3 things you liked about the Deloitte USI? Any suggestions or improvements?
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• Q6. Tell me something about the toughest project you have worked on and your contribution in it.
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• Q7. How was your previous work experience at Oracle? Was it good? If yes, why did you leave it in these unprecedented times?
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Your client is a pharma company and is willing to optimize its IT infrastructure because of COVID-19. They have 6 data centers out of which 2 are critical. And have around 10 internal applications. How would you optimize it?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

I: You seem to have some experience in cloud. Do you have any preference in what type of case you want to do in cloud? Like scaling up, cost cutting etc.

C: Yes, most recently I have worked on a project to migrate to cloud. So, anything related to cloud migration would be great.

I: Sure.

C: I observe that two Data Centers (DC) are critical and the rest four DCs are not. So, we can migrate them to cloud and scale them according to our needs. This is with the DC part.

I: We would like to know the steps of how you do that.

C: Identify which 4 need to be migrated, check the capacity they need, negotiate with all vendors like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and go with the one with the most competitive price. Sometimes the vendors help in data migration so the data center migration will be taken care.

I: Is that it? Is nothing else required?

C: With respect to DCs I cannot think of anything else in this moment. But we must build the links to the applications with the migrated DCs.

I: Exactly! How would you go about it?

C: Can I assume there are around 10 applications in the company which we want to focus on? Like ERP, CRM, HCM, Salary applications and HR applications etc.?

I: You need not classify them, just assume there are 10 out of which 4 are critical, 4 non-critical, 2 are not at all critical. C: If our client wants to show the progress to their higher management, I would like to start with the biggest application so that they can show a big impact in the first few months.

• Q1. Give me a quick introduction about yourself.
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• Q2. Are you aware of the DevOps cycle?
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• Q3. I was asked about my experience of working in a startup and how would that be different from working at Deloitte?
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• Q1. Estimate the market demand for iPhone 12 in India.
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There is a retail company that has been growing tremendously for the last few years. Recently, there has been an increase in the data center costs. As the data centers are old, there have been a lot of outages lately. The owner has heard a lot about cloud technology from his friends and is thinking of moving to cloud. Should he make this decision? What will be the cost of moving to cloud?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: Where is the company located?

I – India.

C: What is the size of the company and the user base?

I: Like Flipkart.

C: About outages - if it is a trend or a seasonal issue?

I: Seasonal/ Promotional.

C: Since it is not a consistent issue, the company can consider moving to cloud as it allows the flexibility to upscale/ downscale storage as per requirement. If the company increases the data storage at the current data center, that might become redundant at other times of the year, hence incurring him extra costs.

I: Alright.

C: What is the infrastructure/platform of the data center?

I: Why do you want to know that?

C: This would have a huge impact on my decision to move to cloud. Certain cloud platforms are not compatible with some technologies. For example - AWS does not support Mainframe applications and Unix based applications. They need to be refactored and re-platformed respectively to perform the migration. Since you mentioned the data centers are quite old, they might be using one of these (obsolete) technologies.

I: Fair enough. What are the other considerations?

C: I would want to do a cost-benefit analysis of moving to cloud vs having an in-house setup with regular maintenance. I would also look at the current employee expertise, data security and compliance issues, also the number of applications that we are
looking to move to the cloud.

I: Let us talk about the last point more. What do you mean?

C: Say, we have multiple small applications which are not in use anymore, we might not want to move those to cloud, rather do away with them or integrate them. Basically, do a suitability and a financial analysis.

I: Let us talk about the costs now. What are the different costs involved in an in-house setup vs on cloud in terms of capital costs and operating costs?

C: Mentioned some costs under both the headers stating the rationale behind them:

Capital costs - Hardware & Labor Costs,
Operating costs - Maintenance Costs.

• Q1. Tell me about yourself.
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• Q2. Why the trajectory of going to IIM Lucknow after Matrix?
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• Q3. What did you do yesterday apart from preparation?
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Your client is "CFA" a credit card issuer based in UK & West Europe. They are involved in issuing & servicing of credit cards. Currently are the 2nd largest player. 90% of the customers are retail consumers and 10% are small businesses. Further, CFA divides the customers as 'revolvers' and 'convenience'. Revolvers carry a balance & pay interest; Convenience customers pay the balance every month (i.e., do not default). They have built a strong reputation for consumer service. However, they are currently facing a decline in profitability over past 5 years.

We need to look into the reason and suggest a strategy for the same.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate] 

C: (Clarified the problem statement, all the points mentioned by the interviewer and the objective)

I would like to understand what function comes under servicing of a credit card: is it payments, partnerships?

I: Yes, servicing is basically end-to-end payments.

C: Alright, also, do they offer multiple types of credit cards for example a premium version, exclusive version etc.?

I: No, just one credit card.

C: Okay. The decline in profitability was seen just by CFA or was it an industry wide issue?

I: This was just limited to CFA.

C: Got it. I think I have all information I need to approach the case at hand. In case I need more information, I'll ask that as and when we are solving.

Now, I would like to take a minute to lay down my approach.

I: Sounds good.

C: (Made my approach chart, laid down the revenue & cost approach)

I: This looks good. However, I have some numbers with me that I would like for you to look and make sense out of it.

(Showed the following Exhibit)

Avg. customer tenure: 3 (5 years ago)
2 (Now)

Customer servicing cost: $3/customer/month (5 years ago)
$3/customer/month (Now)

Revolvers:-

Revenue: $1800 (5 years ago)
$1200 (Now)

Percentage of total customer: 50% (5 years ago)
40% (Now)

Acquisition cost: $50 (5 years ago)
$100 (Now)

Convenience:-

Revenue: $360 (5 years ago)
$240 (Now)

Percentage: 50% (5 years ago)
60% (Now)

Acquisition cost: $50 (5 years ago)
$100 (Now)

C: I'll just take a moment to note down these numbers & analyze these numbers.

Are these revenue & cost numbers per customer?

I: Yes.

C: Alright, so what I can see is that Avg. customer tenure has reduced and so has the Revenue across segment.

However, the CAC (customer acquisition cost) has increased. Even the share of the customer segment has changed. With this data, I would like to calculate the difference in profit from a customer 5 years ago vs today.

(Calculated profit for revolver & convenience individually 5 years ago, then took an avg.
Similarly, for today and took a weighted avg.)

(Numbers: 5 years ago, average profit CFA was earning: $922; Today: $452)

(Made sure to keep the interviewer in loop with my formula and then calculations)

I: This looks great! Let's sum up the case.

C: Yes, sure. So, we can see that overall, the profits have gone down. The points of issue seem to be the following: 2x increase in overall CAC, 33% decrease in the average tenure of a typical customer and percentage of convenience customers has increased. All this affects the profitability.