Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad
Hyderabad, Telangana
Your seniors at Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad helped you with their notes. Now they're helping you with their placement interview questions. 🙏
AmbitionBox
Search
Reviews
- Reviews
- Salaries
- Interview Questions
- About Company
- Benefits
- Jobs
- Office Photos
- Community
Filter interviews byIndian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad Placement Interview Questions
Updated
22 Sep 2024
228 interviews found
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. Prepare the technology strategy for a PSU National Oil Company
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by asking what is the time frame: Answer – over next 10/20 years
• Proposed to evaluate the following to get the right context:
o Company
o Customers
o Employees
o Industry
o Regulation
o Competition
• Moved on to talk about industry: Industry is characterized by environmental challenges and technology is critical in exploration
• Understood the value chain in the industry
• Consumers want energy at cheapest cost – increasingly want clean energy
• Talked about company and business goals: Wants to be a global player and develop a leadership in energy space
• Finally identified that the company is dependent mainly on Oil and not much other reserves.
• Divided the tech strategy into two areas: Optimize what we have and Explore new
• Under optimize: Improve current yield and invest in tech to do that
• Under new sources: Invest in solar, wind etc.
• I started listing some possible technologies when the case ended.
Tips: Questions can be of strategic nature where the interviewer is trying to test your big thinking skills and not necessarily your analytical skills.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: I started by asking what is the time frame: Answer – over next 10/20 years
• Proposed to evaluate the following to get the right context:
o Company
o Customers
o Employees
o Industry
o Regulation
o Competition
• Moved on to talk about industry: Industry is characterized by environmental challenges and technology is critical in exploration
• Understood the value chain in the industry
• Consumers want energy at cheapest cost – increasingly want clean energy
• Talked about company and business goals: Wants to be a global player and develop a leadership in energy space
• Finally identified that the company is dependent mainly on Oil and not much other reserves.
• Divided the tech strategy into two areas: Optimize what we have and Explore new
• Under optimize: Improve current yield and invest in tech to do that
• Under new sources: Invest in solar, wind etc.
• I started listing some possible technologies when the case ended.
Tips: Questions can be of strategic nature where the interviewer is trying to test your big thinking skills and not necessarily your analytical skills.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Referral
3 Interview Rounds
Interview Questions
- Q1. Tell me something about yourself
- Q2. How was your ISB experience?
- Q3. Why consulting?
- Q4. “We did some consulting project for our telecom client some time ago. The client was serving broadband internet to corporate clients with high speed connections...read more
- Q5. “Our client is a cement manufacturer and wants to increase profitability per ton. Lets solve the clients problem
- Q6. “A cement company looking to reduce costs. How will we do it?”
- Q7. “I hope you must have read the news on Tata’s successful foray in to the 1L car. It has been talked about a lot and has got lot of CEOS world wide thinking abou...read more
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: HR Interview
Experience: These were typical ice breaking questions. She didn’t dwell into too many details of any of my responses. We immediately started discussing my ELP on increasing internet penetration in India.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I: As I am aware the value chain of providing the broadband service includes a. IXP b. Backbone rings and bandwidth c. Backbone routers/equipments d. Last mile connections Is this understanding correct? Seema: Yes I: And is our client present in all the bits of these value chain? Seema: Currently they are present in all the parts of the value chain. I: However you mentioned that they are serving corporate clients alone, so I assume their backbone might not be spread a lot? Can you give me some more details on what is their current spread at two levels? a. In what cities are they currently present? b. In each of the cities how is their backbone scaled up? Seema: They are present in 12 cities. (tier-1 cities). They have several backbone rings present in each of these cities to serve the corporate clients. (She scribbles and explains a bit more about the clients backbone) I: Ok. Are we looking for any time frame in mind or any financial constraints? Also, is client a conglomerate – I am trying to figure out the capabilities of the client. Also does the client have any minimum required rate of return from the project? Seema: No for all the questions. Lets not get into details of the numbers of required rate etc. Let us just discuss on what are things you are going to consider in helping the client. I: Because we are talking about broadband connections, we must focus on the number of internet connection market in India. There are 150 internet users in India. However there are only 50million PCs in India. Now because each PC will have only one connection 50 million is true market size. 30-70 rural-urban (tier-1) spit and 60-40 corporate-retail split leaves about 14mn as a potential retail market. The will like to consider the following: Customer Reach Company - PC Users -> Laying backbone -> Financing, structuring,etc Awareness -> Last mile -> Operations -- Content Language -> Pockets with in city -> capabilities -- Availability of content -- Ease of use Willingness --Price --Use/Need --Perception External factors included: Regulations: Getting licenses Competition: Internet penetration in the 14mn is presently low. I used some pointers from my ELP findings like Chinese perceive that using computer is very easy vs Indian perception that only skilled ones can use the computers. Some major points of discussion were: a innovative revenue model which we recommended as part of our ELP, and option of bundling services, expanding market by creating a resale market of 2nd hand PCs. After a discussion on the customer part, we talked about how to reach customers. There are two broad ways of doing the network bit. Organic and inorganic. Issues like network sharing, BVNO, cable TV like models for last mile connections were discussed but it was arrived at that scope of doing these was either limited or not possible. Organic was the only possibility of doing this. The retail market is sparse, requires lot of investment, especially in last mile connections. Also some profitable pockets are already occupied by the competition like BSNL, Bharti etc. Given the sparse market, high setup costs and unpredictable returns it doesn’t make sense in entering the market.
Tips: Connect your thoughts with the interviewer.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I:Why profitability per ton? Why would CEO bother about profitability per ton. Shouldn’t he be focusing on total profits or share price? R: We are talking about making changes in a year and therefore only profitability per ton can be changed. We cannot do much with quantity itself. I: Right. Could you please tell me where does client manufacture and where does it sell? R: It is a pan India producer with 14-15 plants and sells through out India. I: So how are the customers classified. I would divide them into Retail and Industrial customers. Is that how company does it? R: Yes. Let us focus only on retail clients. Bulk of the business happens through them. I: ok. How do we reach our customers? R: There are distributors who sell it to the customers. I: In terms of geography, are the profits homogenous? R: No. South there is excess supply and up north there is excess deman. I: Ok. Competition? R: 3-4 regional players around every plant and 3-4 other large national players I: How are we doing visavis industry in terms of profits? Any targets in mind? R: We are on par with the industry. Lets aim for 5-10% increase in 1 year. I: Profitability per ton = Unit price – Variable cost – unitized Fixed cost Increasing profitability will mean increasing prices or reducing costs. At this time he led the conversation into increasing price part, although I had written appropriate drivers for cost like DM, DL, Transportation, IM, IL, etc) I: To increase the price: I guess cement is a undifferentiated product and therefore commodity. R: Right. So how can you increase prices? Prices are different in each region. I: Can we look at differentiating the cement (on product dimension) or on relationship dimension and therefore command high prices? R: No. Cannot do that, its commodity. I: I draw 1 plant, some distributors around it and large circles around each distributor. These circles are their markets and each market has different prices) Price is decided by D-S curves. We need to maximize the profit/ton for each region or the following: Max(ΣPi-VCi) (i for all markets) R: Ok so what are the constraints? I: Plant capacity (cannot change this in 1 year), competition, market demand (cannot change that) R: Ok. I: @ Each plant to maximize the profit/ton, I will just sell it to the market with the highest profit. But this will reduce total profits ☺R: Smiles....right! I: So instead of maximizing profit/ton, we must look at cutting out non-profitable markets. That is instead of absolute maximum, just eliminate markets where profits are below acceptable levels. R: Ok. But do we not want to look at what can be done here in low profit markets? I: Right. Take some time Ultimately prices must increase. We cannot change demand. But we can play with our mix in the supply (which is also constant for the next 1 year). I: Draw a 2x2 matrix: Us (strong, weak) vs Competition(Strong, weak) Where we are strong and the competition is weak, we can drive them out easily and play with prices Where we are weak and competition is strong, we either exit or consolidate with other players to drive 3rd player out. Where both are weak, we need to send credible signal to competition to drive them away or collude with them,Then I blabber some stuff on what kind of credible signals can be given to the competition When both are strong, it is pretty straight forward anyways. Then I make a few recommendations on preventing volume/price fluctuation by long term contracts, on vertical integration etc.
Tips: Know the interviewer well and connect with the interviewer well. Ask him about what he did in the case, how he did, etc.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I am not describing this case in detail because we simply did some value chain analysis. Nothing right/wrong happened during the interview, barring her 6-8 calls and emails After the interview I was thinking that BCG is a history for me, given the level of disinterest she showed throughout the interview.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This was a very opened case. Also I don’t think I really had any idea of what he wanted me to discuss/solve. I tried to scope down the problem.> I: So tata has come up with this 1L car, and as the CEO of ReVA (I was thinking about the battery operated car, popular in Del/Bangalore) what should I do??? (I was like ok....a game theory case!)A: Nope, we are talking about Renault – the European car manufacture. I: Ok. Could you give me a little head’s up on Renault and its operations ? A: It is a Global player, has presence in all the parts of the value chain, makes cars in various segments. (I have just summarized his description) I: Have we started working towards a similar 1L Car? A: Reva has announced working on a $250 car. It has done little R&D and will take 5 years to launch. I: Alright. Tata has created a new market for cars. The CEO of Renault must be thinking about this in two ways – opportunity and threat. And what CEO must act taking in mind short term and long term. Do we consider all the four possibilities? A: Right way of looking at it. Lets look at all the four options. My structure: (I took like a minute for this as I wasn’t sure if that’s what he wanted) Customer Distribution Company Segments -> Distribution capabilities -> Financing, structuring,etc Needs -> Last mile -> R&D Perception -> Suppliers Preferences Capabilities Price Product External factors included: Regulations: Getting licenses, Pollution aspects Competition: A: Jitesh, why don’t you discuss as you come up with your structure. I: A: That’s alright. But this is gonna happen one the R&D of the car is over. Let us say this is long term. Now what can Renault do? I: Ok we can look at ways of speeding up R&D or pairing with others in the market to co-R&D? A: R&D will take 5 years...cannt play with that. I: Tata has created a new market. Let us treat this thing an opportunity first. Now because we can come into the market only after 5 years, we must look at ways of slowing down the growth of the market so that we can tap into this opportunity at the right time. (I drew 2 S curves with different kurtosis.) We can slow the growth by providing them alternate modes of conveyance @ same or less price! A: That’s good. Alright lets see how can we do that! I: .o0(Finally the first step in right direction ☺ ) Ppl generally use the cars to commute. 1L car users are likely to use it for local commuting. If we can provide substitutes to them, it will be good to slow down the market. The modes of public transportation are Buses, Cars, Trains, 2W (in the same price range) A: Good. So? A: Reva is also into 4W (high end buses). I: Right so, if Reva can help local tier 1/2 municipalities/govt. by establishing the public bus transport system, it will do the trick. I am not sure if we can play any role in Rail transports. We can rope in other players too (who are looking to play role in this market, but have capabilities in this area – Rail and 2W). A: What else can be done here? : 2nd hand market? A: Right! I: Some thing along the lines of true value of maruti. We must ease creation of resale markets for cars. A: Why do you think if may work? I: This business is largely unorganized. Price and credibility will come with Renault brand. But Renault is a small player in the Indian market. (Presence wise) so it must rope in other global players along with it. Also, it must look at getting 2nd hand cars from international markets, if the cost works out, coz I am aware that most of the used cars are dumped in the likes of USA. A: The import duties are likely to be very high. I: But as a lobby of the MNCs, both in India and outside, we can influence Govt Decisions. A: Thik hai. What else? I: We have looked at how do we impact their timing. However these kind of steps might be irreversible and therefore CEO must carefully weigh options. The market may permanently shrink by providing them a substitute where in getting out is not possible. (Like public transport service) One needs to be at the right time at right place with right product. We need to look at how can we block their distribution. They already have a right product (given that their production is underway) A: Right. I: I assume that in India they have their own outlets (single brand). Yes. So I am not sure if much can be done on the distribution front. However in the global markets, we need to erect barriers for Tata’s entry. This can be done at two levels. a. Get higher tarrifs/taxes by lobbying in the government. b. We are already large players globally. We need to prevent Tata from entering the market by blocking the distribution networks (They don’t have their own shops, and we can get others to block their alliances) A: Ok. Good so far, what else? I: We checked the time, distribution?...We need to see if we can control their volumes! (Right product to right customers @ right place in right quantity) A: Good...how will you do it? I: They are sourcing their raw materials from some global vendor. Renault is a large player and will have larger partners eyeing similar opportunity. We can get together and erect barriers for souring of components/raw materials to Tata. A: Ok. This was the opportunity part, how do we analyze this as threat? I : So Tata has created a new market. The threat are as follows: a. Tata dominates new market 5 years down the line b. Customer from our segment moves into tata’s segment A: What else? I: c. Tata can protect the technology with patents, which hampers our R&D d. Uses its technology to launch high end low cost products in our segments and erode our profits!! (d. was the biggest threat and the answer that he was looking for) .
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: These were typical ice breaking questions. She didn’t dwell into too many details of any of my responses. We immediately started discussing my ELP on increasing internet penetration in India.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I: As I am aware the value chain of providing the broadband service includes a. IXP b. Backbone rings and bandwidth c. Backbone routers/equipments d. Last mile connections Is this understanding correct? Seema: Yes I: And is our client present in all the bits of these value chain? Seema: Currently they are present in all the parts of the value chain. I: However you mentioned that they are serving corporate clients alone, so I assume their backbone might not be spread a lot? Can you give me some more details on what is their current spread at two levels? a. In what cities are they currently present? b. In each of the cities how is their backbone scaled up? Seema: They are present in 12 cities. (tier-1 cities). They have several backbone rings present in each of these cities to serve the corporate clients. (She scribbles and explains a bit more about the clients backbone) I: Ok. Are we looking for any time frame in mind or any financial constraints? Also, is client a conglomerate – I am trying to figure out the capabilities of the client. Also does the client have any minimum required rate of return from the project? Seema: No for all the questions. Lets not get into details of the numbers of required rate etc. Let us just discuss on what are things you are going to consider in helping the client. I: Because we are talking about broadband connections, we must focus on the number of internet connection market in India. There are 150 internet users in India. However there are only 50million PCs in India. Now because each PC will have only one connection 50 million is true market size. 30-70 rural-urban (tier-1) spit and 60-40 corporate-retail split leaves about 14mn as a potential retail market. The will like to consider the following: Customer Reach Company - PC Users -> Laying backbone -> Financing, structuring,etc Awareness -> Last mile -> Operations -- Content Language -> Pockets with in city -> capabilities -- Availability of content -- Ease of use Willingness --Price --Use/Need --Perception External factors included: Regulations: Getting licenses Competition: Internet penetration in the 14mn is presently low. I used some pointers from my ELP findings like Chinese perceive that using computer is very easy vs Indian perception that only skilled ones can use the computers. Some major points of discussion were: a innovative revenue model which we recommended as part of our ELP, and option of bundling services, expanding market by creating a resale market of 2nd hand PCs. After a discussion on the customer part, we talked about how to reach customers. There are two broad ways of doing the network bit. Organic and inorganic. Issues like network sharing, BVNO, cable TV like models for last mile connections were discussed but it was arrived at that scope of doing these was either limited or not possible. Organic was the only possibility of doing this. The retail market is sparse, requires lot of investment, especially in last mile connections. Also some profitable pockets are already occupied by the competition like BSNL, Bharti etc. Given the sparse market, high setup costs and unpredictable returns it doesn’t make sense in entering the market.
Tips: Connect your thoughts with the interviewer.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I:Why profitability per ton? Why would CEO bother about profitability per ton. Shouldn’t he be focusing on total profits or share price? R: We are talking about making changes in a year and therefore only profitability per ton can be changed. We cannot do much with quantity itself. I: Right. Could you please tell me where does client manufacture and where does it sell? R: It is a pan India producer with 14-15 plants and sells through out India. I: So how are the customers classified. I would divide them into Retail and Industrial customers. Is that how company does it? R: Yes. Let us focus only on retail clients. Bulk of the business happens through them. I: ok. How do we reach our customers? R: There are distributors who sell it to the customers. I: In terms of geography, are the profits homogenous? R: No. South there is excess supply and up north there is excess deman. I: Ok. Competition? R: 3-4 regional players around every plant and 3-4 other large national players I: How are we doing visavis industry in terms of profits? Any targets in mind? R: We are on par with the industry. Lets aim for 5-10% increase in 1 year. I: Profitability per ton = Unit price – Variable cost – unitized Fixed cost Increasing profitability will mean increasing prices or reducing costs. At this time he led the conversation into increasing price part, although I had written appropriate drivers for cost like DM, DL, Transportation, IM, IL, etc) I: To increase the price: I guess cement is a undifferentiated product and therefore commodity. R: Right. So how can you increase prices? Prices are different in each region. I: Can we look at differentiating the cement (on product dimension) or on relationship dimension and therefore command high prices? R: No. Cannot do that, its commodity. I: I draw 1 plant, some distributors around it and large circles around each distributor. These circles are their markets and each market has different prices) Price is decided by D-S curves. We need to maximize the profit/ton for each region or the following: Max(ΣPi-VCi) (i for all markets) R: Ok so what are the constraints? I: Plant capacity (cannot change this in 1 year), competition, market demand (cannot change that) R: Ok. I: @ Each plant to maximize the profit/ton, I will just sell it to the market with the highest profit. But this will reduce total profits ☺R: Smiles....right! I: So instead of maximizing profit/ton, we must look at cutting out non-profitable markets. That is instead of absolute maximum, just eliminate markets where profits are below acceptable levels. R: Ok. But do we not want to look at what can be done here in low profit markets? I: Right. Take some time Ultimately prices must increase. We cannot change demand. But we can play with our mix in the supply (which is also constant for the next 1 year). I: Draw a 2x2 matrix: Us (strong, weak) vs Competition(Strong, weak) Where we are strong and the competition is weak, we can drive them out easily and play with prices Where we are weak and competition is strong, we either exit or consolidate with other players to drive 3rd player out. Where both are weak, we need to send credible signal to competition to drive them away or collude with them,Then I blabber some stuff on what kind of credible signals can be given to the competition When both are strong, it is pretty straight forward anyways. Then I make a few recommendations on preventing volume/price fluctuation by long term contracts, on vertical integration etc.
Tips: Know the interviewer well and connect with the interviewer well. Ask him about what he did in the case, how he did, etc.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I am not describing this case in detail because we simply did some value chain analysis. Nothing right/wrong happened during the interview, barring her 6-8 calls and emails After the interview I was thinking that BCG is a history for me, given the level of disinterest she showed throughout the interview.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This was a very opened case. Also I don’t think I really had any idea of what he wanted me to discuss/solve. I tried to scope down the problem.> I: So tata has come up with this 1L car, and as the CEO of ReVA (I was thinking about the battery operated car, popular in Del/Bangalore) what should I do??? (I was like ok....a game theory case!)A: Nope, we are talking about Renault – the European car manufacture. I: Ok. Could you give me a little head’s up on Renault and its operations ? A: It is a Global player, has presence in all the parts of the value chain, makes cars in various segments. (I have just summarized his description) I: Have we started working towards a similar 1L Car? A: Reva has announced working on a $250 car. It has done little R&D and will take 5 years to launch. I: Alright. Tata has created a new market for cars. The CEO of Renault must be thinking about this in two ways – opportunity and threat. And what CEO must act taking in mind short term and long term. Do we consider all the four possibilities? A: Right way of looking at it. Lets look at all the four options. My structure: (I took like a minute for this as I wasn’t sure if that’s what he wanted) Customer Distribution Company Segments -> Distribution capabilities -> Financing, structuring,etc Needs -> Last mile -> R&D Perception -> Suppliers Preferences Capabilities Price Product External factors included: Regulations: Getting licenses, Pollution aspects Competition: A: Jitesh, why don’t you discuss as you come up with your structure. I: A: That’s alright. But this is gonna happen one the R&D of the car is over. Let us say this is long term. Now what can Renault do? I: Ok we can look at ways of speeding up R&D or pairing with others in the market to co-R&D? A: R&D will take 5 years...cannt play with that. I: Tata has created a new market. Let us treat this thing an opportunity first. Now because we can come into the market only after 5 years, we must look at ways of slowing down the growth of the market so that we can tap into this opportunity at the right time. (I drew 2 S curves with different kurtosis.) We can slow the growth by providing them alternate modes of conveyance @ same or less price! A: That’s good. Alright lets see how can we do that! I: .o0(Finally the first step in right direction ☺ ) Ppl generally use the cars to commute. 1L car users are likely to use it for local commuting. If we can provide substitutes to them, it will be good to slow down the market. The modes of public transportation are Buses, Cars, Trains, 2W (in the same price range) A: Good. So? A: Reva is also into 4W (high end buses). I: Right so, if Reva can help local tier 1/2 municipalities/govt. by establishing the public bus transport system, it will do the trick. I am not sure if we can play any role in Rail transports. We can rope in other players too (who are looking to play role in this market, but have capabilities in this area – Rail and 2W). A: What else can be done here? : 2nd hand market? A: Right! I: Some thing along the lines of true value of maruti. We must ease creation of resale markets for cars. A: Why do you think if may work? I: This business is largely unorganized. Price and credibility will come with Renault brand. But Renault is a small player in the Indian market. (Presence wise) so it must rope in other global players along with it. Also, it must look at getting 2nd hand cars from international markets, if the cost works out, coz I am aware that most of the used cars are dumped in the likes of USA. A: The import duties are likely to be very high. I: But as a lobby of the MNCs, both in India and outside, we can influence Govt Decisions. A: Thik hai. What else? I: We have looked at how do we impact their timing. However these kind of steps might be irreversible and therefore CEO must carefully weigh options. The market may permanently shrink by providing them a substitute where in getting out is not possible. (Like public transport service) One needs to be at the right time at right place with right product. We need to look at how can we block their distribution. They already have a right product (given that their production is underway) A: Right. I: I assume that in India they have their own outlets (single brand). Yes. So I am not sure if much can be done on the distribution front. However in the global markets, we need to erect barriers for Tata’s entry. This can be done at two levels. a. Get higher tarrifs/taxes by lobbying in the government. b. We are already large players globally. We need to prevent Tata from entering the market by blocking the distribution networks (They don’t have their own shops, and we can get others to block their alliances) A: Ok. Good so far, what else? I: We checked the time, distribution?...We need to see if we can control their volumes! (Right product to right customers @ right place in right quantity) A: Good...how will you do it? I: They are sourcing their raw materials from some global vendor. Renault is a large player and will have larger partners eyeing similar opportunity. We can get together and erect barriers for souring of components/raw materials to Tata. A: Ok. This was the opportunity part, how do we analyze this as threat? I : So Tata has created a new market. The threat are as follows: a. Tata dominates new market 5 years down the line b. Customer from our segment moves into tata’s segment A: What else? I: c. Tata can protect the technology with patents, which hampers our R&D d. Uses its technology to launch high end low cost products in our segments and erode our profits!! (d. was the biggest threat and the answer that he was looking for) .
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
1 Interview Round
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: PI Questions came after the case. It started with interviewer asking about my prior work experience. All subsequent questions emanated from the first question which was: “Of all your achievements, which one do you think is the most important to you”. This was a classic case of being able to draw the interviewer to where you want to go. I talked about a very tough implementation project that I did at ITC Factory in Munger, Bihar. I said for me an achievement is about 2 things: (1) The Context in which I
achieved it (2) What it meant to me at that stage. In the context part, I talked about managing an un-skilled workforce.
Then he asked me how do you manage such a work force? I said by established an internal connect with them. He asked how do you do that? Went into a couple of instances which made me establish such connections. Although he had asked me to talk about just 1 instance, but seeing that he was impressed, I requested him if I could talk of another different type of incident which is also very close to my heart. He allowed. I talked about selling a extravagant project to the company chairman. It was
about high-end world class patented Audio-Visual systems. interviewer too seemed to have some knowledge about those equipments and thus we had an interesting conversation. The idea was, I could not only show my Project Implementation Abilities
but also talk about Planning and Inter-personal skills.
The case was about a canned juice manufacturing company. Recently they have diversified into different types/more variety of juices. Their profitability has gone down in comparison to their competitors. Need to analyze, identify root causes and advice solutions to the client. I asked a few ‘Start-Up’ question These are standard questions which you would ask for most of the cases. Some of them were: How big is the client? Has been in the business for how long and how and when has their business strategy changed. Who are the major competitors? What are the various revenue streams (different type of juices et al)? He gave
me some info but asked to assume one standard fruit juice for the analysis. Now I approached in the classical Profitability Case. Profit = Revenue – Cost. Problem can be in either of the two factors i.e. Revenue or Cost. I asked him if he wanted to delve into Revenue or Cost first. He advised to go into the cost aspect (we never visited the revenue aspect). Then he asked me about what are the various cost heads in such a business. This was the key!!! Process Value Chain rules I drew the entire value
chain from Agri-sourcing of fruits to In-Bound Logistics to Warehousing to Processing/Manufacturing to Out-Bound Logistics to Retailer to Customer. Started from the Left Side i.e. Sourcing. He asked me what could be reasons for lower profits. This was more of a brainstorming session. Coming from ITC (of e-choupal fame) background, I could talk the possibility of competitors being able to backward integrate and establish a symbiotic relationship with the farmers which allows them to remove the middle-men and thus get cheaper and good quality fruits, whereas our client has not done that. Then came to In-Bound logistics. I
said that juicy fruits being mostly hygroscopic are prone to damage in transit. Talked about the quality of infrastructure en-route to their plants and quality of logistics partner. Then came the crux: Processing/Manufacturing. At first it was qualitative.
I said the client might have a very high Cost/Unit because of excess/high quality infrastructure. Somehow this turned out to be the case. I realized there has been loads of ‘strategy’ based talking and there bound to be some nos. I asked him and he gave me whole lot of nos. about their manufacturing costs as well as the manufacturing costs of competitors. There was Maths involved here as he gave costs and throughputs of different plants of client as well as competition. Had to find out the average cost per unit of juice manufactured by client vs competition. Of course client’s cost of manufacturing was way higher. Talked about some ways as to how can this be brought down. Talked about economies of scale as some of the assets were under-utilized. This would involve launching other related products as well or expanding markets. There were a few more points discussed but this was merely a closure.
Asked him a couple of questions on his area of expertise and how markets were shaping this year.
I believe that your work-experience (which is a huge factor in your being short-listed) must be reflected in the way you approach cases. Sometime we lose sight of that in following standard structures/frameworks etc. At each stage, I could use my FMCG and Manufacturing experience to come up possible reasons. So, your experiences must show in case solving as well and I believe I did that well. One very interesting thing, right at the start which I think worked well for me. When I entered the room, I generally talked about the view being great from the window. Nal generally asked whose room was it. I had not noticed the name-plate while entering which anyways was covered with a McKinsey signage. Looking at the books and brochures in the room, I
made a guess giving the reason of the guess. It was Bang On!!!
Tips: Do not lose sight of Who you are and What have you achieved till date.This should reflect in your interview. Also, be ready to delve into nos. Interviewer also wants to test your analytic ability with nos. as they back/justify your claims, ideas and suggestions. So ask him if he has nos. when he says “Cost is High” or “Profits are Low” etc.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Just imagine. It does not get bigger than him. The senior most guy in the panel who is rumored to take the final call on each and every candidate. I was to interview with him in my Round-1. Thought this was the do or die situation. Questions started coming right from my CV. We talked about taking up very good projects additional to normal course curriculum, participation in sports, organizing ILS and some other personal focus areas for the year. Then he asked which one of the 3 academic experiences: School,
Undergrad, ISB was most enriching. I split it into 2: Academic and Over- all. Academic was School and Over-all was Undergrad for me. He asked me the reason. Came from the CV plus how it was important for personality development and so on… Then he asked about my work-experience. Talked about CAPEX for a while. What did I do as Capex Manager etc.
Started off with the standard warm-up questions but somehow warm-up questions and interviewer don’t go too well. I asked him about the background of the company/competition/industry. For each question I was quizzed on why did I think that question was
relevant and how will it help me achieve the final objective i.e. valuation. Some useful information which I could generate was that the ‘patent’ was for cotton farming and would increase the yield of cotton growth. Realizing that it was a valuation case, I proposed following the a combination of 3 approaches -(1) Value Based Costing (2) Competition Based Costing (3) Cost-Up; to come up with a band of prices and then zero-in on the final price based on other factors. He agreed. Started with Value i.e. Willingness to Pay on the part of the customer. The customers would of course be cotton formers. Then he asked what is the value of the patent to them? I told him about it increasing the yield and asked if he could provide some nos. on the same. He said it increases the yield per sq. ft by a factor of 50%. Believing that it would again be a complicated nos. case, I took some time and came up with a complicated structure to calculate the monetary value of this increase in yield. It involved numerous factors such as average land-holing, no. of cotton farmers, current yield, cotton prices in the market etc. etc. But rest-assured interviewer cases would rarely involve complicated calculations. He said he was looking for something very simple and asked me to think about it.
Now was the moment of surprise. While I was thinking, he asked me to pause. He said “Oh you have worked in Capex right? How would you reduce Capex Cost in a Power Plant?” I was really surprised. I started off by giving him a ‘structure’ (yeah right!!!) which we need to put in place to identify the scope of reduction in Capex. I came up with various stages involved in setting up and commissioning a power plant which would be:
Engineering Design > Construction of Infrastructure > Procurement of equipments > Electricity Generation > Electricity Distribution & Transmission
Told him we need to look into Capex requirement at each of stage and started off with Engineering Design. Just I as started, he asked me to go back to the Patent Case (strange!!!!)
He wanted a simplified model to calculate the value. After some discussion, we have me the annual turnover of cotton in India and the average price per ton. From this I calculate the value of the higher yield that all Indian farmers could get.
He asked apart from increasing revenue, how else the patent could benefit the farmers. Now with revenue there has to be cost!!! I said the new technology could lead to reduction in costs. Was asked to brainstorm on the costs involved. I told land, water for irrigation etc. Yes the patent reduced irrigation requirements. So I talked about reducing water consumption, associated energy costs as well as the psychological costs and risks associated with reliance on monsoons which could now be mitigated. He asked what else? Very happily I told him that now lesser seeds may be required. He said “The patent is a variety of seeds only”. I realized I had forgotten to ask him what does the ‘patent’ entail….in one of the professor’s language, “is it a bird or a plane”. Should have asked it upfront.
Anyways recovered. Had already found out of the increase in revenue (was asked to neglect decrease in costs) . Told him this would be the maximum willingness to pay and thus the upper end of the price band. He agreed. Asked him the cost of Research and Development. He asked why? Told him this would be the lower end of the price band unless the focus was not profitability but social upliftment. He said the focus was completely profitability and gave me a Net Present Value (assume N). Could not understand it immediately but realized that it is Revenue net the costs. Thus, the price band for the patent (in NPV terms) would be between Rs. 0 to N. He agreed and asked me to zero down on a value. Told him we need to look at similar launches in the past to capture some trend (and therefore arrive at a value in the middle) but he cut me short and said that no need to look at past records and
you would price it at less than N as we need to incentive the farmers to overcome their switching costs by passing on some benefit to them. Now this is what I eventually wanted to say but could not.
Firstly it seemed that Nothing went right. I wasn’t confident interviewing with him. Missed basic pointers and took time to identify the ‘simple’ model he was looking for. And of course couldn’t conclude well. But, later I was told, what went right was the CAPEX piece He wanted to test how good I was with my basics while I was caught up doing something else. Can’t expect this from anyone but him. The framework was bang on!!!
Got a bit psyched. Could not structure the Patent Case well and it was more of bouncing off ideas. But was later told this is what happens with everyone when they interview with him
Tips: Can’t emphasize more the need to be thorough with your work-ex and reflect your experience in the case. And if can, be confident no matter whosoever is interviewing you. Please remember, you know stuff much better than the interviewer. You have slogged your back while working. Who else would know about it better?
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I was told that he was very keen to meet me because of my Operations background and was especially interested in my CAPEX experience. I was told that he wanted to know more about what I had done during that stint. So I went in with the frame of mind that I have to maximize on that aspect of my profile. As expected, he asked me thread bare on what all I did in that stint. He did try to intimidate me by passing a few sarcastic remarks but I seemed to enjoy it and gave him appropriate responses. Then he asked a very interesting “What do I expect to hear if I were to go out and ask people randomly what they thought about you?” Now
McKinsey allows you to be innovative, frank and candid in such questions. But these need to be backed by some logic. Told him that different people are entitle to have different opinions about a person and how my different types of interactions i.e. in class, in events, in sports would result in varied responses. Also, talked about the situational aspect of it being 1st Day of placements and how that could influence the responses. Then came up with a few candid ones. You can call me to
find those out
Was told this is a short case and we need to wrap up the case fast. Without asking too many ‘Start-Up’ questions, came to the 3 dimensional approach of (1) Value to Customer (Willingness to Pay) (2) Competition (3) Cost-up. Started with Value. Was asked to brainstorm on how could this service be valuable to the customers? Talked about the qualitative aspects of Mumbai traffic having various tangible and in-tangible costs. Tangible benefits could be saving of time, fuel and fare. Intangible benefits could be alleviation of psychological costs like being stuck in traffic and getting to spend less valuable time at work and office. But he said that fare is something we need to find outThen moved to the 2nd aspect of competition. Asked him what were the other modes of transport available to the public? He said two alternatives existed- Road (Taxi) and Rail (Train). Asked him information on Time and Cost. Don’t remember the exact nos. so will use indicative figures. By Taxi you took 45 minutes and incurred costs (all inclusive- tangible + intangible) of Rs. 250. By train you took 30 minutes and incurred costs of Rs. 50. Now asked him the time supposed to be taken by Hovercraft and how many of them were there. He said that a hovercraft would take 20 minutes to cover the distance. The company was planning to start off with just 1 hovercraft. Asked him it’s capacity and he gave a figure of 100 people. In a flash of rushing ideas, I just said that then there would be a capacity constraint or atleast the hovercraft would always be full as the no. of travelers would far exceed 100 in a busy place like Mumbai. Although at that stage I didn’t know how this was important in the context of the case but he liked it Ok, coming back. Hovercraft saves 25 minutes over Taxi and 10 minutes
over Train. So though would try and valuate in monetary terms this saving of 25 minutes and 10 minutes. But point to note is that cost of Train is much lower than cost of Taxi. So, value based approach if applied on both the modes would result in two different nos. poles apart. He quizzed me how to proceed and after some discussion, I concluded that it made no business sense for the Hovercraft company to compete with the Train and thus focus on competing with the Taxi only. Plus, with only 100 seats, there would be no issue of in-sufficient traffic. Now this is where the earlier remark on capacity made sense At this stage he asked me to synthesize by giving an elevator pitch to the client CEO, asked me to fit it in 1 minute and started looking at his watch saying I was being evaluated for brevity. To wrap up, knowing that he Head the Ops practice, I asked him a question on benchmarking in operations and whether Indian firms are at a stage where they can be set as international benchmarks. Surprisingly,
he asked me why I wanted to know about it. Now this was strange as I had never ever heard of an interviewer asking the interviewee a counter question on the closing question. I told him how we had to benchmark many of our expansion/ up gradation projects with Japanese firms and wanted a view from someone who has been exposed to such facilities across the world. He was satisfied and then answered the question.
Discussion on Work-ex. Taking the sarcastic remarks in the right way and not getting intimidated. Again reflecting the learning from the work- experience in the case.
The synthesis could have been better. His staring at the watch for an accurate 1 min pitch intimidated me a bit. My bad. Otherwise nothing much was wrong here.
Tips: Again, work-ex thoroughness is imperative. Think through carefully the closing questions that the interviewer offers to answer at the end of the interview. The questions need to make sense in the backdrop of your profile, experiences and those of the interviewer.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: PI came after a couple of cases. This PI for this interview too was Work- Ex centric. Noshir asked me about the two most important leadership instances in me work life. Again my idea here was to use these 2 instances to reflect upon 2 different sides of my profile. First example was of course on leading one very tough project in a logistically challenging location. The other was captaining my ex-company’s cricket team which comprised of my bosses and super-bosses, and the leadership tools that you need to put into use in such situations.
This 11th interview of the day and for sure the final/most critical interview for McKinsey. When I was given the first case on Tata Nano, he could figure out looking at the time of the day as well as the previous few interviews that all he wanted was a structured brain-storming output on strategic cost management. So, I did not spend any time on asking clarifications/start-up questions and got down to business. As there wasn’t any readymade framework/structure for this, I imagined myself a part of the Nano team and thought through the sequence in which the material design and procurement process would unfold (of course, again, my experiences at work came in very handy). After a minute of thought, I started off by saying that this was a huge cut- down on costs (by almost 75%) thus process improvements won’t suffice and that it called for radical changes in the design and sourcing
processes. I then recommended that we should first identify the various steps that are involved in the material procurement process and see how we can cut costs in each one of them. The sequence I gave was as
follows: Technical Specifications of the car and individual parts and sub- assemblies > Preparing the Bill of Materials (BOM) > Identification and Selection of Vendors > Negotiations > Logistics- Freight, Duties, Insurance, Taxes etc.
I asked interviewer for his approval which he promptly gave. Then I brain- stormed various ways of cutting costs as each step. Car & Parts Specifications: Car to adhere to the bare minimum specifications that are needed to be adhered to by Indian Rules n Regulations (E.g. no need to Euro N+1 of Euro N compliance required in India) but without compromise on the safety of the passenger which is very important. Technical Specifications of the parts and sub-assemblies to the at Minimum Technical Standard (MTS) i.e. the specs need to be just right to meet the requirements. Bill of Materials (BOM): Talked about how big companies being risk averse always order and add extra quantity of material in everything. E.g. if 90 kgs steel is required, they would order 100 kgs and end up putting 95 kgs. So optimal safety margins need to defined and be adhered to.
Identification and Selection of Vendors: Said for experience that big companies chose their trusted and loyal vendors, and are inclined to have single vendors/point of contact for a plethora of related/unrelated materials. This way, the vendors make unnecessary money. Thus, to manufacture the lowest car in the world, we need to rationally evaluate vendors outside our ‘Zone of Comfort’ and their scope of supplies. Talked for Chinese manufacturers that give both cost and quality advantage. Gave examples of some proposals of Chinese manufacturers that I had evaluated at work.
Negotiations: Then, negotiate hard. Tata can use their buyer power (multiple businesses and product lines) to fleece suppliers but showing them possible opportunities in near future.
Logistics- Freight, Clearance etc.: This was a pure brainstorming session with ideas like bulk shipments through sea (no part shipments, air freights etc.). Centralized insurance and clearance agents. Managing road taxes etc.
Finally, something which is typically talked of in manufacturing: INNOVATION. Although setting Indica as an anchor and working backwards is a possible way, big companies like Tata Motors which have presence in the foreign markets (talked of JLR) and access to the modern technology, must mobilize their R&D department to come up with revolutionary car design. Some cutting-edge innovation like a new cost effective fuel injection system etc.
Whoa…I spoke for 20 minutes continuously non-stop. Did not find the need to. Interviewer was constantly smiling and acknowledging.
Then straight away came the second case on IT. Now that’s his area of expertise and he wanted to check if I could talk about an industry I had no prior exposure to. I came to know later that this case was in some past year’s case-book and he had written a paper on that. Anyways, I had missed both
Again I gave the initial questions a pass and asked for a minute to think. Exhausted after so many cases, I was not able to recollect any jazzy structure and thus stuck to the basics. I proposed looking at 2 types of factors/aspects which need to looked at by the IT giants of the country:
(1) Internal Factors (2) External Factors
Told him that I am a firm believer that any individual/organization should first have an internal introspection and then start looking at the world outside. Thus would recommend starting off with the Internal Factors. He smiled and said go-ahead. Internal factors meant how the company needs to improve and uplift it-self internally. Said the biggest assets for IT firms were its people and it boiled down to (a) Productivity (b) Innovation. (a) Productivity: Here, I used Productivity = f(Efficiency, Effectiveness) .
Explained the difference between the two and gave some ideas on how IT industries could do that. We could see Microsoft from one of the windows so pointed out and shared some experiences I had while I was visiting an old friend there. (b) Innovation: This is always a safe point to say. No one will challenge Innovation as an improvement measure . Talked a bit about Google
and how it fostered a culture of innovation. This again translated to sound people practices. (2) External Factors: Here I used the 3 Us framework in disguise- Users, Uses, Usage. Users: Talked about IT firms expanding their user base in India and un-explored markets abroad. Once, once you get an organization on-board, need to penetrate to all departments. Uses: Used some SAIT funds to discuss codability and measurability. How certain key process where still handled by companies internally (gave example
from work) as they were highly strategic in nature. Here, IT firms could built enhance their credibility and build stronger partnerships with the clients. Usage: Discussed growth through service provisions like AMCs etc. And then of course, Mergers and Acquisition abroad. Talk of more and more Indian firm’s expanding outside India through this medium and how biggies like Infosys, TCS etc. could continue this trend. This was followed by PI (explained above). Asked him a couple of questions on increasing role of consultants in assisting implementation and talked about the trend at McKinsey.
By this time, I was a robot. This was the best interview of the day for me.
Tips: If you can’t immediately think of established structures, just think-through the logical sequence of events. If you were there in that situation then how would things unfold stepwise? Then within each step, mini- structures/frameworks would readily fit. Again, give examples from work- ex and life beyond work. If you have seen something happen, it has to be true. Also, industry awareness is important to some extent. Reading a Financial Daily for 2 months before the interviews if enough.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: PI Questions came after the case. It started with interviewer asking about my prior work experience. All subsequent questions emanated from the first question which was: “Of all your achievements, which one do you think is the most important to you”. This was a classic case of being able to draw the interviewer to where you want to go. I talked about a very tough implementation project that I did at ITC Factory in Munger, Bihar. I said for me an achievement is about 2 things: (1) The Context in which I
achieved it (2) What it meant to me at that stage. In the context part, I talked about managing an un-skilled workforce.
Then he asked me how do you manage such a work force? I said by established an internal connect with them. He asked how do you do that? Went into a couple of instances which made me establish such connections. Although he had asked me to talk about just 1 instance, but seeing that he was impressed, I requested him if I could talk of another different type of incident which is also very close to my heart. He allowed. I talked about selling a extravagant project to the company chairman. It was
about high-end world class patented Audio-Visual systems. interviewer too seemed to have some knowledge about those equipments and thus we had an interesting conversation. The idea was, I could not only show my Project Implementation Abilities
but also talk about Planning and Inter-personal skills.
The case was about a canned juice manufacturing company. Recently they have diversified into different types/more variety of juices. Their profitability has gone down in comparison to their competitors. Need to analyze, identify root causes and advice solutions to the client. I asked a few ‘Start-Up’ question These are standard questions which you would ask for most of the cases. Some of them were: How big is the client? Has been in the business for how long and how and when has their business strategy changed. Who are the major competitors? What are the various revenue streams (different type of juices et al)? He gave
me some info but asked to assume one standard fruit juice for the analysis. Now I approached in the classical Profitability Case. Profit = Revenue – Cost. Problem can be in either of the two factors i.e. Revenue or Cost. I asked him if he wanted to delve into Revenue or Cost first. He advised to go into the cost aspect (we never visited the revenue aspect). Then he asked me about what are the various cost heads in such a business. This was the key!!! Process Value Chain rules I drew the entire value
chain from Agri-sourcing of fruits to In-Bound Logistics to Warehousing to Processing/Manufacturing to Out-Bound Logistics to Retailer to Customer. Started from the Left Side i.e. Sourcing. He asked me what could be reasons for lower profits. This was more of a brainstorming session. Coming from ITC (of e-choupal fame) background, I could talk the possibility of competitors being able to backward integrate and establish a symbiotic relationship with the farmers which allows them to remove the middle-men and thus get cheaper and good quality fruits, whereas our client has not done that. Then came to In-Bound logistics. I
said that juicy fruits being mostly hygroscopic are prone to damage in transit. Talked about the quality of infrastructure en-route to their plants and quality of logistics partner. Then came the crux: Processing/Manufacturing. At first it was qualitative.
I said the client might have a very high Cost/Unit because of excess/high quality infrastructure. Somehow this turned out to be the case. I realized there has been loads of ‘strategy’ based talking and there bound to be some nos. I asked him and he gave me whole lot of nos. about their manufacturing costs as well as the manufacturing costs of competitors. There was Maths involved here as he gave costs and throughputs of different plants of client as well as competition. Had to find out the average cost per unit of juice manufactured by client vs competition. Of course client’s cost of manufacturing was way higher. Talked about some ways as to how can this be brought down. Talked about economies of scale as some of the assets were under-utilized. This would involve launching other related products as well or expanding markets. There were a few more points discussed but this was merely a closure.
Asked him a couple of questions on his area of expertise and how markets were shaping this year.
I believe that your work-experience (which is a huge factor in your being short-listed) must be reflected in the way you approach cases. Sometime we lose sight of that in following standard structures/frameworks etc. At each stage, I could use my FMCG and Manufacturing experience to come up possible reasons. So, your experiences must show in case solving as well and I believe I did that well. One very interesting thing, right at the start which I think worked well for me. When I entered the room, I generally talked about the view being great from the window. Nal generally asked whose room was it. I had not noticed the name-plate while entering which anyways was covered with a McKinsey signage. Looking at the books and brochures in the room, I
made a guess giving the reason of the guess. It was Bang On!!!
Tips: Do not lose sight of Who you are and What have you achieved till date.This should reflect in your interview. Also, be ready to delve into nos. Interviewer also wants to test your analytic ability with nos. as they back/justify your claims, ideas and suggestions. So ask him if he has nos. when he says “Cost is High” or “Profits are Low” etc.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Just imagine. It does not get bigger than him. The senior most guy in the panel who is rumored to take the final call on each and every candidate. I was to interview with him in my Round-1. Thought this was the do or die situation. Questions started coming right from my CV. We talked about taking up very good projects additional to normal course curriculum, participation in sports, organizing ILS and some other personal focus areas for the year. Then he asked which one of the 3 academic experiences: School,
Undergrad, ISB was most enriching. I split it into 2: Academic and Over- all. Academic was School and Over-all was Undergrad for me. He asked me the reason. Came from the CV plus how it was important for personality development and so on… Then he asked about my work-experience. Talked about CAPEX for a while. What did I do as Capex Manager etc.
Started off with the standard warm-up questions but somehow warm-up questions and interviewer don’t go too well. I asked him about the background of the company/competition/industry. For each question I was quizzed on why did I think that question was
relevant and how will it help me achieve the final objective i.e. valuation. Some useful information which I could generate was that the ‘patent’ was for cotton farming and would increase the yield of cotton growth. Realizing that it was a valuation case, I proposed following the a combination of 3 approaches -(1) Value Based Costing (2) Competition Based Costing (3) Cost-Up; to come up with a band of prices and then zero-in on the final price based on other factors. He agreed. Started with Value i.e. Willingness to Pay on the part of the customer. The customers would of course be cotton formers. Then he asked what is the value of the patent to them? I told him about it increasing the yield and asked if he could provide some nos. on the same. He said it increases the yield per sq. ft by a factor of 50%. Believing that it would again be a complicated nos. case, I took some time and came up with a complicated structure to calculate the monetary value of this increase in yield. It involved numerous factors such as average land-holing, no. of cotton farmers, current yield, cotton prices in the market etc. etc. But rest-assured interviewer cases would rarely involve complicated calculations. He said he was looking for something very simple and asked me to think about it.
Now was the moment of surprise. While I was thinking, he asked me to pause. He said “Oh you have worked in Capex right? How would you reduce Capex Cost in a Power Plant?” I was really surprised. I started off by giving him a ‘structure’ (yeah right!!!) which we need to put in place to identify the scope of reduction in Capex. I came up with various stages involved in setting up and commissioning a power plant which would be:
Engineering Design > Construction of Infrastructure > Procurement of equipments > Electricity Generation > Electricity Distribution & Transmission
Told him we need to look into Capex requirement at each of stage and started off with Engineering Design. Just I as started, he asked me to go back to the Patent Case (strange!!!!)
He wanted a simplified model to calculate the value. After some discussion, we have me the annual turnover of cotton in India and the average price per ton. From this I calculate the value of the higher yield that all Indian farmers could get.
He asked apart from increasing revenue, how else the patent could benefit the farmers. Now with revenue there has to be cost!!! I said the new technology could lead to reduction in costs. Was asked to brainstorm on the costs involved. I told land, water for irrigation etc. Yes the patent reduced irrigation requirements. So I talked about reducing water consumption, associated energy costs as well as the psychological costs and risks associated with reliance on monsoons which could now be mitigated. He asked what else? Very happily I told him that now lesser seeds may be required. He said “The patent is a variety of seeds only”. I realized I had forgotten to ask him what does the ‘patent’ entail….in one of the professor’s language, “is it a bird or a plane”. Should have asked it upfront.
Anyways recovered. Had already found out of the increase in revenue (was asked to neglect decrease in costs) . Told him this would be the maximum willingness to pay and thus the upper end of the price band. He agreed. Asked him the cost of Research and Development. He asked why? Told him this would be the lower end of the price band unless the focus was not profitability but social upliftment. He said the focus was completely profitability and gave me a Net Present Value (assume N). Could not understand it immediately but realized that it is Revenue net the costs. Thus, the price band for the patent (in NPV terms) would be between Rs. 0 to N. He agreed and asked me to zero down on a value. Told him we need to look at similar launches in the past to capture some trend (and therefore arrive at a value in the middle) but he cut me short and said that no need to look at past records and
you would price it at less than N as we need to incentive the farmers to overcome their switching costs by passing on some benefit to them. Now this is what I eventually wanted to say but could not.
Firstly it seemed that Nothing went right. I wasn’t confident interviewing with him. Missed basic pointers and took time to identify the ‘simple’ model he was looking for. And of course couldn’t conclude well. But, later I was told, what went right was the CAPEX piece He wanted to test how good I was with my basics while I was caught up doing something else. Can’t expect this from anyone but him. The framework was bang on!!!
Got a bit psyched. Could not structure the Patent Case well and it was more of bouncing off ideas. But was later told this is what happens with everyone when they interview with him
Tips: Can’t emphasize more the need to be thorough with your work-ex and reflect your experience in the case. And if can, be confident no matter whosoever is interviewing you. Please remember, you know stuff much better than the interviewer. You have slogged your back while working. Who else would know about it better?
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I was told that he was very keen to meet me because of my Operations background and was especially interested in my CAPEX experience. I was told that he wanted to know more about what I had done during that stint. So I went in with the frame of mind that I have to maximize on that aspect of my profile. As expected, he asked me thread bare on what all I did in that stint. He did try to intimidate me by passing a few sarcastic remarks but I seemed to enjoy it and gave him appropriate responses. Then he asked a very interesting “What do I expect to hear if I were to go out and ask people randomly what they thought about you?” Now
McKinsey allows you to be innovative, frank and candid in such questions. But these need to be backed by some logic. Told him that different people are entitle to have different opinions about a person and how my different types of interactions i.e. in class, in events, in sports would result in varied responses. Also, talked about the situational aspect of it being 1st Day of placements and how that could influence the responses. Then came up with a few candid ones. You can call me to
find those out
Was told this is a short case and we need to wrap up the case fast. Without asking too many ‘Start-Up’ questions, came to the 3 dimensional approach of (1) Value to Customer (Willingness to Pay) (2) Competition (3) Cost-up. Started with Value. Was asked to brainstorm on how could this service be valuable to the customers? Talked about the qualitative aspects of Mumbai traffic having various tangible and in-tangible costs. Tangible benefits could be saving of time, fuel and fare. Intangible benefits could be alleviation of psychological costs like being stuck in traffic and getting to spend less valuable time at work and office. But he said that fare is something we need to find outThen moved to the 2nd aspect of competition. Asked him what were the other modes of transport available to the public? He said two alternatives existed- Road (Taxi) and Rail (Train). Asked him information on Time and Cost. Don’t remember the exact nos. so will use indicative figures. By Taxi you took 45 minutes and incurred costs (all inclusive- tangible + intangible) of Rs. 250. By train you took 30 minutes and incurred costs of Rs. 50. Now asked him the time supposed to be taken by Hovercraft and how many of them were there. He said that a hovercraft would take 20 minutes to cover the distance. The company was planning to start off with just 1 hovercraft. Asked him it’s capacity and he gave a figure of 100 people. In a flash of rushing ideas, I just said that then there would be a capacity constraint or atleast the hovercraft would always be full as the no. of travelers would far exceed 100 in a busy place like Mumbai. Although at that stage I didn’t know how this was important in the context of the case but he liked it Ok, coming back. Hovercraft saves 25 minutes over Taxi and 10 minutes
over Train. So though would try and valuate in monetary terms this saving of 25 minutes and 10 minutes. But point to note is that cost of Train is much lower than cost of Taxi. So, value based approach if applied on both the modes would result in two different nos. poles apart. He quizzed me how to proceed and after some discussion, I concluded that it made no business sense for the Hovercraft company to compete with the Train and thus focus on competing with the Taxi only. Plus, with only 100 seats, there would be no issue of in-sufficient traffic. Now this is where the earlier remark on capacity made sense At this stage he asked me to synthesize by giving an elevator pitch to the client CEO, asked me to fit it in 1 minute and started looking at his watch saying I was being evaluated for brevity. To wrap up, knowing that he Head the Ops practice, I asked him a question on benchmarking in operations and whether Indian firms are at a stage where they can be set as international benchmarks. Surprisingly,
he asked me why I wanted to know about it. Now this was strange as I had never ever heard of an interviewer asking the interviewee a counter question on the closing question. I told him how we had to benchmark many of our expansion/ up gradation projects with Japanese firms and wanted a view from someone who has been exposed to such facilities across the world. He was satisfied and then answered the question.
Discussion on Work-ex. Taking the sarcastic remarks in the right way and not getting intimidated. Again reflecting the learning from the work- experience in the case.
The synthesis could have been better. His staring at the watch for an accurate 1 min pitch intimidated me a bit. My bad. Otherwise nothing much was wrong here.
Tips: Again, work-ex thoroughness is imperative. Think through carefully the closing questions that the interviewer offers to answer at the end of the interview. The questions need to make sense in the backdrop of your profile, experiences and those of the interviewer.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: PI came after a couple of cases. This PI for this interview too was Work- Ex centric. Noshir asked me about the two most important leadership instances in me work life. Again my idea here was to use these 2 instances to reflect upon 2 different sides of my profile. First example was of course on leading one very tough project in a logistically challenging location. The other was captaining my ex-company’s cricket team which comprised of my bosses and super-bosses, and the leadership tools that you need to put into use in such situations.
This 11th interview of the day and for sure the final/most critical interview for McKinsey. When I was given the first case on Tata Nano, he could figure out looking at the time of the day as well as the previous few interviews that all he wanted was a structured brain-storming output on strategic cost management. So, I did not spend any time on asking clarifications/start-up questions and got down to business. As there wasn’t any readymade framework/structure for this, I imagined myself a part of the Nano team and thought through the sequence in which the material design and procurement process would unfold (of course, again, my experiences at work came in very handy). After a minute of thought, I started off by saying that this was a huge cut- down on costs (by almost 75%) thus process improvements won’t suffice and that it called for radical changes in the design and sourcing
processes. I then recommended that we should first identify the various steps that are involved in the material procurement process and see how we can cut costs in each one of them. The sequence I gave was as
follows: Technical Specifications of the car and individual parts and sub- assemblies > Preparing the Bill of Materials (BOM) > Identification and Selection of Vendors > Negotiations > Logistics- Freight, Duties, Insurance, Taxes etc.
I asked interviewer for his approval which he promptly gave. Then I brain- stormed various ways of cutting costs as each step. Car & Parts Specifications: Car to adhere to the bare minimum specifications that are needed to be adhered to by Indian Rules n Regulations (E.g. no need to Euro N+1 of Euro N compliance required in India) but without compromise on the safety of the passenger which is very important. Technical Specifications of the parts and sub-assemblies to the at Minimum Technical Standard (MTS) i.e. the specs need to be just right to meet the requirements. Bill of Materials (BOM): Talked about how big companies being risk averse always order and add extra quantity of material in everything. E.g. if 90 kgs steel is required, they would order 100 kgs and end up putting 95 kgs. So optimal safety margins need to defined and be adhered to.
Identification and Selection of Vendors: Said for experience that big companies chose their trusted and loyal vendors, and are inclined to have single vendors/point of contact for a plethora of related/unrelated materials. This way, the vendors make unnecessary money. Thus, to manufacture the lowest car in the world, we need to rationally evaluate vendors outside our ‘Zone of Comfort’ and their scope of supplies. Talked for Chinese manufacturers that give both cost and quality advantage. Gave examples of some proposals of Chinese manufacturers that I had evaluated at work.
Negotiations: Then, negotiate hard. Tata can use their buyer power (multiple businesses and product lines) to fleece suppliers but showing them possible opportunities in near future.
Logistics- Freight, Clearance etc.: This was a pure brainstorming session with ideas like bulk shipments through sea (no part shipments, air freights etc.). Centralized insurance and clearance agents. Managing road taxes etc.
Finally, something which is typically talked of in manufacturing: INNOVATION. Although setting Indica as an anchor and working backwards is a possible way, big companies like Tata Motors which have presence in the foreign markets (talked of JLR) and access to the modern technology, must mobilize their R&D department to come up with revolutionary car design. Some cutting-edge innovation like a new cost effective fuel injection system etc.
Whoa…I spoke for 20 minutes continuously non-stop. Did not find the need to. Interviewer was constantly smiling and acknowledging.
Then straight away came the second case on IT. Now that’s his area of expertise and he wanted to check if I could talk about an industry I had no prior exposure to. I came to know later that this case was in some past year’s case-book and he had written a paper on that. Anyways, I had missed both
Again I gave the initial questions a pass and asked for a minute to think. Exhausted after so many cases, I was not able to recollect any jazzy structure and thus stuck to the basics. I proposed looking at 2 types of factors/aspects which need to looked at by the IT giants of the country:
(1) Internal Factors (2) External Factors
Told him that I am a firm believer that any individual/organization should first have an internal introspection and then start looking at the world outside. Thus would recommend starting off with the Internal Factors. He smiled and said go-ahead. Internal factors meant how the company needs to improve and uplift it-self internally. Said the biggest assets for IT firms were its people and it boiled down to (a) Productivity (b) Innovation. (a) Productivity: Here, I used Productivity = f(Efficiency, Effectiveness) .
Explained the difference between the two and gave some ideas on how IT industries could do that. We could see Microsoft from one of the windows so pointed out and shared some experiences I had while I was visiting an old friend there. (b) Innovation: This is always a safe point to say. No one will challenge Innovation as an improvement measure . Talked a bit about Google
and how it fostered a culture of innovation. This again translated to sound people practices. (2) External Factors: Here I used the 3 Us framework in disguise- Users, Uses, Usage. Users: Talked about IT firms expanding their user base in India and un-explored markets abroad. Once, once you get an organization on-board, need to penetrate to all departments. Uses: Used some SAIT funds to discuss codability and measurability. How certain key process where still handled by companies internally (gave example
from work) as they were highly strategic in nature. Here, IT firms could built enhance their credibility and build stronger partnerships with the clients. Usage: Discussed growth through service provisions like AMCs etc. And then of course, Mergers and Acquisition abroad. Talk of more and more Indian firm’s expanding outside India through this medium and how biggies like Infosys, TCS etc. could continue this trend. This was followed by PI (explained above). Asked him a couple of questions on increasing role of consultants in assisting implementation and talked about the trend at McKinsey.
By this time, I was a robot. This was the best interview of the day for me.
Tips: If you can’t immediately think of established structures, just think-through the logical sequence of events. If you were there in that situation then how would things unfold stepwise? Then within each step, mini- structures/frameworks would readily fit. Again, give examples from work- ex and life beyond work. If you have seen something happen, it has to be true. Also, industry awareness is important to some extent. Reading a Financial Daily for 2 months before the interviews if enough.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. How should you go about picking up a stock?
- Q2. Issues on profitability of a cement company
- Q3. Situation of the company wanting to launch broad band services across India
- Q4. Builder company planning to open up a green buildings in India. Assess the NPV
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In first case interviewer asked me how should one go about selecting a stock. I proposed two approaches one in terms of finding out a DCF based valuation. He was trying to test deepness of my thought and he made me explain the entire process. Then second approach was by comparing EPS. Then he picked me asking all information is available in public domain so what makes you feel that you know this information which nobody else knows – here I was a bit puzzled by I explained him about management profile, investor profile etc. There was some more discussion which I do not remember. Post this long discussion on first case we moved on second case, which was totally unexpected for me. Anyway, after getting the problem statement. I tried to dig deeper by gathering more facts like:
o Industry was in a reasonably stable state
o Products were fairly comparable
o Company was in existence for last 30-40 years Interestingly I did not made the structure upfront rather went on picking each step and going in depth. So I picked on pricing part first – Ravi asked me what will be the factors affecting it, I could think of:
o Type of product
o Customer segments
o Distribution
o Value Added For product as expected answer was nothing, distribution and value added services he said no scope. Now we went on to customer segment – here I figured out the type of segments which one can supply to and problem became a problem of targeting different market areas. Thereafter we went on to discuss how can this firm go on to establish its presence in new market areas – critical issue which came out was establishing dealerships.
Tips: Just treat interview as a professional discussion – so neither you are nervous nor you are so aggressive that you make the interviewer uncomfortable.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started of with first assessing whether the market is attractive enough for India. Next logical step was to assess market size. I did it by breaking the market in to households, cyber cafes, and small shops / offices (corporates were already out as they were assumed to be running on their VPNs). This was pretty simple. Next step was to estimate yearly sales – here I used Bass model from Marketing Term 2. Seema was visibly impressed with this. But just to test depth of my thought she asked me to tell what factors should be considered for applying this model (v/s the proxy country which we are going to take). I immediately listed down four factors viz. Needs, Income, Globalisation, and Prices of computers. Seema was very happy with this. But to my surprise, she asked me to move on to second phase as to how client should go about launching it. Client had a limited budget and they wanted to launch services across all metros. This was a seemingly difficult question but I listed out three or four ways, e.g. outsourcing infrastructure, launching services in limited area. Later on Seema told me that they took the limited area option. Post this we had a good discussion on how did costs in this industry move. I must admit this discussion seemed like with a colleague and I could sense the positive vibe from the interview.
Tips: Being open to any kind of discussion. Have fundas of core term eco, marketing, operations, dmop ready – they come very handy.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I deciphered the problem in to revenue and cost and the factors affecting them. Primarily the structure was: (it was built around on incremental basis vis-à-vis a normal building) Revenue:
o Built up area (how it was different from a normal building)
o Lease rentals
o Carbon credits Cost:
o Upfront costs
o Operational costs
o Any grants/ subsidy from government / other agencies Any difference in cost of capital being a more stable project. Then the discussion moved on to putting in numbers and finding out NPV of the project. It came out that NPV was not positive. Now Sachin asked me as to how this can be turned in to NPV positive. I tried to dvelve on each and every factor, but he said that more of less everything is fixed. From here on somehow Sachin took charge of the case and he started discussion about what kind of clients will they target - I told him corporates. He asked what kind of I told him three kinds, viz. Image conscious, Large corporates (for whom differential rent is miniscule), and firms which otherwise are known to be polluters / damager to environment). Next he suddenly came back to some number crunching again as to how can we incentives corporates to take it up which was done with some number crunching. At this point it seemed Sachin was done with the case, but suddenly an idea came up in my mind (which was never discussed in the case) and I told him how DLF built various residential areas coupled with a big corporate building and how this can be used by this builder to make one big project. Though Sachin appeared to be convinced about the case, with this idea he was very impressed. This is why probably he immediately asked me the question how serious are you about BCG!
Again being friendly with the interviewer and being honest. I knew that Ravi has experience in consulting industry and he would be familiar with interviewing styles of all firms, so honestly told him my opinion and did not hide any fact. This helped me in case solving as well wherein I did not do any mistake in number crunching (because of low pressure).
Tips: Be friendly and professional. Don’t be nervous. Even if this your 12th or 15th interview in the day, show energy and enthusiasm.
Skills: Ability To Cope Up With Stress, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: In first case interviewer asked me how should one go about selecting a stock. I proposed two approaches one in terms of finding out a DCF based valuation. He was trying to test deepness of my thought and he made me explain the entire process. Then second approach was by comparing EPS. Then he picked me asking all information is available in public domain so what makes you feel that you know this information which nobody else knows – here I was a bit puzzled by I explained him about management profile, investor profile etc. There was some more discussion which I do not remember. Post this long discussion on first case we moved on second case, which was totally unexpected for me. Anyway, after getting the problem statement. I tried to dig deeper by gathering more facts like:
o Industry was in a reasonably stable state
o Products were fairly comparable
o Company was in existence for last 30-40 years Interestingly I did not made the structure upfront rather went on picking each step and going in depth. So I picked on pricing part first – Ravi asked me what will be the factors affecting it, I could think of:
o Type of product
o Customer segments
o Distribution
o Value Added For product as expected answer was nothing, distribution and value added services he said no scope. Now we went on to customer segment – here I figured out the type of segments which one can supply to and problem became a problem of targeting different market areas. Thereafter we went on to discuss how can this firm go on to establish its presence in new market areas – critical issue which came out was establishing dealerships.
Tips: Just treat interview as a professional discussion – so neither you are nervous nor you are so aggressive that you make the interviewer uncomfortable.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started of with first assessing whether the market is attractive enough for India. Next logical step was to assess market size. I did it by breaking the market in to households, cyber cafes, and small shops / offices (corporates were already out as they were assumed to be running on their VPNs). This was pretty simple. Next step was to estimate yearly sales – here I used Bass model from Marketing Term 2. Seema was visibly impressed with this. But just to test depth of my thought she asked me to tell what factors should be considered for applying this model (v/s the proxy country which we are going to take). I immediately listed down four factors viz. Needs, Income, Globalisation, and Prices of computers. Seema was very happy with this. But to my surprise, she asked me to move on to second phase as to how client should go about launching it. Client had a limited budget and they wanted to launch services across all metros. This was a seemingly difficult question but I listed out three or four ways, e.g. outsourcing infrastructure, launching services in limited area. Later on Seema told me that they took the limited area option. Post this we had a good discussion on how did costs in this industry move. I must admit this discussion seemed like with a colleague and I could sense the positive vibe from the interview.
Tips: Being open to any kind of discussion. Have fundas of core term eco, marketing, operations, dmop ready – they come very handy.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I deciphered the problem in to revenue and cost and the factors affecting them. Primarily the structure was: (it was built around on incremental basis vis-à-vis a normal building) Revenue:
o Built up area (how it was different from a normal building)
o Lease rentals
o Carbon credits Cost:
o Upfront costs
o Operational costs
o Any grants/ subsidy from government / other agencies Any difference in cost of capital being a more stable project. Then the discussion moved on to putting in numbers and finding out NPV of the project. It came out that NPV was not positive. Now Sachin asked me as to how this can be turned in to NPV positive. I tried to dvelve on each and every factor, but he said that more of less everything is fixed. From here on somehow Sachin took charge of the case and he started discussion about what kind of clients will they target - I told him corporates. He asked what kind of I told him three kinds, viz. Image conscious, Large corporates (for whom differential rent is miniscule), and firms which otherwise are known to be polluters / damager to environment). Next he suddenly came back to some number crunching again as to how can we incentives corporates to take it up which was done with some number crunching. At this point it seemed Sachin was done with the case, but suddenly an idea came up in my mind (which was never discussed in the case) and I told him how DLF built various residential areas coupled with a big corporate building and how this can be used by this builder to make one big project. Though Sachin appeared to be convinced about the case, with this idea he was very impressed. This is why probably he immediately asked me the question how serious are you about BCG!
Again being friendly with the interviewer and being honest. I knew that Ravi has experience in consulting industry and he would be familiar with interviewing styles of all firms, so honestly told him my opinion and did not hide any fact. This helped me in case solving as well wherein I did not do any mistake in number crunching (because of low pressure).
Tips: Be friendly and professional. Don’t be nervous. Even if this your 12th or 15th interview in the day, show energy and enthusiasm.
Skills: Ability To Cope Up With Stress, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
3 Interview Rounds
Interview Questions
- Q1. A Widgets manufacturer, who’s been in the business for a few years now, had been seeing phenomenal growth over the last couple of years, and has recently added ...read more
- Q2. A Telecom Infrastructure Company - Provider of Telecom Equipment and Related Services, is facing profitability issues inspite of good growth in their business. ...read more
- Q3. An Indian Garments Company, a 3rd party manufacturer for clients in US & Europe wants to enter the Indian Market with their own label. Recommend a go/ no go dec...read more
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: HR Interview
Experience: The usual PI questions, I’d say be prepared with a list of them. The PI would give you on opportunity to strike the right vibes with the interviewer. So when you get down to doing a case, you’ll feel a lot more comfortable and confident.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked a few clarifying questions. The information that I got was as follows – 1. The trend was temporary, and the market was expected to start growing again after a few years. 2. Need not worry about what widgets are; just consider them to be a part of machine equipment. 3. The manufacturer is a global company headquartered in US 4. The market had been growing over the last 2-3 years at 30 – 40 % and has now flattened. I then defined the problem statement. From here on I took a pretty unconventional first principles approach in structuring my though process. I decided to look at 2 aspects – a. Means to enhance Capacity Utilization through an understanding of the business based on b. Market Analysis Under capacity utilization I had intended to focus on Altering the product mix, increase sales geographically, rationalize my asset base, and providing value added services. The first one wasn’t possible and on the geographical front we were already selling globally. Then I switched to market analysis where I looked at # of players, respective market shares, competitive landscape, drivers of purchase and price points. On questioning, it turned out that we were the largest player with a 35% market share, two other major players had a 20% share each, and the rest of the market was fragmented amongst small players. Everyone sold at the same price. In past, the purchase decision had not been based on price, but on being highest in quality, and we were perceived to be amongst the highest in quality. We were also the cost leaders in this business, and this was the catch point. It also turned out that in being more cautious about their purchase of widgets, our potential customers had now become more price conscious, and the market was price elastic. From here on I started shaping recommendations – I put them as short term and long term. In the short term I suggested that we play on price points. Since we are the cost leaders and the market was price elastic, we can bring down our prices till a point where our profits increase with decrease in prices. Also, our competitors won’t be able to cut prices to the extent that we can, and in this way we can squeeze their margins beyond tolerable limits, force them to exit, and thus increase our share of the pie. In the long run, we needed to work around rationalizing our asset base, and building a value added service layer to our business. That’s where the case concluded.
Tips: I’d suggest that encase you too reach your solution pretty soon in the interview, spend some time to look at other strategic aspects, at points in your structure that might have been left untouched, but don’t panic if there’s nothing more to add from your end. You can close the case as and when you feel you’ve done what you wanted to, and need not wait to have spent a pre-decided amount of time on it. Yes I made it to the next round.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked a few clarifying questions. The information I got was a follows – 1. The client was a $10 billion + company with 50000 + employees. 2. It was a Europe based company with operations all over the world, and their business was expected to grow at 10 – 15 % 3. The lines of business were divided into 2: A. Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space. B. Providing Services, which was further subdivided into 4 categories.(i) Turnkey i.e. developing new networks (ii) Managed Services i.e. run the network on behalf of the service provider (iii) Maintenance (H/W and S/W) (iv) Consulting Solutions then defined the problem statement. From here on I structured by approach to do a Revenues & Cost analysis after having done a thorough Market Analysis. Under Market Analysis, I looked at 1. No. of Players – there were 6 -7 players, we were no. 2 with a mkt. share of 20%. The mkt. leader had a 30% share. 2. I looked at Growth in each of the businesses, Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space each growing at 15 % and 25% respectively and overall this line of business was growing at 20% In Providing Services, the above 4 were expected to grow at 0%, less than 10%, 15% and less than 10% respectively (in the order mentioned above). 3. The drivers of purchase were driven by Cap Ex and Op Ex incurred by the customers, i.e. Price was the key driver of purchase once you were a part of the consideration set. However, to be considered for a contract by a potential customer, high standards of quality were a must. Before starting to look at the revenues and costs in trying to address profitability, I asked for the revenue break up of for our client. It was as follows – 55% from 2G(30%) & 3G(25%). 24% from turnkey. 9% from maintenance. 6% from managed services and the rest from consulting. I then asked for how this picture would look 3-4 years from now. Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space would together constitute 40%, with 70% of this 40 from 3G and rest from 2G. Services would constitute 60% of the revenues, and in comparing to their current contributions, Turnkey would stagnate, Maintenance business would grow at 10 – 15%, and Consulting and Managed Services would grow disproportionately. This unfortunately is all that I remember of the case in terms of data, but from here on it was pretty standard. I prioritized my probing of the cost structures for each of the businesses based on their current and future contributions to the revenue pie. I then explored the cost structures for each line of business, identified the cost levers, and further prioritized my recommendations for each cost lever on the basis of where we could achieve most impact. On the revenue side, my recommendations were around building capabilities around consulting and managed services based on how the business was expected to shape up in the future. There was a lot to talk about under each of the above – off shoring, consolidation of suppliers and subcontractors etc., managing over runs, acquisition to build capabilities, and I did touch upon all of these. I'm sure based on your own judgement, you can add more to it. All the best!
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked a few clarifying questions. The information I got was a follows – 1. The client manufactured broadly two kinds of products A. Textiles (of different counts, pure yarns, viscose mix etc.) B. Garments (semi formal / informal in cotton, for both men and women) I structured my approach as follows: As part of Market Entry evaluation, I wanted to look at the following: 1. Market Attractiveness – size of the mkt., growth expected, penetration levels and margins. 2. Competition – in each of the segments. Further look at unbranded retailing, branded retailing and pvt. label retailing. 3. Strategic Fit and Capabilities as far as this proposed line of business was concerned. 4. How to enter – Organic v/s Inorganic At this point, I was asked to move onto the branding strategy that I would recommend. One key factor that I considered was a single brand v/s a multi brand strategy. And through discussions with the interviewer, I decided to pursue a multi-brand approach for different segments, different qualities etc. (just as Arvind Mills, Madura Garments etc. do). I then proposed that in developing a brand strategy for each of the brands I chose to pursue, I would look at the following: 1. Position the brand 2. Pricing 3. Distribution 4. Promotion. In positioning the brand (each of the brands that we will roll out), I would look at drivers of purchase and then position myself accordingly through parity and distinction. At this point, we got into a more general conversation around how to position, what other factors to consider, and then wrapped up the case.
Tips: As you step in for the interview, make sure that you leave all the excess baggage outside. It’s a big deterrent in one’s performance. I had one more interview that I’m unable to document, after which I was made an offer.
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: The usual PI questions, I’d say be prepared with a list of them. The PI would give you on opportunity to strike the right vibes with the interviewer. So when you get down to doing a case, you’ll feel a lot more comfortable and confident.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked a few clarifying questions. The information that I got was as follows – 1. The trend was temporary, and the market was expected to start growing again after a few years. 2. Need not worry about what widgets are; just consider them to be a part of machine equipment. 3. The manufacturer is a global company headquartered in US 4. The market had been growing over the last 2-3 years at 30 – 40 % and has now flattened. I then defined the problem statement. From here on I took a pretty unconventional first principles approach in structuring my though process. I decided to look at 2 aspects – a. Means to enhance Capacity Utilization through an understanding of the business based on b. Market Analysis Under capacity utilization I had intended to focus on Altering the product mix, increase sales geographically, rationalize my asset base, and providing value added services. The first one wasn’t possible and on the geographical front we were already selling globally. Then I switched to market analysis where I looked at # of players, respective market shares, competitive landscape, drivers of purchase and price points. On questioning, it turned out that we were the largest player with a 35% market share, two other major players had a 20% share each, and the rest of the market was fragmented amongst small players. Everyone sold at the same price. In past, the purchase decision had not been based on price, but on being highest in quality, and we were perceived to be amongst the highest in quality. We were also the cost leaders in this business, and this was the catch point. It also turned out that in being more cautious about their purchase of widgets, our potential customers had now become more price conscious, and the market was price elastic. From here on I started shaping recommendations – I put them as short term and long term. In the short term I suggested that we play on price points. Since we are the cost leaders and the market was price elastic, we can bring down our prices till a point where our profits increase with decrease in prices. Also, our competitors won’t be able to cut prices to the extent that we can, and in this way we can squeeze their margins beyond tolerable limits, force them to exit, and thus increase our share of the pie. In the long run, we needed to work around rationalizing our asset base, and building a value added service layer to our business. That’s where the case concluded.
Tips: I’d suggest that encase you too reach your solution pretty soon in the interview, spend some time to look at other strategic aspects, at points in your structure that might have been left untouched, but don’t panic if there’s nothing more to add from your end. You can close the case as and when you feel you’ve done what you wanted to, and need not wait to have spent a pre-decided amount of time on it. Yes I made it to the next round.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked a few clarifying questions. The information I got was a follows – 1. The client was a $10 billion + company with 50000 + employees. 2. It was a Europe based company with operations all over the world, and their business was expected to grow at 10 – 15 % 3. The lines of business were divided into 2: A. Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space. B. Providing Services, which was further subdivided into 4 categories.(i) Turnkey i.e. developing new networks (ii) Managed Services i.e. run the network on behalf of the service provider (iii) Maintenance (H/W and S/W) (iv) Consulting Solutions then defined the problem statement. From here on I structured by approach to do a Revenues & Cost analysis after having done a thorough Market Analysis. Under Market Analysis, I looked at 1. No. of Players – there were 6 -7 players, we were no. 2 with a mkt. share of 20%. The mkt. leader had a 30% share. 2. I looked at Growth in each of the businesses, Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space each growing at 15 % and 25% respectively and overall this line of business was growing at 20% In Providing Services, the above 4 were expected to grow at 0%, less than 10%, 15% and less than 10% respectively (in the order mentioned above). 3. The drivers of purchase were driven by Cap Ex and Op Ex incurred by the customers, i.e. Price was the key driver of purchase once you were a part of the consideration set. However, to be considered for a contract by a potential customer, high standards of quality were a must. Before starting to look at the revenues and costs in trying to address profitability, I asked for the revenue break up of for our client. It was as follows – 55% from 2G(30%) & 3G(25%). 24% from turnkey. 9% from maintenance. 6% from managed services and the rest from consulting. I then asked for how this picture would look 3-4 years from now. Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space would together constitute 40%, with 70% of this 40 from 3G and rest from 2G. Services would constitute 60% of the revenues, and in comparing to their current contributions, Turnkey would stagnate, Maintenance business would grow at 10 – 15%, and Consulting and Managed Services would grow disproportionately. This unfortunately is all that I remember of the case in terms of data, but from here on it was pretty standard. I prioritized my probing of the cost structures for each of the businesses based on their current and future contributions to the revenue pie. I then explored the cost structures for each line of business, identified the cost levers, and further prioritized my recommendations for each cost lever on the basis of where we could achieve most impact. On the revenue side, my recommendations were around building capabilities around consulting and managed services based on how the business was expected to shape up in the future. There was a lot to talk about under each of the above – off shoring, consolidation of suppliers and subcontractors etc., managing over runs, acquisition to build capabilities, and I did touch upon all of these. I'm sure based on your own judgement, you can add more to it. All the best!
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked a few clarifying questions. The information I got was a follows – 1. The client manufactured broadly two kinds of products A. Textiles (of different counts, pure yarns, viscose mix etc.) B. Garments (semi formal / informal in cotton, for both men and women) I structured my approach as follows: As part of Market Entry evaluation, I wanted to look at the following: 1. Market Attractiveness – size of the mkt., growth expected, penetration levels and margins. 2. Competition – in each of the segments. Further look at unbranded retailing, branded retailing and pvt. label retailing. 3. Strategic Fit and Capabilities as far as this proposed line of business was concerned. 4. How to enter – Organic v/s Inorganic At this point, I was asked to move onto the branding strategy that I would recommend. One key factor that I considered was a single brand v/s a multi brand strategy. And through discussions with the interviewer, I decided to pursue a multi-brand approach for different segments, different qualities etc. (just as Arvind Mills, Madura Garments etc. do). I then proposed that in developing a brand strategy for each of the brands I chose to pursue, I would look at the following: 1. Position the brand 2. Pricing 3. Distribution 4. Promotion. In positioning the brand (each of the brands that we will roll out), I would look at drivers of purchase and then position myself accordingly through parity and distinction. At this point, we got into a more general conversation around how to position, what other factors to consider, and then wrapped up the case.
Tips: As you step in for the interview, make sure that you leave all the excess baggage outside. It’s a big deterrent in one’s performance. I had one more interview that I’m unable to document, after which I was made an offer.
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
3 Interview Rounds
Interview Questions
- Q1. The year is 2001. There is a global fiber optic manufacturing company. During the past few years the company has built in a huge manufacturing capacity. Now in ...read more
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: HR Interview
Experience: The interview started with a detailed discussion on various fascets of points on my CV. Neeraj wanted to know about my thought process as I went through the various phases of my life and how I took decisions that I actually took. For example, he was very interested in knowing as to why I chose IIT Bombay for my B.Tech when I could have gone to join IIT-Delhi which was nearer home. The idea was to develop a rapport with the interviewer by being clear, insightful and interesting in your answers. Be very nicely prepared with your CV and think through the various decisions you have taken in life, keep smiling throughout the interview, present a firm hand shake, think before you speak and engage the interviewer in a discussion.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started off by trying to understand the situation as clearly as possible. The one dictum I stuck to in this and other case interviews was to really get to the crux of the matter and scope down the problem relentlessly to what the top of the line issues were for the client. So trying to be MECE, I told Neeraj that I would look at the following three alternatives: - Not do any thing about the excess capacity and wait for the good times to come back- - Downgrade the capacity by eliminating excess - Find better uses of capacity or sell more to existing customers A free flowing discussion followed on each of the points above and Neeraj very quickly refuted the first two suggestions. We then dived headlong into the third suggestion and it quickly appeared clear that fiber optic cables were commoditized products to a large extent. I asked Neeraj about the specific ways in which we were better than the competition and got to know that our client had better product quality at the same price. I drew a perceptual map of our Vs. the competitors’ positions on these maps and argued that we may want to play upon our better product quality to induce the customers to buy more from us. When prodded further by Neeraj, I used the tried and tested Raju formula: Market Share = (Share of Voice)X(%of acceptability)X(%of availability) Since availability was not an issue and since advertising was not a main concern, he asked me to dive into ways of improving our Client’s share of acceptability. I proposed pricing as a way of doing so. I postulated that we needed to study our client’s fixed costs and those of our competitors’. Based on the fact that our fixed costs were lower than those of our competitors, I argued that we could play the pricing game by bringing our prices down and cornering a bigger share of the market. I further argued that if our competitors tried to imitate us in this price war, they may end up chasing us to the bottom of the barrel and get killed in the process. This would only be good for the industry which badly needs consolidation given the excess capacity. I think Neeraj was visibly impressed by this time by the depth of analysis I had presented and the diverse ideas from marketing, managerial accounting etc that I was able to bring to the table.
Tips: Be yourself.
Be confident.
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: The interview started with a detailed discussion on various fascets of points on my CV. Neeraj wanted to know about my thought process as I went through the various phases of my life and how I took decisions that I actually took. For example, he was very interested in knowing as to why I chose IIT Bombay for my B.Tech when I could have gone to join IIT-Delhi which was nearer home. The idea was to develop a rapport with the interviewer by being clear, insightful and interesting in your answers. Be very nicely prepared with your CV and think through the various decisions you have taken in life, keep smiling throughout the interview, present a firm hand shake, think before you speak and engage the interviewer in a discussion.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started off by trying to understand the situation as clearly as possible. The one dictum I stuck to in this and other case interviews was to really get to the crux of the matter and scope down the problem relentlessly to what the top of the line issues were for the client. So trying to be MECE, I told Neeraj that I would look at the following three alternatives: - Not do any thing about the excess capacity and wait for the good times to come back- - Downgrade the capacity by eliminating excess - Find better uses of capacity or sell more to existing customers A free flowing discussion followed on each of the points above and Neeraj very quickly refuted the first two suggestions. We then dived headlong into the third suggestion and it quickly appeared clear that fiber optic cables were commoditized products to a large extent. I asked Neeraj about the specific ways in which we were better than the competition and got to know that our client had better product quality at the same price. I drew a perceptual map of our Vs. the competitors’ positions on these maps and argued that we may want to play upon our better product quality to induce the customers to buy more from us. When prodded further by Neeraj, I used the tried and tested Raju formula: Market Share = (Share of Voice)X(%of acceptability)X(%of availability) Since availability was not an issue and since advertising was not a main concern, he asked me to dive into ways of improving our Client’s share of acceptability. I proposed pricing as a way of doing so. I postulated that we needed to study our client’s fixed costs and those of our competitors’. Based on the fact that our fixed costs were lower than those of our competitors, I argued that we could play the pricing game by bringing our prices down and cornering a bigger share of the market. I further argued that if our competitors tried to imitate us in this price war, they may end up chasing us to the bottom of the barrel and get killed in the process. This would only be good for the industry which badly needs consolidation given the excess capacity. I think Neeraj was visibly impressed by this time by the depth of analysis I had presented and the diverse ideas from marketing, managerial accounting etc that I was able to bring to the table.
Tips: Be yourself.
Be confident.
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
3 Interview Rounds
Interview Questions
- Q1. Why consulting after so much experience?
- Q2. Why Dubai?
- Q3. Prepare feasibility study for an American Cosmetics Manufacturer who wants to enter Middle East
- Q4. Market Estimation for Tata Nano and projected revenue for 1st 5 years
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: HR Interview
Experience: Understood the background of the company – the company is a global player and sells products everywhere except Middle East • Mainly in Hair Care and Personal Care categories
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: These are the steps that I took:
1)Understood the background of the company – the company is a global player and sells products everywhere except Middle East Mainly in Hair Care and Personal Care categories
My structure was:
Figure out the market size as follows – total population x % using these products x market share x average unit revenue / year o
Figure out cost to serve this market: Interviewer asked me to ignore this and focus on revenue o
Perform competitive analysis o Understand customers o Understand company competency o Understand regulations •
The interviewer liked my structure and we started by understanding the competition and customer before understanding the company and regulations. Finally, I did the market estimation.
Eventually my recommendation was to enter the market as there emerged a low-cost market (laborers) who could use our low-end products in a high-volume game.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: These are the steps that I took:
• Estimate the market size (units)
• Estimate the revenue per unit
• Estimate the growth in market each year to draw a 5 year plan
• Market size
o Start with India Population (households)
o Divide into income segments (to check affordability of owning a car)
o Figure out using poverty line and some other discussions, how many households can actually afford a car
o Then divided into new users and switchers
o Figured out how many new users and % of switchers / 2ndcar buyers
o Worked out the total demand for such cars in market
o Assumed some number for adoption in Year 1
o Evaluated the demand curve – expecting it to be convex with sales rising initially and then slowly flattening as competition comes in and market gets saturated.
o Based on this, predicted some unit sales per year with year 1 > year 2 > year 3 etc.
o Multiplied by constant price (for simplicity) to get revenues for 5 years. The interviewer liked my structure and my thoroughness. In particular he liked my demand curve insight.
Skills: Personnel Management, Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: Understood the background of the company – the company is a global player and sells products everywhere except Middle East • Mainly in Hair Care and Personal Care categories
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: These are the steps that I took:
1)Understood the background of the company – the company is a global player and sells products everywhere except Middle East Mainly in Hair Care and Personal Care categories
My structure was:
Figure out the market size as follows – total population x % using these products x market share x average unit revenue / year o
Figure out cost to serve this market: Interviewer asked me to ignore this and focus on revenue o
Perform competitive analysis o Understand customers o Understand company competency o Understand regulations •
The interviewer liked my structure and we started by understanding the competition and customer before understanding the company and regulations. Finally, I did the market estimation.
Eventually my recommendation was to enter the market as there emerged a low-cost market (laborers) who could use our low-end products in a high-volume game.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: These are the steps that I took:
• Estimate the market size (units)
• Estimate the revenue per unit
• Estimate the growth in market each year to draw a 5 year plan
• Market size
o Start with India Population (households)
o Divide into income segments (to check affordability of owning a car)
o Figure out using poverty line and some other discussions, how many households can actually afford a car
o Then divided into new users and switchers
o Figured out how many new users and % of switchers / 2ndcar buyers
o Worked out the total demand for such cars in market
o Assumed some number for adoption in Year 1
o Evaluated the demand curve – expecting it to be convex with sales rising initially and then slowly flattening as competition comes in and market gets saturated.
o Based on this, predicted some unit sales per year with year 1 > year 2 > year 3 etc.
o Multiplied by constant price (for simplicity) to get revenues for 5 years. The interviewer liked my structure and my thoroughness. In particular he liked my demand curve insight.
Skills: Personnel Management, Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Referral
1 Interview Round
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: HR Interview
Experience: There were 3 groups formed when the A&M team arrived on campus. A&M conducted 3 rounds of interviews for each candidate and after all the 3 groups had interviewed the candidate, they used to meet and decide on the candidate. Thus the procedure was elaborate but slow. All the interviews were personal interviews.
After waiting outside for almost 7 hours, the interviews were conducted in a very professional manner and the interviewers focus in knowing your past was crystal clear.
Each of the interviewer asked me to go through my resume in a detailed fashion. Each and every bullet point in my resume was questioned and cross questioned. But the interview was not stressful at any point in time. The key reason was that there were no lies in the resume and hence I was very sure about the background of every point (situation, what action I took, why I took that action, what I did, who helped me, how things eventually worked out and what was the result). There were some usual questions as well on strengths, etc. Such questions were few and were randomly thrown at you. Since A&M is mainly a client oriented company who as a part of turnaround would want to “get things done”, I kept all my answers focused towards this theme. Be aware that the interviewers may try to derail you in case you have very well rehearsed answers. So in between questions, there will be some side talk. That can put you off. So being relaxed would help you just laugh/smile that their comments and then continue where you left off. This interview was a walk-in interview for me on day 6, but I had planned on applying here before and hence had some overview of the firm and what it does. That helped me in asking several questions throughout the day. My questions were mainly on switching my focus from IT to operation and finance. At the end of the day, I was told to contact Amit Laud who would be conducting my interview from his base location. This interview was also a personal interview. I googled him and found some details on him. He was an MBA from Wharton, done a stint in Mckinsey, GE and now was the acting CIO for some client company so some questions on IT implementation would be due. I knew that if I get through then I might end up working for him.
Tips: Keep your cool. It is not important to know how to fix laptop or how to fix account statements (if you are CA). But it was more about how you handle such deliberate distracting situations (as if they were your clients) and make the atmosphere friendly.
Skills: HR Skills
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: There were 3 groups formed when the A&M team arrived on campus. A&M conducted 3 rounds of interviews for each candidate and after all the 3 groups had interviewed the candidate, they used to meet and decide on the candidate. Thus the procedure was elaborate but slow. All the interviews were personal interviews.
After waiting outside for almost 7 hours, the interviews were conducted in a very professional manner and the interviewers focus in knowing your past was crystal clear.
Each of the interviewer asked me to go through my resume in a detailed fashion. Each and every bullet point in my resume was questioned and cross questioned. But the interview was not stressful at any point in time. The key reason was that there were no lies in the resume and hence I was very sure about the background of every point (situation, what action I took, why I took that action, what I did, who helped me, how things eventually worked out and what was the result). There were some usual questions as well on strengths, etc. Such questions were few and were randomly thrown at you. Since A&M is mainly a client oriented company who as a part of turnaround would want to “get things done”, I kept all my answers focused towards this theme. Be aware that the interviewers may try to derail you in case you have very well rehearsed answers. So in between questions, there will be some side talk. That can put you off. So being relaxed would help you just laugh/smile that their comments and then continue where you left off. This interview was a walk-in interview for me on day 6, but I had planned on applying here before and hence had some overview of the firm and what it does. That helped me in asking several questions throughout the day. My questions were mainly on switching my focus from IT to operation and finance. At the end of the day, I was told to contact Amit Laud who would be conducting my interview from his base location. This interview was also a personal interview. I googled him and found some details on him. He was an MBA from Wharton, done a stint in Mckinsey, GE and now was the acting CIO for some client company so some questions on IT implementation would be due. I knew that if I get through then I might end up working for him.
Tips: Keep your cool. It is not important to know how to fix laptop or how to fix account statements (if you are CA). But it was more about how you handle such deliberate distracting situations (as if they were your clients) and make the atmosphere friendly.
Skills: HR Skills
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Referral
3 Interview Rounds
Interview Questions
- Q1. Tell about a trait of your personality that you think is a strength in personal life but does not serve you well in professional life? "one trait that think is ...read more
- Q2. An international Office stationary retailer has just entered India and set up a sample store in Bangalore in association with an India Retail Giant. The store h...read more
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: HR Interview
Experience: This round was primarily a personal round revolving around the CV. The question broadly covered the various things done at ISB and the extra-
curricular. A lot of expected question were there on the Strengths, weaknesses, successes, Stay at ISB, Comparison with Undergrad education at IIT-B.
The interviewer was insistent that I answer both but I answered the first part and said that there was nothing I could think of for the second part because I just could not relate to such a separation in personal and professional personalities. Of course the answer was detailed and elaborate and ultimately convincing.
The conversation was a very easy one. I think I was able to break ice very early in the discussion and was always conscious for the crispness of my answers. As a result we were able to have a long discussion about a lot of different issues during the 30 minute+ long discussion. I was also trying to build a coherent storyline throughout by citing examples and connecting back to things I had earlier said in the interview.
Tips: Be sure to have a consistent story for all of the above and make sure that you keep corroborating your claims and assertion from time to time. For every aspect I was asked to site an example.
Be very thorough with you CV. Elaborate every point of your CV and prepare answers to the standard expected questions. Make sure you have rehearsed them well enough.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by looking at the international retailer (Company) and its Indian partner? Why the venture, what strengths, type of contract, etc. it seems the company had efficient back end operation and the front end expertise was with the Indian partner. They would need 6 months to get out of contractual obligations. The operation is merely breaking even right now. I also looked at the competition and customers buckets and there was not enough information available on this.
After this initial analysis the case question was flipped to find out the drivers of setting up a retail store. Some of the drivers discussed were :
- Geography (decided by regulation, logistics, operations, etc)
- Store format (Departmental, Hypermart, location in city or outside city)
- Product Mix ( What would be item stocked)
- Partnerships (potential allies)
- Competition
- Target Customers (to decide Footfalls X Conversion Rate X Ticket Size)
The next part of the case was that where will I gather information about all these, customers, geographies, etc. I said there could be two ways of collecting information: Primary Research and Secondary Research. Primary we can collected from other stores, scanner data, Pilot study, survey, etc Secondary could be done through industry and analyst reports like Crisil, Datamonitor, ISI Emerging markets, These reports normally give detailed outlook about cities, types of formats, conversion rates, catchment area and other parameters. Given that we had just one monthinformation, Secondary research would be more appropriate.
Tips: Keep your cool
Skills: HR Skills, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: This round was primarily a personal round revolving around the CV. The question broadly covered the various things done at ISB and the extra-
curricular. A lot of expected question were there on the Strengths, weaknesses, successes, Stay at ISB, Comparison with Undergrad education at IIT-B.
The interviewer was insistent that I answer both but I answered the first part and said that there was nothing I could think of for the second part because I just could not relate to such a separation in personal and professional personalities. Of course the answer was detailed and elaborate and ultimately convincing.
The conversation was a very easy one. I think I was able to break ice very early in the discussion and was always conscious for the crispness of my answers. As a result we were able to have a long discussion about a lot of different issues during the 30 minute+ long discussion. I was also trying to build a coherent storyline throughout by citing examples and connecting back to things I had earlier said in the interview.
Tips: Be sure to have a consistent story for all of the above and make sure that you keep corroborating your claims and assertion from time to time. For every aspect I was asked to site an example.
Be very thorough with you CV. Elaborate every point of your CV and prepare answers to the standard expected questions. Make sure you have rehearsed them well enough.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by looking at the international retailer (Company) and its Indian partner? Why the venture, what strengths, type of contract, etc. it seems the company had efficient back end operation and the front end expertise was with the Indian partner. They would need 6 months to get out of contractual obligations. The operation is merely breaking even right now. I also looked at the competition and customers buckets and there was not enough information available on this.
After this initial analysis the case question was flipped to find out the drivers of setting up a retail store. Some of the drivers discussed were :
- Geography (decided by regulation, logistics, operations, etc)
- Store format (Departmental, Hypermart, location in city or outside city)
- Product Mix ( What would be item stocked)
- Partnerships (potential allies)
- Competition
- Target Customers (to decide Footfalls X Conversion Rate X Ticket Size)
The next part of the case was that where will I gather information about all these, customers, geographies, etc. I said there could be two ways of collecting information: Primary Research and Secondary Research. Primary we can collected from other stores, scanner data, Pilot study, survey, etc Secondary could be done through industry and analyst reports like Crisil, Datamonitor, ISI Emerging markets, These reports normally give detailed outlook about cities, types of formats, conversion rates, catchment area and other parameters. Given that we had just one monthinformation, Secondary research would be more appropriate.
Tips: Keep your cool
Skills: HR Skills, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Referral
3 Interview Rounds
Interview Questions
- Q1. There is a factory. The transportation company charges the factory owners as long as their trucks stay in the factory area. Costs are rising due to this. How do...read more
- Q2. Tell me something about yourself?
- Q3. Why Accenture?
- Q4. Why MBA?
- Q5. Greatest achievement at ISB?
- Q6. One person you admire in your batch and why?
- Q7. What did you learn from your peers at ISB?
- Q8. What do you think works for you in an interview?
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: After listening to the question I immediately analysed by asking myself some questions.
a) What can be the internal issues due to which trucks stay in the premises overtime? This could be broken down into - No preparation by the warehouse - No space in the warehouse- Shortage of tools and materials to unload Point no. 1 can be broken down into why there is no preparation by the warehouse personnel. One can analyse that there may be no communication between procurement division and store manager and the store manager may not know what he is getting, how much is he getting and at what time. The other reason can be that the truck is entering the premises with the wrong items (contrary to what was ordered) Point no. 2 can be broken down into several inventory management issues. Demand estimation, service cycle levels and are they reasonable and things like that. Basically a whole lot of OPMG from term 3. Point no. 3 is what do they use to upload. In this case the labour was fine but then there was a problem with the pallet availability. Pallets can be unavailable because they are procured from a vendor with high lead time. b) What can be the external factors that influence increase in costs? Are these the only transporters? Can we get better rates from another transporter Are these transporters getting rate of the items brought in.
Tips: Stay cool and confident. A case is just like doing a 30 min project under a
guide. Engage with him and be interested in knowing more.
Round: HR Interview
Tips: You can prepare for all the basic questions in a PI. Tell me about yourself is a standard question and should really be the clincher in any interview. Try not to talk only about studies and projects. Bring in a human and humour element to your anecdotes. And of course relevant anecdotes.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: After listening to the question I immediately analysed by asking myself some questions.
a) What can be the internal issues due to which trucks stay in the premises overtime? This could be broken down into - No preparation by the warehouse - No space in the warehouse- Shortage of tools and materials to unload Point no. 1 can be broken down into why there is no preparation by the warehouse personnel. One can analyse that there may be no communication between procurement division and store manager and the store manager may not know what he is getting, how much is he getting and at what time. The other reason can be that the truck is entering the premises with the wrong items (contrary to what was ordered) Point no. 2 can be broken down into several inventory management issues. Demand estimation, service cycle levels and are they reasonable and things like that. Basically a whole lot of OPMG from term 3. Point no. 3 is what do they use to upload. In this case the labour was fine but then there was a problem with the pallet availability. Pallets can be unavailable because they are procured from a vendor with high lead time. b) What can be the external factors that influence increase in costs? Are these the only transporters? Can we get better rates from another transporter Are these transporters getting rate of the items brought in.
Tips: Stay cool and confident. A case is just like doing a 30 min project under a
guide. Engage with him and be interested in knowing more.
Round: HR Interview
Tips: You can prepare for all the basic questions in a PI. Tell me about yourself is a standard question and should really be the clincher in any interview. Try not to talk only about studies and projects. Bring in a human and humour element to your anecdotes. And of course relevant anecdotes.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Interview Questions of Popular Companies
Campus Placement Interview Questions at Top Colleges
- Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai Placement Interview Questions
- Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology, Delhi Placement Interview Questions
- National Institute of Technology (NIT), Warangal Placement Interview Questions
- Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow Placement Interview Questions
- Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) Placement Interview Questions
- Show more
- Home >
- colleges >
- indian school of business isb hyderabad placement interview questions