Coherent Market Insights Management Consultant Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I never realized when my case started; he was asking me the model on which Inductis works, and slowly moved towards what are the challenges for a company like Inductis in expanding. Only when he said “Or let’s say the CEO of JP Morgan, Kevin, or the CEO of Infosys comes to you and says that they wanted to expand their offshoring strength from 250 to 400, but they were not able to scale up.”, did I realize that my case had started! I politely asked him, “Is this a case, or I should be answering just on the fly?”; to which he replied – “Whatever you deem correct. Okay, lets consider it a
case”. I came up with the following issues:
1) They are not getting quality CVs
2) There are too many companies wooing the skilled people we want
3) There are some problems in meeting the expectations of the workers – challenging work , work-life balance and growth opportunities
4) Where do our workers go after leaving us
5) Is there some problem with the HR department
It turned out that the 5 point was one of the major problems.

Then I was given another case – “Mr Murthy is contemplating to expand globally and set up centers in US because India gets only $30 bn out of the total $800 bn offshoring/outsourcing market. What are the pros and cons?”
The most important negative point I identified was that that the cost arbitrage would not be there. Noshir then asked me to focus on advantages, and I came up with the following:
1) Proximity to the client
2) Cultural affinity
3) Better domain knowledge as you are working where the action is taking place
4) Lower telecom costs and hurdles
5) Political benefits – Democrats are totally against moving jobs to Asia, and hence such a move would be politically hailed


Tips: Biggest learning – your case can start anytime without you being explicitly told. This is really true for McK interviewers especially. Also, they don’t always look for structuring – when I was starting to jot down some points for my first case, the interviewer told me not to worry about structure and clarificatory questions and other formalities; he said “I know you would be master in all this, so I just want recommendations and issues which will add value to the client”.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In the second interview I was given a case study. It was conducted by another Interviewer. Your friend lives in Beijing, and is observing the commercial/office buildings being built these days. He is contemplating getting into the business of leasing cranes to constructors. What do you think of this idea?
The rough framework I told him I would follow is:
1) The market opportunity
2) Competition
3) Contacts, especially with suppliers of cranes
4) Investments in this business
5) Risks going forward
After a little discussion on each of these, he told me that this is an estimation case, and I have to estimate the market size of this business in $ terms. There can be several ways to go about it, and I took the following one:
1) An average building is built on a square of side 70m
2) Assume Beijing to be a square of side 20km
3) Out of the total are of 400 sq.km, 50sq.km is used for commercial purposes
4) 80% of this, ie 40 sq. km is the area on which a building is actually build (the rest 20% for roads, lawns, parking lots etc)
5) This gives about 8000 buildings which can be built
6) Assume in the next years, a total 2000 buildings will be build, 400 each in every year
7) A building construction requires 3 cranes in the initial 4 months,
2 cranes in the next 4 months, and 1 crane in the last 4 months, completing in whole 1 year
8) A crane costs $50,000 per month Doing all the calculation should give the total annual market size of approximately $480 million.


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In the personal Interview the interview started from a discussion on BTO practice for 20 minutes. The case interview started after a discussion of my short-term/long-term goals, how consulting fits in and why MBA etc.
She gave an actual situation she met in China on one of her projects:
A meat manufacturer in Europe, selling only ham and sausages, has been seeing declining profits for the last 2 years. So what could be the reason behind it?
I did the following analysis step by step:
1) What specific did we do 2 years back? – Nothing was the answer.
2) Have the customer tastes been changing? – No, the market was stable
3) How is the competitive landscape? – 2 competitors, each having 30% mkt share, while we have 40%.
4) Revenue-Cost analysis: It turned out that the volumes of sausages was going down, while it was constant for ham. The reason was that one of the competitors was selling sausages at 99 cents a kg, while we sold at $1/kg; also, we sold ham at $4.2/kg.
The issue then shifted to the question – how was the competitor able to sell sausages at 99 cents a kg? While analyzing the cost structure, it emerged that sausages were being sold at break-even!
Now the question was – if they are zero margins in sausages, then how could lower sausage sales trigger a decline in profits? I asked some more questions about how they were manufactured, and found that the following process is followed: the company buys chunks of meat, makes ham out of them, and the small, leftover pieces of meat are used to make sausages. Hence, when the sales of sausages went down, it was because they were not able to sell the leftover meat at $1/kg they bought the raw meat at.

This rang the bell of ‘cost allocation’; why should sausages me allocated the costs for leftover scrap meat at the same rate as that of good meat used in ham? Well, one reason unearthed. Actually, there was a bigger reason; the indirect labor costs (salaries of CEO, managers etc) were being allocated very irrationally – though a ham was being sold at 4.2 times the price of a sausage and involved more processing and personnel time, both were allocated the same costs! In fact, a sausage was being allocated a total of 60 cents for indirect labor costs, though a ham was being allocated only 80 cents.
I synthesized the case by explaining how cross-subsidization was happening, how this could be because of the shrewdness of the manager of ham operations and the naivety of the manager of sausage operations. It turned out that this was exactly the reason behind all this.
In the second interview, I was not given any case.

Tips: Keep in mind how much time you would have for the case; As we had lost 20-25 minutes discussing BTO, I was well aware that no way would I get much time as this was a 30 min interview. Hence I quickly went through all possible issues, and zeroed in on the relevant one
Prepare your PI well.

General Tips: Structuring of the cases should be impressive.
Keep in mind how much time you would have for the case.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case 1: As I had worked in the healthcare industry for the last 2.5 years of career with Infosys. The interviewer made a case on the spot for the software industry and healthcare.
Nandan Nilakeni approaches you for advice on a product that can be created for the US healthcare industry. How do you analyze the situation?
Analysis
Since healthcare industry value chain has many players, structured case as focusing on the healthcare providers. Confirmed with interviewer. Bucketed the IT drivers into market trends, government regulation & operational efficiency.
Market trends
Discussed the broad trends in the US healthcare industry
f. Climbing health care costs
g. Government encouraging customers to take more responsibility for their health care spending
h. Creation of tax deductible Flexible spending accounts
i. Consumers transitioning to customers (earlier customers were the payers employers)
j. Need for more robust means of identifying customers and their medical history to manage chronic diseases
k. More consumer directed health plans being purchased
l. Importance of customer relationship management systems for health care providers (which currently doesn’t exist/ limited versions)
He further quizzed me about the apparent lack of IT systems in US HC providers. Asked me to explore historical reasons
Me:
1) Misaligned incentives for the providers vis-à-vis accrual of benefits from IT usage. Major beneficiaries are insurance companies.
2) Practicing Physicians less likely to make IT investment Government Regulation
Discussed high cost of regulation in the health care industry (1 of total health care spend)
Discussed HIPAA regulations as an example
Interviewer: Will the providers be able to meet the deadlines set by HIP? Talked about the security and portability aspects of HIPAA, Timelines for each phase etc
Me : Compliance will drive some of the major health spending. Ease of enhancement for regulatory compliance will be one of the important aspects of the IT product.

Operational Efficiency:
Me: Accidental deaths from inefficient and error-prone process within hospitals. Operational efficiency to be improved. Importance of IT systems like CPOE, EHR gaining importance. Potential toreduce errors. Standardization of processes within hospitals
increases scope for productization.
Interviewer: To summarize, what are the most important aspects which favor product development as opposed to customized application development in the health care industry ?
Me: Standardization of requirements is one. Regulatory compliance is another.

Asked if I have any questions.

In the second interview I was given another case.
Client is a no 1 boiler manufacturer in India. He is now witnessing
reduce profits. Advise .
Laid out the structure--- Client (his product lines, pricing, distribution channel), competition (change in competitors, their strategy wrt product lines, distribution), Customers (size, preferences), Industry (regulatory, new technology) and cost dynamics (fixed, variable, etc).Interviewer was happy with the structure and said he wanted hypothesis as to why is he losing profits:
• New competitors have come up with diff technology for boilers
–NO
• The market size for boilers has shrunk (due to changes in the
industry they have been rendered redundant)
• Price war in the industry – reduced profitability – YES
Then I explored how the competitors are offering a lower price. After delving through each item on cost structure, Supply chain, etc; it appeared that it was because the competitors used a new technology to manufacture boilers --- This tech required LESS raw material (steel) per unit of boiler because the manner in which Steel was being cut (he gave some technical knowledge) -boy….this took some time to get to…in fact interviewer helped out here !!!

Discussed about the trends in IT off-shoring. Asked him about the next wave of off-shoring from Infrastructure management business and how well prepared the Indian players are to meet this challenge in his opinion ?


General Tips: Stick to a detailed and precise answer while solving for the case.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Personal Interview questions revolved around my academic performance and about grades. The case interview started off with the following case:
Client is a no 1 boiler manufacturer in India. He is now witnessing reduce profits. Advise.
I Laid out the structure--- Client (his product lines, pricing, distribution channel), competition (change in competitors, their strategy wrt product lines, distribution), Customers (size, preferences), Industry (regulatory, new technology) and cost dynamics (fixed, variable, etc).Interviewer was happy with the structure and said he wanted hypothesis as to why is he losing profits:
• New competitors have come up with diff technology for boilers –NO
• The market size for boilers has shrunk (due to changes in the industry they have been rendered redundant)
• Price war in the industry – reduced profitability – YES
Then I explored how the competitors are offering a lower price. After delving through each item on cost structure, Supply chain, etc; it appeared that it was because the competitors used a new technology to manufacture boilers --- This tech required LESS raw material (steel) per unit of boiler because the manner in which Steel was being cut (he gave some technical knowledge) -boy….this took some time to get to…in fact interviewer helped out here !!!

Tips: Stay Confident & Cool even if you miss the above fact. Move on
and build on it. Show Energy during the interview. !!

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: in the second interview of the first round, personal interview was entirely experience based; did not miss any line of CV on work exp (as I had fin work exp)
case: I want to start a crane leasing biz in China….estimate my annual profits for next year
I Assumed: No regulatory issues, no replacement of cranes with better equipment for 1 year
First zeroed in on city, then city space, available free space, plausible for construction next year.
Identified alternative pricing strategies—ie per diem, per contract, on/off season rates (less in rainy,etc)

Lots of numbers given (area—square kms, rates, etc)– he wanted me to calculated to the nearest dollar….
Made a calculation mistake (while using square root for area
estimation)…but keep your cool ..they are looking at approach

He then asked me to convert the final answer ($33,85,263) to the nearest pound sterling (DON’T LOSE your cool…)..I used 1.8 conversion rate to convert it (did not carry a calculator☺)))

At the end I asked few questions on M&A issues in China (I heard up on this after the interview schedule was out)..this helps impress him as he was based in the Corp Fin group in China


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In the first interview of the second round personal interview was more of a general feel good talk. Then the case Interview began. the case was:
Airline industry—reduced profitability
I gave the structure, identified the drivers and was beginning to explore each item ---he said that he was happy with structure and gave me another scenario where an airline had 2 options either to fly:
Brazil to US
Brazil-Argentina-US

I explored the pt to pt vs hub and spoke model….we went through the numbers and looked at the opportunity costs to finally chose the right strategy.
I also looked at non-fin aspects like strategy and future growth before choosing the option.

He asked me to list adv and dis adv of both models. I drew a model and explored that for 10 routes, pt to pt needs 45 air crafts (10 C 2) while hub and spoke needs only 10. Also identified positives and negatives in other aspects such as costs, customer perception, time, target segment impact, load factor (utilization rate), pricing, etc
Incidentally the actual opinion he said was similar to my recommendation.


Tips: Be ready for pep talk, good opportunity to create feel good

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In the second interview, the personal interview was more of a general talk with questions on why MBA, why ISB etc.
Case: International Courier company-losing market share

Standard structure—
• product mix (packages of all sizes), distribution network pricing,
• competition,
• customer segment (attributes they look for: time, safety of packet and prices; convenience – centers for collection-touch points),
• industry dynamics,
• cost structure (esp fixed), etc

Identified problem as local couriers eating market share due to lower costs

Recommendation:
As Fixed costs are high; increase volume business by:
• Alliances with Low cost couriers (but quality of service is a issue)
• JV s (would help as equity stake)
• Acquisitions (highlighted both positives and negatives)

Reduce costs internally (explore using excess capacity on other airlines instead of using your own airlines for low volumes)

General Tips: Keep your cool during the interview.
Keep smiling and be confident.
Try to not to goof up with calculations.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Looked at auto-components industry on my resume and said he would give me an auto-comp case.
Case: Client is a leading auto component manufacturer. It wants to increase profits in the next few years and wants to reach a target of $5 bn in revenues. It is currently at $1 bn.
I suggested there are 2 basic ways to do so:
- Increase volume
- Increase value add and thus margins (elaborated below)
Clarifying questions
Me: Asked what was the core capability of the manufacturer and
the kind of products it manufacturers.
The Interviewer (TI): Forging and forged components
Me: Geographic presence?
TI: India and some acquisitions in Europe.
Me: Is it into auto- comp outsourcing business?
TI: Yes
Me: Increase Volume as follows:
I said can we assume is it meeting demand?
Was asked to make assumptions and proceed. Now I moved into a monologue – coz I gathered that’s what he wants
Increase volume:
- So I said if we know it is lagging in demand, we should explore expansions options – add domestic capacity, acquire capacity externally – (also a increase value add option – refer below)
- Enhance product offering (all types of forged components based on core forging capability)
- Increase share of wallet ( Does a single OEM outsource all types of auto-components) ; Have we exploited any potential to cross sell – if he is buying power train (engine) components, should he also buy axle and chasis components from us
- External acquisitions: Dual shore manufacturing – have a low cost mfg base in India and China, acquire plants in Europe and America which has good customer relationships – thus improve customer intimacy by being geographically close to customer and improve share of wallet.
Increase value add:
- Any change in product mix – make more of critical safety components which provide higher margins
- Provide full end to end support – from design of components to testing – make attempts to support the entire life cycle of car platforms – this will also enhance value add and thus margins ( Explore options to acquire or build R&D centers)
- Compare costs in India and China, add capacity in China, if it reduces costs and enhances margins
Tips: Anything on your CV could be turned into a case. Spend lot of time thinking and reading about companies and industries mentioned on your CV. Whats good/bad about industry? How are companies exploring growth options and so on?

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case:Client is an insurance company. They want to know how big is the insurance opportunity in India? Finally, given the size of the opportunity, what would you recommend as the next steps.
Me: Let me ask the usual clarifying questions, is the company into life insurance or non-life? Private company or a public company?
Interviewer: Life insurance, the client is a private company.
Me: To understand how big the opportunity is I would want to estimate the size of the insurance market.
Interviewer: In what denomination you would estimate the market.
Me: $ mm of life insurance premium
Interviewer: Great. So go ahead and do it.
Me: Sir, before I get into the number work, it will be useful to pictorially or graphically understand where does India stand on insurance penetrations relative to the world.
Interviewer: How would you do that? (It seemed he was very open to new ideas
as seen from his body language because he always sounded excited to hear
something new)
Me: You plot all the countries by insurance penetration ratios and see where India is in the stage of evolution in the insurance market
Interviewer: How would you define the penetration ratio?
Me: Insured population by Insurable population
Interviewer: Great. Now lets get to the number work.
Me: I took some time to think at this stage.
Usual method: Indian population, 30% urban, for now lets focus on the urban market, % of people who cannot afford insurance, I suggested if insurance premium exceeds a particular% of your annual income, then its not affordable, such population should be excluded or alternatively people below the poverty line. I suggested we could break down the population by Income class. As we discussed, it stood out that age cannot be a right basis, as people get their children insured and old people can also be insured albeit at a higher premium.
Interviewer: Great, let us assume you have done all that and the total size of
the market comes to $210mm. LIC’s market is 180mm and has 80%
market share. So what would your conclusion be?
Me:(I wasn’t very fluent at this stage …..somehow I got a bit confused at this stage…no particular reason…probably I wasn’t thinking calmly enough…. Later, with some push from him…this is what I concluded…
Me: Ok, so total insured market is then 180mm/ 0.80 which comes to approximately $205mm. Insurable market is $210mm. So penetration ratio is very high close to 95%. This leaves private insurers a market of only $5mm to pursue. So now how many private insurers are there?
Interviewer: 12/13
Me: Fine, then it is evident that private insurers are competing quite hard and each has a very minuscule share of the private market….and the nature of the game is to arrest market share from LIC, which may be very difficult.
Interviewer: We have now run out of time, so what would you suggest to the company?
Me: As of now, the market is very small and competitive for the private insurers. Going forward, the client would have to arrest market share from LIC and would have to do it better than other private players. So the key question client should ask itself?
- Do I have enough distribution capabilities to gain market share from LIC…coz in Insurance distribution pipeline is most critical. (Things like alliances with corporates, third party distributor alliances etc)
- Secondly, Insurance being a capital intensive business, due to solvency ratios, and unexpected insurance claims, do I have the deep pockets to sustain this market till I become profitable? – high shelf life before break even in insurance business
- Finally, Do I have the ability to offer innovative and customized insurance products to attract the customers?
Tips: - Power of good communication skills and engagement….You may not be reaching the answer…but by showing enough enthusiasm and energy about solving the case…..you allow the interviewer to help you a lot.
- Second, I made up for the not so sharp number work in my synthesis and recommendation. I did not restate facts, based on what I concluded and my industry knowledge, I suggested value added insights and recommendations.
- Lastly, knowing a bit about the industry helps you quote the right metrics like insurance penetration ratios, distribution pipeline etc (Doesn’t substitute pure problem solving skills but allows you to sound sensible)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In round 2 i was directly given a case to solve. The case was:
Our client is a Chocolate confectionary manufacturer started in 1980. It did quite well till 1990. Post 1990, it has seen a revenue slowdown and a profitability slowdown. Can you help them figure out why?
Me: I drew the usual profitability tree. Revenue and costs.I took him through volumes ( Market size, market share, production) Price changes, if any? Variances in costs ?
Interviewer: Fine, lets look at the costs
Me: Let me list down the various heads of costs Variable costs: Direct material, labor, variable overheads Fixed costs: SG&A including distribution costs, interest costs, I also highlighted the overlap.
Interviewer: Fine, let me provide you some data. Write it down. Raw material costs (% of revenue) For the client is 25%, for competitors 20% Distribution cost (cents per bar): For the client 0.25c and for the competitor 0.15c. Let us explore the distribution cost first.
Me: How does the client distribute its products?
Interviewer: It has its own distribution infrastructure….the trucks, manpower etc.
Me: So can I say the client does distribution in-house. So do our competitors not do it in-house?
Interviewer: Yes, you are right, the competitors are outsourcing distribution. What do you think is happening here?
Me: Is it that distribution agent is operating at a higher scale because he is sourcing the business from various manufacturers. If yes, then this could be the cause of difference in cost.
Interviewer: That’s right. What else? Give me one more reason for difference distribution cost.
Me: Is it that transporters are making more number of trips, since our batches of production are small or not synchronized?
Interviewer: Fine, give me one more.
Me: On what basis do transporters charge us?
Interviewer: Based on hourly rate.
Me: This leads me to the hypothesis, that they may be spending lot of time waiting, at the factory without doing any productive work.
Interviewer: You are thinking right.....go on
Me: Phew! Is it that turnaround time per truck is too high compared to our competitors.
Interviewer: Why do you think that is happening?
Me: Distances are too far from our customers or our suppliers. We are not located at the optimal distance from either customers or suppliers.
Oliver: Great, now lets talk about the raw material cost.
Me: So what kind of chocolate is this? Like a Mars bar or something?
Interviewer: Perfect.
Me: So let me list down the ingredients ……..Milk, cocoa, and sugar would be the main ingredients
Interviewer: So lets talk about each ingredient separately.
Me: Milk is a commodity…..
Interviewer: Is Milk a commodity? Is it traded?
Me: No, its not traded, so its not a commodity (This was my clue….thankfully I picked it up…..you will see below how it was a useful)
Interviewer: Go on…think specifically about each ingredient
Me: Cocoa and sugar are commodities.....because they are traded.
interviewer: So?
Me: After a pause of thinking......... Have the prices gone up of late? If yes, “ They are not hedging the commodity costs”
Interviewer: Excellent...You are right...either they are not hedging it or not hedging it as much as they should.
Me: yah....may be not even things like long term supply contracts.
Case part II:
Interviewerr: Great fresh page………note down these numbers…..gave me a full profitability statement to make for 2 factories….one in UK and one in France…..with capacity utilization to be calculated, units produced, price, RM costs as % of revenue, Labor based on per hour etc.
Me: I did the numbers in a very traditional school boy like fashion, did not try any quick calculation tricks…..was very transparent and vocal about my calculations …..helped a lot in showing my comfort with numbers
Interviewer: So what is your conclusion?
Me:
UK France
Capacity utilization 54% 39%
Profitability % 46.2% 33%
This shows a correlation between profitability and scale utilization.
Interviewer: So what would you suggest?
Me: Why don’t we integrate the facilities…. I did a ball park calculation to see if capacity in UK would be enough to handle production in both UK and France. However, there could be a downside to shutting plant in France…
Interviewer: So what are the downsides?
Me: Transportation cost, labor retrenchment cost, loss of customer intimacy in France resulting in loss of certain customers…he kept saying what else….i kept giving him more and more reasons
Interviewer: Only one thing you missed out real option value, if the French market picks up again…
Me: Ya right….I agree.
Interviewer: Thanks Gautam. Excellent. I liked your idea of integrating capacity. I am very happy with the way case has turned out.

Tips: - Very closely watch the words of the interviewer so that you pick up the clues……write as clearly as you can on paper……it helps you organize your thoughts clearly.
- Again, enjoy the process…treat it like a learning process…..will help you specially with an interviewer like Oliver (the interviewer)…who keeps pushing for more and more reasons and is never satiated.
Its good to be able to talk about common people, it just improves the conversation….again nothing substitutes for being genuine and enthusiastic in personal interviews.

General Tips: 1) Use the Challenge-Action-Impact framework to prepare answers for teamwork, leadership etc. Prepare beforehand
2) Keep telling yourself…. So what? When you prepare these kind of answers
3) Don’t sound rehearsed for such questions. Pick up
something, you are genuinely proud of….It will show
through.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Looked at auto-components industry on my resume and said he would give me an auto-comp case.
Case: Client is a leading auto component manufacturer. It wants to increase profits in the next few years and wants to reach a target of $5 bn in revenues. It is currently at $1 bn.
I suggested there are 2 basic ways to do so:
- Increase volume
- Increase value add and thus margins (elaborated below)
Clarifying questions
Me: Asked what was the core capability of the manufacturer and
the kind of products it manufacturers.
The Interviewer (TI): Forging and forged components
Me: Geographic presence?
TI: India and some acquisitions in Europe.
Me: Is it into auto- comp outsourcing business?
TI: Yes
Me: Increase Volume as follows:
I said can we assume is it meeting demand?
Was asked to make assumptions and proceed. Now I moved into a monologue – coz I gathered that’s what he wants
Increase volume:
- So I said if we know it is lagging in demand, we should explore expansions options – add domestic capacity, acquire capacity externally – (also a increase value add option – refer below)
- Enhance product offering (all types of forged components based on core forging capability)
- Increase share of wallet ( Does a single OEM outsource all types of auto-components) ; Have we exploited any potential to cross sell – if he is buying power train (engine) components, should he also buy axle and chasis components from us
- External acquisitions: Dual shore manufacturing – have a low cost mfg base in India and China, acquire plants in Europe and America which has good customer relationships – thus improve customer intimacy by being geographically close to customer and improve share of wallet.
Increase value add:
- Any change in product mix – make more of critical safety components which provide higher margins
- Provide full end to end support – from design of components to testing – make attempts to support the entire life cycle of car platforms – this will also enhance value add and thus margins ( Explore options to acquire or build R&D centers)
- Compare costs in India and China, add capacity in China, if it reduces costs and enhances margins
Tips: Anything on your CV could be turned into a case. Spend lot of time thinking and reading about companies and industries mentioned on your CV. Whats good/bad about industry? How are companies exploring growth options and so on?

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case:Client is an insurance company. They want to know how big is the insurance opportunity in India? Finally, given the size of the opportunity, what would you recommend as the next steps.
Me: Let me ask the usual clarifying questions, is the company into life insurance or non-life? Private company or a public company?
Interviewer: Life insurance, the client is a private company.
Me: To understand how big the opportunity is I would want to estimate the size of the insurance market.
Interviewer: In what denomination you would estimate the market.
Me: $ mm of life insurance premium
Interviewer: Great. So go ahead and do it.
Me: Sir, before I get into the number work, it will be useful to pictorially or graphically understand where does India stand on insurance penetrations relative to the world.
Interviewer: How would you do that? (It seemed he was very open to new ideas
as seen from his body language because he always sounded excited to hear
something new)
Me: You plot all the countries by insurance penetration ratios and see where India is in the stage of evolution in the insurance market
Interviewer: How would you define the penetration ratio?
Me: Insured population by Insurable population
Interviewer: Great. Now lets get to the number work.
Me: I took some time to think at this stage.
Usual method: Indian population, 30% urban, for now lets focus on the urban market, % of people who cannot afford insurance, I suggested if insurance premium exceeds a particular% of your annual income, then its not affordable, such population should be excluded or alternatively people below the poverty line. I suggested we could break down the population by Income class. As we discussed, it stood out that age cannot be a right basis, as people get their children insured and old people can also be insured albeit at a higher premium.
Interviewer: Great, let us assume you have done all that and the total size of
the market comes to $210mm. LIC’s market is 180mm and has 80%
market share. So what would your conclusion be?
Me:(I wasn’t very fluent at this stage …..somehow I got a bit confused at this stage…no particular reason…probably I wasn’t thinking calmly enough…. Later, with some push from him…this is what I concluded…
Me: Ok, so total insured market is then 180mm/ 0.80 which comes to approximately $205mm. Insurable market is $210mm. So penetration ratio is very high close to 95%. This leaves private insurers a market of only $5mm to pursue. So now how many private insurers are there?
Interviewer: 12/13
Me: Fine, then it is evident that private insurers are competing quite hard and each has a very minuscule share of the private market….and the nature of the game is to arrest market share from LIC, which may be very difficult.
Interviewer: We have now run out of time, so what would you suggest to the company?
Me: As of now, the market is very small and competitive for the private insurers. Going forward, the client would have to arrest market share from LIC and would have to do it better than other private players. So the key question client should ask itself?
- Do I have enough distribution capabilities to gain market share from LIC…coz in Insurance distribution pipeline is most critical. (Things like alliances with corporates, third party distributor alliances etc)
- Secondly, Insurance being a capital intensive business, due to solvency ratios, and unexpected insurance claims, do I have the deep pockets to sustain this market till I become profitable? – high shelf life before break even in insurance business
- Finally, Do I have the ability to offer innovative and customized insurance products to attract the customers?
Tips: - Power of good communication skills and engagement….You may not be reaching the answer…but by showing enough enthusiasm and energy about solving the case…..you allow the interviewer to help you a lot.
- Second, I made up for the not so sharp number work in my synthesis and recommendation. I did not restate facts, based on what I concluded and my industry knowledge, I suggested value added insights and recommendations.
- Lastly, knowing a bit about the industry helps you quote the right metrics like insurance penetration ratios, distribution pipeline etc (Doesn’t substitute pure problem solving skills but allows you to sound sensible)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In round 2 i was directly given a case to solve. The case was:
Our client is a Chocolate confectionary manufacturer started in 1980. It did quite well till 1990. Post 1990, it has seen a revenue slowdown and a profitability slowdown. Can you help them figure out why?
Me: I drew the usual profitability tree. Revenue and costs.I took him through volumes ( Market size, market share, production) Price changes, if any? Variances in costs ?
Interviewer: Fine, lets look at the costs
Me: Let me list down the various heads of costs Variable costs: Direct material, labor, variable overheads Fixed costs: SG&A including distribution costs, interest costs, I also highlighted the overlap.
Interviewer: Fine, let me provide you some data. Write it down. Raw material costs (% of revenue) For the client is 25%, for competitors 20% Distribution cost (cents per bar): For the client 0.25c and for the competitor 0.15c. Let us explore the distribution cost first.
Me: How does the client distribute its products?
Interviewer: It has its own distribution infrastructure….the trucks, manpower etc.
Me: So can I say the client does distribution in-house. So do our competitors not do it in-house?
Interviewer: Yes, you are right, the competitors are outsourcing distribution. What do you think is happening here?
Me: Is it that distribution agent is operating at a higher scale because he is sourcing the business from various manufacturers. If yes, then this could be the cause of difference in cost.
Interviewer: That’s right. What else? Give me one more reason for difference distribution cost.
Me: Is it that transporters are making more number of trips, since our batches of production are small or not synchronized?
Interviewer: Fine, give me one more.
Me: On what basis do transporters charge us?
Interviewer: Based on hourly rate.
Me: This leads me to the hypothesis, that they may be spending lot of time waiting, at the factory without doing any productive work.
Interviewer: You are thinking right.....go on
Me: Phew! Is it that turnaround time per truck is too high compared to our competitors.
Interviewer: Why do you think that is happening?
Me: Distances are too far from our customers or our suppliers. We are not located at the optimal distance from either customers or suppliers.
Oliver: Great, now lets talk about the raw material cost.
Me: So what kind of chocolate is this? Like a Mars bar or something?
Interviewer: Perfect.
Me: So let me list down the ingredients ……..Milk, cocoa, and sugar would be the main ingredients
Interviewer: So lets talk about each ingredient separately.
Me: Milk is a commodity…..
Interviewer: Is Milk a commodity? Is it traded?
Me: No, its not traded, so its not a commodity (This was my clue….thankfully I picked it up…..you will see below how it was a useful)
Interviewer: Go on…think specifically about each ingredient
Me: Cocoa and sugar are commodities.....because they are traded.
interviewer: So?
Me: After a pause of thinking......... Have the prices gone up of late? If yes, “ They are not hedging the commodity costs”
Interviewer: Excellent...You are right...either they are not hedging it or not hedging it as much as they should.
Me: yah....may be not even things like long term supply contracts.
Case part II:
Interviewerr: Great fresh page………note down these numbers…..gave me a full profitability statement to make for 2 factories….one in UK and one in France…..with capacity utilization to be calculated, units produced, price, RM costs as % of revenue, Labor based on per hour etc.
Me: I did the numbers in a very traditional school boy like fashion, did not try any quick calculation tricks…..was very transparent and vocal about my calculations …..helped a lot in showing my comfort with numbers
Interviewer: So what is your conclusion?
Me:
UK France
Capacity utilization 54% 39%
Profitability % 46.2% 33%
This shows a correlation between profitability and scale utilization.
Interviewer: So what would you suggest?
Me: Why don’t we integrate the facilities…. I did a ball park calculation to see if capacity in UK would be enough to handle production in both UK and France. However, there could be a downside to shutting plant in France…
Interviewer: So what are the downsides?
Me: Transportation cost, labor retrenchment cost, loss of customer intimacy in France resulting in loss of certain customers…he kept saying what else….i kept giving him more and more reasons
Interviewer: Only one thing you missed out real option value, if the French market picks up again…
Me: Ya right….I agree.
Interviewer: Thanks Gautam. Excellent. I liked your idea of integrating capacity. I am very happy with the way case has turned out.

Tips: - Very closely watch the words of the interviewer so that you pick up the clues……write as clearly as you can on paper……it helps you organize your thoughts clearly.
- Again, enjoy the process…treat it like a learning process…..will help you specially with an interviewer like Oliver (the interviewer)…who keeps pushing for more and more reasons and is never satiated.
Its good to be able to talk about common people, it just improves the conversation….again nothing substitutes for being genuine and enthusiastic in personal interviews.

General Tips: 1) Use the Challenge-Action-Impact framework to prepare answers for teamwork, leadership etc. Prepare beforehand
2) Keep telling yourself…. So what? When you prepare these kind of answers
3) Don’t sound rehearsed for such questions. Pick up
something, you are genuinely proud of….It will show
through.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I never realized when my case started; he was asking me the model on which Inductis works, and slowly moved towards what are the challenges for a company like Inductis in expanding. Only when he said “Or let’s say the CEO of JP Morgan, Kevin, or the CEO of Infosys comes to you and says that they wanted to expand their offshoring strength from 250 to 400, but they were not able to scale up.”, did I realize that my case had started! I politely asked him, “Is this a case, or I should be answering just on the fly?”; to which he replied – “Whatever you deem correct. Okay, lets consider it a
case”. I came up with the following issues:
1) They are not getting quality CVs
2) There are too many companies wooing the skilled people we want
3) There are some problems in meeting the expectations of the workers – challenging work , work-life balance and growth opportunities
4) Where do our workers go after leaving us
5) Is there some problem with the HR department
It turned out that the 5 point was one of the major problems.

Then I was given another case – “Mr Murthy is contemplating to expand globally and set up centers in US because India gets only $30 bn out of the total $800 bn offshoring/outsourcing market. What are the pros and cons?”
The most important negative point I identified was that that the cost arbitrage would not be there. Noshir then asked me to focus on advantages, and I came up with the following:
1) Proximity to the client
2) Cultural affinity
3) Better domain knowledge as you are working where the action is taking place
4) Lower telecom costs and hurdles
5) Political benefits – Democrats are totally against moving jobs to Asia, and hence such a move would be politically hailed


Tips: Biggest learning – your case can start anytime without you being explicitly told. This is really true for McK interviewers especially. Also, they don’t always look for structuring – when I was starting to jot down some points for my first case, the interviewer told me not to worry about structure and clarificatory questions and other formalities; he said “I know you would be master in all this, so I just want recommendations and issues which will add value to the client”.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In the second interview I was given a case study. It was conducted by another Interviewer. Your friend lives in Beijing, and is observing the commercial/office buildings being built these days. He is contemplating getting into the business of leasing cranes to constructors. What do you think of this idea?
The rough framework I told him I would follow is:
1) The market opportunity
2) Competition
3) Contacts, especially with suppliers of cranes
4) Investments in this business
5) Risks going forward
After a little discussion on each of these, he told me that this is an estimation case, and I have to estimate the market size of this business in $ terms. There can be several ways to go about it, and I took the following one:
1) An average building is built on a square of side 70m
2) Assume Beijing to be a square of side 20km
3) Out of the total are of 400 sq.km, 50sq.km is used for commercial purposes
4) 80% of this, ie 40 sq. km is the area on which a building is actually build (the rest 20% for roads, lawns, parking lots etc)
5) This gives about 8000 buildings which can be built
6) Assume in the next years, a total 2000 buildings will be build, 400 each in every year
7) A building construction requires 3 cranes in the initial 4 months,
2 cranes in the next 4 months, and 1 crane in the last 4 months, completing in whole 1 year
8) A crane costs $50,000 per month Doing all the calculation should give the total annual market size of approximately $480 million.


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In the personal Interview the interview started from a discussion on BTO practice for 20 minutes. The case interview started after a discussion of my short-term/long-term goals, how consulting fits in and why MBA etc.
She gave an actual situation she met in China on one of her projects:
A meat manufacturer in Europe, selling only ham and sausages, has been seeing declining profits for the last 2 years. So what could be the reason behind it?
I did the following analysis step by step:
1) What specific did we do 2 years back? – Nothing was the answer.
2) Have the customer tastes been changing? – No, the market was stable
3) How is the competitive landscape? – 2 competitors, each having 30% mkt share, while we have 40%.
4) Revenue-Cost analysis: It turned out that the volumes of sausages was going down, while it was constant for ham. The reason was that one of the competitors was selling sausages at 99 cents a kg, while we sold at $1/kg; also, we sold ham at $4.2/kg.
The issue then shifted to the question – how was the competitor able to sell sausages at 99 cents a kg? While analyzing the cost structure, it emerged that sausages were being sold at break-even!
Now the question was – if they are zero margins in sausages, then how could lower sausage sales trigger a decline in profits? I asked some more questions about how they were manufactured, and found that the following process is followed: the company buys chunks of meat, makes ham out of them, and the small, leftover pieces of meat are used to make sausages. Hence, when the sales of sausages went down, it was because they were not able to sell the leftover meat at $1/kg they bought the raw meat at.

This rang the bell of ‘cost allocation’; why should sausages me allocated the costs for leftover scrap meat at the same rate as that of good meat used in ham? Well, one reason unearthed. Actually, there was a bigger reason; the indirect labor costs (salaries of CEO, managers etc) were being allocated very irrationally – though a ham was being sold at 4.2 times the price of a sausage and involved more processing and personnel time, both were allocated the same costs! In fact, a sausage was being allocated a total of 60 cents for indirect labor costs, though a ham was being allocated only 80 cents.
I synthesized the case by explaining how cross-subsidization was happening, how this could be because of the shrewdness of the manager of ham operations and the naivety of the manager of sausage operations. It turned out that this was exactly the reason behind all this.
In the second interview, I was not given any case.

Tips: Keep in mind how much time you would have for the case; As we had lost 20-25 minutes discussing BTO, I was well aware that no way would I get much time as this was a 30 min interview. Hence I quickly went through all possible issues, and zeroed in on the relevant one
Prepare your PI well.

General Tips: Structuring of the cases should be impressive.
Keep in mind how much time you would have for the case.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case 1: As I had worked in the healthcare industry for the last 2.5 years of career with Infosys. The interviewer made a case on the spot for the software industry and healthcare.
Nandan Nilakeni approaches you for advice on a product that can be created for the US healthcare industry. How do you analyze the situation?
Analysis
Since healthcare industry value chain has many players, structured case as focusing on the healthcare providers. Confirmed with interviewer. Bucketed the IT drivers into market trends, government regulation & operational efficiency.
Market trends
Discussed the broad trends in the US healthcare industry
f. Climbing health care costs
g. Government encouraging customers to take more responsibility for their health care spending
h. Creation of tax deductible Flexible spending accounts
i. Consumers transitioning to customers (earlier customers were the payers employers)
j. Need for more robust means of identifying customers and their medical history to manage chronic diseases
k. More consumer directed health plans being purchased
l. Importance of customer relationship management systems for health care providers (which currently doesn’t exist/ limited versions)
He further quizzed me about the apparent lack of IT systems in US HC providers. Asked me to explore historical reasons
Me:
1) Misaligned incentives for the providers vis-à-vis accrual of benefits from IT usage. Major beneficiaries are insurance companies.
2) Practicing Physicians less likely to make IT investment Government Regulation
Discussed high cost of regulation in the health care industry (1 of total health care spend)
Discussed HIPAA regulations as an example
Interviewer: Will the providers be able to meet the deadlines set by HIP? Talked about the security and portability aspects of HIPAA, Timelines for each phase etc
Me : Compliance will drive some of the major health spending. Ease of enhancement for regulatory compliance will be one of the important aspects of the IT product.

Operational Efficiency:
Me: Accidental deaths from inefficient and error-prone process within hospitals. Operational efficiency to be improved. Importance of IT systems like CPOE, EHR gaining importance. Potential toreduce errors. Standardization of processes within hospitals
increases scope for productization.
Interviewer: To summarize, what are the most important aspects which favor product development as opposed to customized application development in the health care industry ?
Me: Standardization of requirements is one. Regulatory compliance is another.

Asked if I have any questions.

In the second interview I was given another case.
Client is a no 1 boiler manufacturer in India. He is now witnessing
reduce profits. Advise .
Laid out the structure--- Client (his product lines, pricing, distribution channel), competition (change in competitors, their strategy wrt product lines, distribution), Customers (size, preferences), Industry (regulatory, new technology) and cost dynamics (fixed, variable, etc).Interviewer was happy with the structure and said he wanted hypothesis as to why is he losing profits:
• New competitors have come up with diff technology for boilers
–NO
• The market size for boilers has shrunk (due to changes in the
industry they have been rendered redundant)
• Price war in the industry – reduced profitability – YES
Then I explored how the competitors are offering a lower price. After delving through each item on cost structure, Supply chain, etc; it appeared that it was because the competitors used a new technology to manufacture boilers --- This tech required LESS raw material (steel) per unit of boiler because the manner in which Steel was being cut (he gave some technical knowledge) -boy….this took some time to get to…in fact interviewer helped out here !!!

Discussed about the trends in IT off-shoring. Asked him about the next wave of off-shoring from Infrastructure management business and how well prepared the Indian players are to meet this challenge in his opinion ?


General Tips: Stick to a detailed and precise answer while solving for the case.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Personal Interview questions revolved around my academic performance and about grades. The case interview started off with the following case:
Client is a no 1 boiler manufacturer in India. He is now witnessing reduce profits. Advise.
I Laid out the structure--- Client (his product lines, pricing, distribution channel), competition (change in competitors, their strategy wrt product lines, distribution), Customers (size, preferences), Industry (regulatory, new technology) and cost dynamics (fixed, variable, etc).Interviewer was happy with the structure and said he wanted hypothesis as to why is he losing profits:
• New competitors have come up with diff technology for boilers –NO
• The market size for boilers has shrunk (due to changes in the industry they have been rendered redundant)
• Price war in the industry – reduced profitability – YES
Then I explored how the competitors are offering a lower price. After delving through each item on cost structure, Supply chain, etc; it appeared that it was because the competitors used a new technology to manufacture boilers --- This tech required LESS raw material (steel) per unit of boiler because the manner in which Steel was being cut (he gave some technical knowledge) -boy….this took some time to get to…in fact interviewer helped out here !!!

Tips: Stay Confident & Cool even if you miss the above fact. Move on
and build on it. Show Energy during the interview. !!

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: in the second interview of the first round, personal interview was entirely experience based; did not miss any line of CV on work exp (as I had fin work exp)
case: I want to start a crane leasing biz in China….estimate my annual profits for next year
I Assumed: No regulatory issues, no replacement of cranes with better equipment for 1 year
First zeroed in on city, then city space, available free space, plausible for construction next year.
Identified alternative pricing strategies—ie per diem, per contract, on/off season rates (less in rainy,etc)

Lots of numbers given (area—square kms, rates, etc)– he wanted me to calculated to the nearest dollar….
Made a calculation mistake (while using square root for area
estimation)…but keep your cool ..they are looking at approach

He then asked me to convert the final answer ($33,85,263) to the nearest pound sterling (DON’T LOSE your cool…)..I used 1.8 conversion rate to convert it (did not carry a calculator☺)))

At the end I asked few questions on M&A issues in China (I heard up on this after the interview schedule was out)..this helps impress him as he was based in the Corp Fin group in China


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In the first interview of the second round personal interview was more of a general feel good talk. Then the case Interview began. the case was:
Airline industry—reduced profitability
I gave the structure, identified the drivers and was beginning to explore each item ---he said that he was happy with structure and gave me another scenario where an airline had 2 options either to fly:
Brazil to US
Brazil-Argentina-US

I explored the pt to pt vs hub and spoke model….we went through the numbers and looked at the opportunity costs to finally chose the right strategy.
I also looked at non-fin aspects like strategy and future growth before choosing the option.

He asked me to list adv and dis adv of both models. I drew a model and explored that for 10 routes, pt to pt needs 45 air crafts (10 C 2) while hub and spoke needs only 10. Also identified positives and negatives in other aspects such as costs, customer perception, time, target segment impact, load factor (utilization rate), pricing, etc
Incidentally the actual opinion he said was similar to my recommendation.


Tips: Be ready for pep talk, good opportunity to create feel good

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In the second interview, the personal interview was more of a general talk with questions on why MBA, why ISB etc.
Case: International Courier company-losing market share

Standard structure—
• product mix (packages of all sizes), distribution network pricing,
• competition,
• customer segment (attributes they look for: time, safety of packet and prices; convenience – centers for collection-touch points),
• industry dynamics,
• cost structure (esp fixed), etc

Identified problem as local couriers eating market share due to lower costs

Recommendation:
As Fixed costs are high; increase volume business by:
• Alliances with Low cost couriers (but quality of service is a issue)
• JV s (would help as equity stake)
• Acquisitions (highlighted both positives and negatives)

Reduce costs internally (explore using excess capacity on other airlines instead of using your own airlines for low volumes)

General Tips: Keep your cool during the interview.
Keep smiling and be confident.
Try to not to goof up with calculations.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)