Flipkart Associate Consultant Interview Questions and Answers

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Medium level competitive programming question. Interviewer looked for the approach and working code.

Q1. 
Time to Burn Tree Problem
You are given a binary tree consisting of 'N' unique nodes and a start node where the burning will commence. The task is to calculate the time in minutes required to completely b...read more
Ans. 
Calculate the time in minutes required to completely burn a binary tree starting from a given node.
• Perform a depth-first search (DFS) to calculate the time taken to burn the entire tree.

• Track the time taken to burn each node based on its distance from the starting node.

• Consider the maximum time taken among all nodes as the total time to burn the entire tree.
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Round duration - 40 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Timing : Evening
Interviewer was frank. He checked for indepth knowledge of the subject.

Round duration - 90 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

2 coding questions and 20 mcq
 

Q1. 
Rotting Oranges Problem Statement
You are given a grid containing oranges where each cell of the grid can contain one of the three integer values:
• 0 - representing an empty cell
• 1 - representing a fre...read more
Ans. 
Find the minimum time required to rot all fresh oranges in a grid.
• Use Breadth First Search (BFS) to simulate the rotting process.

• Track the time taken to rot all oranges and return -1 if any fresh oranges remain.

• Handle edge cases like no fresh oranges or all oranges already rotten.

• Consider using a queue to efficiently process adjacent oranges.

• Ensure to update the grid with the new state of oranges after each second.
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Q2. 
Calculate Sum of Proper Divisors
Given a natural number N, return the sum of all its proper divisors.
A proper divisor of Y is defined as a number X such that X < Y and Y % X = 0.
Example:
Input:
T...read more
Ans. 
Calculate the sum of proper divisors of a given natural number.
• Iterate from 1 to sqrt(N) and check for divisors

• If a divisor is found, add it to the sum and also add N/divisor if it is not the same as divisor

• Return the sum as the result
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Round duration - 45 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Technical interview

Q1. 
Rearrange Array to Form Largest Number
Given an array ARR consisting of non-negative integers, rearrange the numbers to form the largest possible number. The digits within each number cannot be changed.
...read more
Ans. 
Rearrange the array elements to form the largest possible number by concatenating them.
• Sort the array elements in a custom comparator function to get the largest number.

• Convert the sorted array elements to strings and concatenate them to form the final number.

• Handle cases where the numbers have the same prefix by comparing the concatenated forms.
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Round duration - 90 Miinutes
Round difficulty - Medium

First round had MCQ + 2 coding questions. It was held in morning around 11 am. It was held on campus.

Q1. 
Robot Delivery Path Problem
You are tasked with directing a robot from the top-left corner of an N*N matrix to a specified point (x, y), delivering a parcel. The robot is restricted to move only on flat a...read more
Ans. 
Determine if a robot can reach a specified destination in a matrix by moving only downwards or rightwards.
• Start at (0,0) and move towards the destination (x, y) only downwards or rightwards.

• Check if the path is clear (1) and avoid obstacles (0) while staying within matrix boundaries.

• Return true if the robot can reach the destination, false otherwise.

• Example: For input matrix [[1, 0, 1], [1, 1, 1], [1, 1, 5]] with desti
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Q2. 
Unique Element in Array
Given an arbitrary array arr consisting of N non-negative integers where every element appears thrice except for one. Your task is to find the element in the array that appears onl...read more
Ans. 
Find the unique element in an array where every element appears thrice except for one.
• Use XOR operation to find the unique element.

• Iterate through the array and XOR each element to find the unique element.

• The XOR operation cancels out elements that appear thrice, leaving only the unique element.

• Example: arr = [2, 2, 3, 2], XOR of all elements = 3.

• Example: arr = [0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 99], XOR of all elements = 99.
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Round duration - 90 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Second Round was held in morning around 10-11 am. There was one interviewer working on his laptop. Interviewer was really helpful and first offered me water and then for a bit talked about himself.

Q1. 
BST Iterator Problem Statement
You are tasked with implementing a class BSTIterator, which is designed to traverse a Binary Search Tree (BST) in the inorder manner. The class must support the following op...read more
Ans. 
Implement a BSTIterator class to traverse a Binary Search Tree in inorder manner.
• Implement a constructor to initialize the iterator with the root of the BST.

• Implement next() and hasNext() methods to traverse the BST in inorder.

• Implement prev() and hasPrev() methods to access the previous element in the inorder traversal.

• Use level-order traversal format to represent the tree input.

• Output the inorder traversal of the bin
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Q2. 
Distance Between Two Nodes in a Binary Tree
Given a binary tree and the values of two distinct nodes, determine the distance between these two nodes in the tree. The distance is defined as the minimum num...read more
Ans. 
Calculate the distance between two nodes in a binary tree.
• Traverse the tree to find the paths from the root to each node

• Find the lowest common ancestor of the two nodes

• Calculate the distance by adding the distances from the LCA to each node
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Round duration - 150 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

We could attempt at any time out of the 3 given days.
The round was very time constrained and we could NOT go back to the question that we already attempted.

Q1. 
Merge Two Sorted Linked Lists
Given two sorted linked lists, your task is to merge them into a single sorted linked list. Return the head of the newly combined list.
Note:
The given linked lists may or ...read more
Ans. 
Merge two sorted linked lists into a single sorted linked list.
• Create a dummy node to start the merged list

• Compare nodes from both lists and add the smaller one to the merged list

• Move the pointer of the merged list and the list with the smaller node

• Handle cases where one list is exhausted before the other

• Return the head of the merged list
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

Evening at 5:00 pm. It was held on Amazon Chime app
Face cam was to be kept on COMPULSARILY. You could however not see the interviewer.
Codepen type environment was also used for typing my code which could be edited by the interviewer also.
(Shared document kind of)
Interviewer was very professional and was trying to push me towards getting the most optimal solution. Each and every answer was asked a counter question as to why I made that choice

Q1. 
Missing Numbers Problem Statement
You are provided with an array called ARR, consisting of distinct positive integers. Your task is to identify all the numbers that fall within the range of the smallest a...read more
Ans. 
Identify missing numbers within the range of smallest and largest elements in an array.
• Find the smallest and largest elements in the array.

• Generate a list of numbers within the range of smallest and largest elements.

• Remove the numbers that are present in the array to get the missing numbers.

• Sort and return the missing numbers.
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Q2. 
Find Maximum Element Between Two Nodes in a BST
Given a Binary Search Tree (BST) and two integers, NODE1 and NODE2, determine the maximum element found in the path between NODE1 and NODE2.
Explanation:
...read more
Ans. 
Find the maximum element between two nodes in a Binary Search Tree (BST) path.
• Traverse the BST to find the path between NODE1 and NODE2.

• Keep track of the maximum element encountered in the path.

• Return the maximum element found, or -1 if NODE1 or NODE2 are not in the BST or no elements exist between them.
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Q3. 
String Compression Problem Statement
Implement a program that performs basic string compression. When a character is consecutively repeated more than once, replace the consecutive duplicates with the coun...read more
Ans. 
Implement a program to compress a string by replacing consecutive duplicates with the count of repetitions.
• Iterate through the string and keep track of consecutive characters and their counts.

• Replace consecutive duplicates with the count of repetitions.

• Ensure the count of repetitions is ≤ 9.

• Return the compressed string.
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. 
Count Inversions Problem Statement
Given an integer array ARR of size N, your task is to find the total number of inversions that exist in the array.
An inversion is defined for a pair of integers in the...read more
Ans. 
Count the total number of inversions in an integer array.
• Iterate through the array and for each pair of elements, check if the conditions for inversion are met.

• Use a nested loop to compare each element with all elements to its right.

• Keep a count of the inversions found and return the total count at the end.
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Q2. 
Postfix Expression Evaluation Problem Statement
Given a postfix expression, your task is to evaluate the expression. The operator will appear in the expression after the operands. The output for each expr...read more
Ans. 
Evaluate postfix expressions by applying operators after operands. Return result modulo (10^9+7).
• Iterate through each character in the postfix expression

• If character is an operand, push it onto the stack

• If character is an operator, pop two operands from stack, apply operator, and push result back

• Continue until end of expression, return final result modulo (10^9+7)
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Round duration - 40 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. 
String Rearrangement Problem Statement
You are given a string of lowercase characters. The objective is to rearrange (reorder) the string so that no two adjacent characters are identical.
Return the rear...read more
Ans. 
Given a string of lowercase characters, rearrange it so that no two adjacent characters are identical. Return the rearranged string or 'NO SOLUTION'.
• Iterate through the string and count the frequency of each character.

• Sort the characters based on their frequency in non-increasing order.

• Place the characters with highest frequency first, alternating with other characters.

• If there are more than half of the characters with
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Q2. 
Pair Sum Problem Statement
Given an integer array ARR of size N and an integer S, your task is to return a list of all pairs of elements such that the sum of each pair equals S.
Input:
The first line co...read more
Ans. 
The task is to find pairs of elements in an array that sum up to a given target value.
• Iterate through the array and for each element, check if the complement (target - current element) exists in a hash set.

• If the complement exists, add the pair to the result list.

• Ensure pairs are sorted based on the criteria mentioned in the question.
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Round duration - 40 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. 
Find Number of Islands
You are provided with a 2-dimensional array/list of size N rows by M columns, containing ones (1) and zeroes (0). Here, 1 represents land, and 0 represents water.
A cell is consider...read more
Ans. 
Find the number of islands in a 2D matrix of 1s and 0s.
• Iterate through the matrix and perform depth-first search (DFS) to find connected 1s.

• Use a visited array to keep track of visited cells to avoid counting the same island multiple times.

• Increment the island count whenever a new island is encountered.
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Q2. 
Triplets in a Sorted Doubly Linked List
Given a sorted doubly linked list of distinct nodes, determine how many triplets in the list have a sum equal to a given value 'X'. Each node in the list contains a...read more
Ans. 
Given a sorted doubly linked list of distinct nodes, find and count triplets with a sum equal to a given value 'X'.
• Iterate through the list and for each node, use two pointers to find the other two nodes that sum up to 'X'.

• Keep track of the count of triplets found and return it at the end.

• Handle edge cases like when the list has less than 3 nodes or no triplets are found.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

In this round i was tested for Data Structure competency. Two questions were asked.

Q1. 
Group Anagrams Problem Statement
Given an array or list of strings called inputStr, your task is to return the strings grouped as anagrams. Each group should contain strings that are anagrams of one anoth...read more
Ans. 
Group anagrams in an array of strings based on their characters.
• Iterate through the array of strings and sort each string to group anagrams together.

• Use a hashmap to store the sorted string as key and the list of anagrams as value.

• Return the values of the hashmap as the grouped anagrams.
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Two questions were asked in this round on data structures and algorithms.

Q1. 
BST Iterator Problem Statement
You are tasked with creating a class named BSTIterator that acts as an iterator for the inorder traversal of a binary search tree. Implement the following functions:
1. BST...read more
Ans. 
Implement a BSTIterator class for inorder traversal of a binary search tree.
• Create a BSTIterator class with constructor, next, and hasNext functions.

• Use a stack to simulate inorder traversal of the binary search tree.

• Ensure the hasNext function returns true if there are more elements to traverse.

• Example: Input - 4 2 6 1 3 5 7 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1, Output - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Q2. 
K Most Frequent Words Problem Statement
Given an array or list WORDS of 'N' non-empty words and an integer 'K', identify the 'K' most frequent words and return them sorted by their frequency, in descendin...read more
Ans. 
Identify the K most frequent words in a list, sorted by frequency and lexicographical order.
• Use a hashmap to store word frequencies

• Use a min heap to keep track of K most frequent words

• Sort the heap based on frequency and lexicographical order
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Round duration - 50 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

At the beginning of this round, the interviewer asked me about the data structures I knew. Linked lists, trees, graphs, arrays etc. was my answer. He asked me how well I knew Dynamic Programming. I said I wasn’t strong in that and he said that he would ask me a question on dynamic programming for sure.

Round duration - 40 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

The interviewer asked me if I was comfortable with the interview process so far and how the previous interviews were. I said it was good and he gave me the first problem to solve.

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

The interviewer asked me some Com­puter Sci­ence‍ fundamentals in this round as well as some behavioural questions.

Q1. Implement a Trie data structure and write functions to insert and search for a few words in it.
Ans. 
Implement a Trie data structure with insert and search functions.
• Create a TrieNode class with children and isEndOfWord attributes.

• Implement insert function to add words by iterating through characters.

• Implement search function to check if a word exists by traversing the Trie.

• Example: Insert 'apple', 'banana', 'orange' and search for 'apple' and 'grape'.
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