Thoucentric Management Consultant Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: After some general questions related to my profile, academic background, work-experience and interests they moved to cases.
1. Your client wants to establish a cement factory. How would you approach and what all factors would affect the location decision?
2.Your client has developed an eye solution, using which a customer can do without spectacles. However, one unit works only for one day. So, an user will have to consume fresh unit everyday for solving same problem. Assume that the cost of producing these units is negligible. The cost incurred so far is on Research and Development which is substantial amount. How should they market and price the products?
3. Estimate the market for second hand cars in India?
4. Moser bear has launched DVD range at affordable prices of Rs. 30-40. a MUSIC COMPANY, x has been in the market for last few years and has been selling DVD's for Rs. 250-300. How should they react to the situation of continuously falling demand?
5. Estimate the demand for cricket bats in India
6. Estimate the size of surat textile Industry?
Tips: Don't focus on getting the right solution as cases don't have just one solution. The interviewer is interested in seeing your approach not the result.

General Tips: Focus and pick up the cues from the interviewer.
Skills:
Duration: 2
College Name: IIM Lucknow

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case: A manufacturing Co. produces three products: A,B and c cost of production of each is Rs 20. The SP of A= Rs60, B=Rs 80 and C= Rs100. The company produces the same amount of all the three products. In order to earn more profits, the CEO of the company feels that the company should concentrate on producing C, while the CA says that they should go for product A. The CEO a friend of yours comes to you for consultation. Can you help him out?
Profit per unit is ficed; hence the number of units is the variable part.
Thus the important factor is the time required for the production of each unit of product A, B and c. In this case, the interviewer told me that the time of production for C is 1 hr while for A its 15 min and for B 30 min. Thus, the profit from A will be larger compared to B and c.
Other options explored :
- The market growth rate of the products
-The taxes on individual products, in case there are any(because of the CA factor)
-Competitors for the given products.
Tips: As with me, many people, or at least some, tend to give importance to a particular thing on which the interviewer would have stressed on. While this may be so, but its also possible that he's trying to mislead you or give you a broader option. I believe the appropriate approach would be to take a two way approach which in this case would have been an accounting approach and other an operational approach.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case1: There is XYZ refrigerator manufacturing co. The company has only one factory in the centre of the country. From there, it distributes its products throughout the country and hence incurs some transportation costs. There is a competitor situated only about a km away. The management of the company comes to know that the transportation costs of the competitor are considerably less than theirs. In order to find out the reason they have hired you. so How will you go about it?

Analysis: The total transportation costs of the company will depend on three factors.
These include:
- distance travelled per trip
- costs per km of distance
-no. of trips

Since the competitor was also located in the same area, the distance traveled per trip and the cost of trip per Km would have been same. This gets us to the point of no.of trips. It might have been possible that the XYZ company might not be fully utilizing the capacity of the truck and hence required more number of trips to transport the same number of refrigerators as the competitors. Thus, they should be concentrating at maximum utilization of the capacity.

Case 2- Estimation
You are the head of ESPN-STAR. Formula 1 is coming to India and you aim at bidding for the television rights of the same. How would you go about doing it?

The estimation can be fairly carried out by structuring the population in 2 ways:
-one the basis of cities: Divide into urban cities, satellite towns and villages
-on the basis of age: Divide into 3 groups 0-15, 15-20 and above 50

For each city based on population divide it into the three age groups. Now in cities, people in the age group 15-50 are most likely to watch formula 1. let the number be 30% of them. For below and above this age group, let the number be 10%.
In case of satellite towns, the percentage of people in 15-50 age group can be assumed to be 15% and 2-3% for people above and below this age group.
while in villages it can be safely assumed that nobody watches F1. Thus estimation can be carried out in this way.


Tips: being a fresher and not being used to interacting with high profile people was at the back of my mind. Hence, I had a very cautious approach to my interview and probably hampered my natural thinking and flow. So for probable interviewees who feel the same , it is advisable to be as natural as possible.

General Tips: Be as natural as possible
Structure the case properly.
Aim for a good interaction by asking them questions.
Skills:
Duration: 3
College Name: IIM Lucknow

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case:A cement manufacturer based out of East India has been seeing his prices in east India dip heavily in the past few months. Despite being the market leader, he seems to be unable to arrest the fall in prices. The aim as a consultant lies to raise the prices by 10% and find a strategy to make sure the prices do not fall so easily again.
Case analysis:
This was a very complex case with multiple problems and solutions with each having a different set of pros and cons. He wanted me to see the case from a simple
demand and supply point of view.
Structure:
The supply was overshooting demand in the market as a result of the actions of competitors. So the issue was also to do with the distributors in the middle and how brand consciousness would come into the scene. The structure could be simplified to a 2*2 matrix with price elasticity of demand and brand consciousness on the axes. The issue could be then simplified on the basis of the quadrant in focus.
Summary:

Overall, the issue was embedded in being able to use game theory with the distributor and play prices up and down at regular intervals. Another strategy was to enter into forward contracts.



Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The interviewer was very calm and reassuring and that helped me build the conversation.
Case: A local taxi driver in Delhi wants to explore the possibility of signing a contract with a radio taxi service. Help him with his dilemma.
Analysis: This was a case that really tested your ability to think far and wide because the math was simple but the underlying logic could have been missed very easily.
Structure:
Used a simple revenue-cost structure for the pre and post radio taxi phase. Then tried to see if any of the key variables could be modified to come up with a different result.
Summary:
The case had two parts- one was the initial decision and the decision after changing a key variable.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The interview took off with a general discussion on football and tennis and we spoke about our favorite stars from each of them. More than anything else, this was an amazing conversation where I could speak without any fears and inhibitions.
Case: A life insurance company in Sri Lanka is losing out on market share. Where does the problem lie?
Analysis:
The case was a test of structure to see if you could create one with all the levers enlisted.
Structure:
The market share could be seen as a function of number of policies sold and the revenue per policy. The discussion would then carry on the aspect of number of policies. The number of policies itself would be a function of a number of factors, out of which one of them was creating an issue.
Summary:
The toxic area was something to do with the insurance policy salesman and the entire structure had to be panned out so as to get to that

Tips: Be calm, logical and energetic. That is all you need to impress the interviewer.

General Tips: Be energetic.
Calmness and common sense are the key.
Skills:
College Name: IIM Lucknow

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case:The client is a financial services company. It has started a wealth management business five years earlier. The business is not performing nicely. Should the company keep on making on investments in this or exit.
Structure:
First asked about the industry. The industry was growing but the company was losing share. This meant that the problem was with the company. Structured to find about the revenue and cost structures of the industry and the firm in particular. Tried to gather as much background information on this as possible. Talked about training the employees, any new adverse regulations, competitor offerings, etc. In short covered a lot of different angles.
Finally he asked me to give 10 recommendations to solve the problem. This was difficult as we had barely discussed the case for 10 minutes. Took 5 minutes to write down my suggestions.
Structured my answer in three areas: Customers, employees and business improvement. Gave 3-4 suggestions in each bucket.

Tips: Idea generation requires a lot of practice. Make sure you do abstract cases which involve idea generation. Also have questions for the interviewer ready for at least 3 rounds of the process.

Skills:
College Name: IIM Lucknow

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: Basic clarification: How are environment friendly building different from normal construction. Basically all the raw materials used to construct will have lesser footprint. These raw materials are readily available at slightly higher price and hence there is no issue with them.What are the objectives of the client from this project? He said what do you think? I mentioned the impacts of such projects are both financial as well as from strategic. I took some time and laid down the following structure Financial: Compared the NPV of this project with the regular project Laid down the entire cash flow statement from boththe projects. Strategic Measure: Impact on brand of the client, impact on the customer base that the client will attract, extension of this environment friendly project to other parts of client’s business, kind of government support that client can gather. Risk associated with this project Once I discussed this structure with Sachin, he started giving me some numbers to calculate the NPV of both the projects (Sorry I do not remember numbers but cash flows from environment friendly building were coming better). I calculated the cash flow for both the projects. Then I told Sachin that cost of capital for both these projects would be different. He mentioned it is true and then we had a long discussion on why environmental building will be more risky. He said right now we might not be able to estimate the risks, so in absence of risk how can we find if we can take the project or not. During our discussion on the risk involved with the project, we found various components of risk. I mentioned we can take base case of normal projects for all those components (basically calculate sensitivity of cash flows on project specific risk) and we did that and found that still environmental project was better. Then we had discussion on the strategic implication of these projects, primarily the one which I had already listed on my initial structure.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This interview had some graphs, I might not be able to reproduce them. But will try my best to give inferences of those graphs. Felix started with showing me the value chain of entire automobile industry. And told in which part of the value chain our client operates: R&D, Manufacturing, After sales.. Client was not in Dealers, insurance and car financing. He asked me to calculate the potential car financing market. I told him we will first calculate the total cars that are needed by US markets and then find out average price of cars sold in US and then see what percentage of people take car financing and also up to what percentage of total car price. He was happy that I mentioned percentage part as most of the times customers make certain payments from their savings. We followed standard method of calculating number of cars, started with number of households and then dissected it across income group which can afford cars. He told me that approximately 90% household in US can afford cars and on average there are 2 cars per households. We came up with some number, but I told him that this number is the stock of car in US. Annual sale of new cars would be dependent on average life of the car and percentage of old car market in US. He asked me to ignore old car market, and told average age of a car is 12 years. He gave me some numbers of the price of the car and % upfront payment. I mentioned that this is the total size of the car financing market, but actual profit that our client will make from this business is dependent on clients market share and the spread of the loans (mainly his cost of borrowing and his rate of borrowing). This was the point where he mentioned I am doing extremely well with numbers, now lets move on to the strategy part. He showed me few graphs which compared the spread of our clients car financing and spread of other loans available in market ( house loans and others.. I am currently forgetting rest). But the spread of car financing was about 0.2% and total profit that the client will make per by using car financing was somewhere around 38$ per car. I mentioned to Felix that this on the face of this looks very small profit, but car financing business can help us in acquiring new customers and the client can make money through that. Then based on the graphs and the discussion till now, he asked me to make 3 recommendations. I told him a) Client can get into joint venture with some banks and decrease its cost of borrowing as banks balance sheet might be stronger than our client. b) Cross sell various other loans like house loans c) I am forgetting third one. Then Felix clicked next on his power point presentation and showed these were the exact recommendations he made to his client. Then we again chatted for sometime about his experience with India and then he mentioned to me that I have cracked the case, he just need to check with my previous interviewer.
Tips: Make sure interview flow like a logical discussion, and try to interact with the partners when they come to campus. Familiarity with the interviewer helps a lot.

Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: T he interview started with a discussion on tintin, herge, literary quizzing and went on to about yourself.
Case:Client is a life insurance agency in Sri Lanka facing declining market share ,
Analysis:Market leader, no.2 and no. 3 growing in dominance, Market growing, they didn't release a particular policy, don‟t give enough incentives to their agents which other firms are capitalizing on.
Structure:
Broke it down into their business structure, understood how they operate, tried to find loopholes in each step.
Summary:
Was asked to stop after explaining the approach and asking two or three questions, BCG vs McKinsey took over, spirited discussion regarding pros, cons and discussion I had with Gautam Kumra at McK, after debates and stressing the people point, we called it a day.
Tips: Take hints, explain approach

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This interview again started with a 'tell me about yourself' question and my experiences till now.they gave me an outlin that we'll start with a case and then move on to any doubts I have about BCG.
Case: Leading cement manufacturer is facing declining profits; prices have halved in the last few months and facing decreasing prices further as well. Suggest emergency measures for next few weeks.
Analysis:Spoke about the business, market, the competition and how everyone else was coping. Talked about how the business worked; distribution and sales network, retailers and incentives and breakup in terms of branded, unbranded cement. Twist in the case, BCG says increase prices; profits fall by 12% more and take a hit. Now what?
Structure:
Value chain + market scenario, focused on issues like rising costs, raw material sourcing, manufacturing difficulties, expansion possibilities but were discounted. Went on to retailers and distribution and his eyes lit up, literally. Focused on region wise distribution, why there were discrepancies in individual dealers selling different quantities given same consumption patterns, focused on price prediction patterns and inventory holding practices by different retailers.
Summary:
Was stopped after this, talked about BCG, consulting as a career and how the partner found his calling, how BCG contributes in making real change in the world.

Tips: Be clear, calm and logical on the day and not let anything bog you down, least of all, the pressure and reputation.


General Tips: Be comfortable and at ease while giving the interview.
Skills:
College Name: IIM Lucknow