ZS Business Associate Interview Questions and Answers

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Total 3 rounds :
1. Online Aptitude Test
2. JAM Round
3. Interview

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Focus more on the audits performed during the articleship.

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: I started by asking what is the time frame: Answer – over next 10/20 years
• Proposed to evaluate the following to get the right context:
o Company
o Customers
o Employees
o Industry
o Regulation
o Competition
• Moved on to talk about industry: Industry is characterized by environmental challenges and technology is critical in exploration
• Understood the value chain in the industry
• Consumers want energy at cheapest cost – increasingly want clean energy
• Talked about company and business goals: Wants to be a global player and develop a leadership in energy space
• Finally identified that the company is dependent mainly on Oil and not much other reserves.
• Divided the tech strategy into two areas: Optimize what we have and Explore new
• Under optimize: Improve current yield and invest in tech to do that
• Under new sources: Invest in solar, wind etc.
• I started listing some possible technologies when the case ended.
Tips: Questions can be of strategic nature where the interviewer is trying to test your big thinking skills and not necessarily your analytical skills.

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