ISB Casebook 2012

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012

k o o B e s a C B S I

b u l C g n i t l u s n o C : y b d e l i p m o C

2 1 0 2 f o s s a l C

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ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Contents Introduction ........................................................... .............................................................................................................................. ........................................................................................................... ........................................ 4 Case Solving Approach ............................................................................. .................................................................................................................................................. ......................................................................... .... 6 Case Frameworks Frameworks .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. 8 Case Type: Profitability or Profit! ......................................................... .............................................................................................................................. ......................................................................... .... 8 Case Type: Market Entry ............................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................. ................................................. 13 Case Type: Problem Diagnosis Situation ......................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ............................................................ 16 16 Case Type: PE Investment .................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................ 18 Case Type: Capacity Expansion ................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................... 19 Case Type: Turn Around ........................................................... .................................................................................................................................. ................................................................................... ............ 20 Case Type: Growth Strategy................................................................. ....................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................ 21 Case Type: M&A ................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................ ....................................................................... .. 23 Case Type: Business Situation Framework – Victor Cheng Videos ............................................................................. ............................................................................. 26 26 Mckinsey & Co. .................................................................. ....................................................................................................................................... ............................................................................................. ........................ 27 Samudra Dasgupta .............................................................................................................................. ...................................................................................................................................................... ........................ 28 Himanshu Jain ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. 30 Raman Chadha ................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................ ............................................................ 33 Rahul Mangla .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. 38 Aditi Sharma ......................................................................................... .............................................................................................................................................................. ....................................................................... .. 45 Vamshidhar Reddy ...................................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... 48 Sachin Kumar ................................................................. ...................................................................................................................................... ............................................................................................. ........................ 51 Shreerang Godbole .................................................................................................................. ..................................................................................................................................................... ................................... 55 Akshay Sethi ................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................ ............. 57 Dhruv Vatsal ............................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................. 61 Sonali Gupta ........................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................ ........................ 64 Boston Consulting Group ............................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................. 68 Rahul Mangla .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. 69 Himanshu Jain ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. 74 Samudra Dasgupta .............................................................................................................................. ...................................................................................................................................................... ........................ 76 Reshmi Ghosh ............................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... .............................................................................................. ........................ 78 Rahul Ramaraju .......................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................... ................................................. 83 Shreerang Godbole .................................................................................................................. ..................................................................................................................................................... ................................... 89 Ankur Bhageria .......................................................................... ............................................................................................................................................... .................................................................................. ............. 92 Brij Vashisth ................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................... ...................... 101 AT Kearney .................................................................................................................................................................... .................................................................................................................................................................... 108 Bishwa Ranjan Roy .............................................................................................................................. .................................................................................................................................................... ...................... 109 Himanshu Jain ........................................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................... 112 Booz & Co. .................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................. ........... 114 Himanshu Jain ........................................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................... 115 Dhruv Vatsal .......................................................................................................................... .............................................................................................................................................................. .................................... 117 Parthenon .............................................................. .................................................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ................................. 118 Nipun Rastogi ................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................ ........... 119 Varun Mimani ............................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... ............................................................................................ ...................... 123 PRTM ........................................................ .............................................................................................................................. ..................................................................................................................... ............................................... 126 Prashant Kr Gupta .................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................... ................................. 127 Accenture ............................................................... ..................................................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ................................. 131 Vikash Sinha ............................................................................................................... .............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................... 132 Rahul Chakraborty .................................................................... ......................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................ ........... 134 Richa Gupta .................................................................................................................................................... ............................................................................................................................................................... ........... 135 Archishman Ghosh .................................................................................................................................................... .................................................................................................................................................... 137 Rajeev Reddy ................................................................................................... ............................................................................................................................................................. .......................................................... 139 Meenatchi Jagasivamani Jagasivamani .......................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................... ................................. 142 PWC .......................................................... ................................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................... ............................................ 143 Siddharth Pai ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. 144 Aeckarth Malik .......................................................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................................... 147 2

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Arjun Sharma ................................................................. ...................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................... ...................... 151 Avneesh Singh ................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................... ........... 152 Harsha Nallur ................................................................. ...................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................... ...................... 153 Deloitte ............................................................... ........................................................................................................................................ .......................................................................................................... ................................. 154 Akshay Raizada.......................................................................... ............................................................................................................................................... ................................................................................ ........... 155 Gaurav Mogra ........................................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................... 156 Archana Saseetharan .................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................................ ............................................ 158 Palash Borah .................................................................. ....................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................... ...................... 159 Arjun Mehra .............................................................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................................................. 160 Ernst & Young................................... Young...................................................................................................... ............................................................................................................................. .......................................................... 162 Sneha Rajan..................................................................................................... ............................................................................................................................................................... ..........................................................163 Anirudh Kataruka ...................................................................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... 165 KPMG ....................................................... ............................................................................................................................. ..................................................................................................................... ............................................... 166 Sahas Gulati................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................... ...............................................167 Siddharth Pai ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. 168 Kanika Chawla ........................................................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................... 171 Siemens Management Management Consulting .......................................................................................................... ................................................................................................................................ ...................... 172 Nishant Gupta ....................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................................................... .................................... 173 Neha Khandelwal .......................................................................................................... ...................................................................................................................................................... ............................................ 179 Other Firms ............................................................ ............................................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... .................................... 184 Shiva ................................................................... ......................................................................................................................................... ....................................................................................................... ................................. 184 Shrini Ravindran ............................................................................................................................................. ........................................................................................................................................................ ........... 185 Sapna Jeslani ............................................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................................. 186 Prashant Kr Gupta .................................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................................................................... ................................. 186

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Introduction Dear ISBians, This case book is prepared by the Consulting Club of ISB Class of 2012. The purpose of this document is to assist the future batches of ISB in preparing for consulting placements. This case book documents the interview experiences of students across various firms. You may also refer to case solving tips and frameworks for interview preparation. However, these frameworks are not necessarily t he optimum way in which one should handle consulting interviews. I wouldn’t advice sticking to any particular framework during interviews. Rather use these frameworks as guidance and create your own framework, leaving room for innovative responses. Every individual will and should have his / her unique way of tackling consulting interviews. On the career front, I would suggest that you follow a 3-stage process when choosing consulting as your goal: 1) Decide –Before you start your preparations, you should be absolutely clear in mind that you want to pursue consulting as a career. Do take note that consultants live an extremely tough life. Most of them work for 6090 hrs/week are traveling 80% of this time. Living life out of a suitcase is not desired by all. Decision to pursue consulting will require strong focus on academics and curricular. So make a well-informed decision instead of getting swayed in the mad-rush for consulting that you will find at the ISB campus. 2) Prepare –Once decided, prepare hard for consulting. There will be no shortcuts to this preparation. Typically, students start preparing for consulting interviews by the end of term 5. Interviews for international and domestic consulting firms will happen around term 6 and term 7 respectively. Therefore, it’s advisable to

take up maximum number of courses in term 5 & 8, to keep term 6 & 7 free for preparation. You can use the following resources/methods for preparation: a. Watch Victor Cheng case interview videos available online to get an initial insight into the interview process. b. You should refer to other numerous resources uploaded on the consulting club portal including past year casebooks, industry summaries, core-term summaries and interview and case preparation guides from Wetfeet and Vault. (Link: Atrium → Knowledge Portal → Consulting Club → Placement c.

Prep – Kindly check this link as IT dept may have changed it) Case interview preparation is a collaborative process. Form a group of 4-5 students, where in one student administers a mock case on the other, and the remaining become observers. Once this mock process is over, all 4-5 students discuss strong and weak points of the interview. This helps pool in of ideas and cases. The sources for these cases can be past year casebooks or alums from consulting firms.

3)

Execution –Proper presentation and execution is equally important as preparation. Important elements of this presentation will include: a. Resume: Start working on your resume from the start of term 5. CAS and alumni will prove to be extremely helpful on this front. Your resume should have been reviewed 5-6 times before you submit it to any company. Please don’t spoil your chances by c ommitting grammatical and spelling mistakes on your resume. b. Don’t forget to customize your resume based on the industry you are applying to. For instance, a consulting firm will look for a mix of leadership, teamwork and analytical skills, and few ‘spikes’. When applying for a General Management role, one should focus more on leadership skills. That said, don’t completely change resumes for dif ferent companies, as you will have interviews will 4

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 these companies simultaneously. It is difficult to remember different stories for different c.

companies . Pre-interview Networking: Maintaining good terms will alums from your dream firm may not help in getting shortlisted or hired, but it will definitely help you in getting the right guidance/support. Also, you should make good use of post-short listing dinners/conferences you will have with partners. Many of these partners will take your interviews. These dinners are an excellent opportunity to leave a first-impression on partner. Knowing the projects handled by partners/firm will provide you surface to kick-start your conversation during an interview.

d. Interviews: Take mock interviews with alums and classmates seriously and try to simulate actual interview settings (We used to book AC, MLTs for practice sessions as actual interviews happen in them). One should appear confident and cheerful in the interview. Don’t be too serious or too relax. Don’t fumble or confuse yourself during the interview. Follow the case solving approach mentioned

in the next section to structure your thoughts. You will find more tips on interview preparations as you will go through some of the excellently written case descriptions. I would like to thank the contributors and the consulting club team who made the compilation of this casebook possible. Special thanks to Asit Sharma, Kumar Abhinav, Rahul Mangla, Nipun Rastogi, Prafulla Rawal and Ankur Bhageria for their contributions. The consulting club team wishes all the very best to the subsequent batches! Regards, Himanshu Jain Consulting Club

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Case Solving Approach Problem definition:

Understand the company and its business. You should be able to create a mental image of the company and its business. Figure out where the business is operating. What does the company do? How is it placed competitively etc? 

Analyze EVERY WORD of the problem statement and ask clarifying questions w.r.t. that.  Understand what caused the problem and what has been the impact. 

Keep the 3Cs (Customer, Company and Competition) and 2Ps (product and price) in mind at all times when solving a case. Whenever you’re stuck, revisit these.

Problem scoping: Think along basic cuts like: a. Internal vs. external b. Short term vs. Long term c.

Current state vs. desired state (desired state can be understood through objectives/ goals/motivations of the management)

Segmentation: This is one of the most crucial and often overlooked steps. Always break the problem by company segments before applying any standard framework. Understand which part of the business the problem lies in. For e.g. think along the below segments: a. Customer segments b. Product segments c. Geographic segments d. Segments in terms of different parts of the value chain e. Different channels of distribution At this point, you should’ve a pretty good hold of defining what the actu al problem is. It helps to paraphrase or

summarize the problem statement more tangibly at this point. Problem Structuring:

1. Build out a quick approach of what the key issues are that we need to tackle, and what is the sequence you intend to follow. 2. Communicate this approach to the interviewer 3. Then build out a MECE structure. When building a structure: 

Note making clarity is important  Visualize the case. Put yourself in the CEO’s shoes. It helps!  Don’t try to force fit frameworks. Always approach a problem based on first principles. Frameworks will support your analysis. 4. Communicate the structure to the interviewer and get his buy in. Analysis: 

Develop a hypothesis for where the problem might lie. Then ask questions and collect more information to prove/disprove it

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ISB Casebook – Class of 2012  Make it a collaborate process. Do not treat it like an interview. It’s not meant to be that. Treat it like a

real project and that you’re working with a colleague on the project. 

Ask for numerical data at every level of structure before going deeper. This is required until you figure out whether it’s a numerical problem or not.



Speak with conviction and bring creativity into your solution.



In case of numbers, take your time. Do not sacrifice accuracy for speed.

Synthesis/summary:

It is effectively an answer to the client’s problem. Make your recommendation and provide 2-3 strong supporting reasons for it. Follow it up with considerations / risks that may be involved with the strategy. Overall synthesis should not exceed a minute ideally. Important Tips: 

Always define the problem again and ask if your understanding is correct



Always take a buy-in on your framework before you proceed



Show the inherent excitement to solve the problem – your eyes should sparkle once you identify an issue



Once you identify a core issue – always think “Why” is it happening – shows that you want to really solve

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Case Frameworks Frameworks can act as useful tools to structure thoughts during a case interview. Moreover, they ensure that you ask the right questions and help you reach the answer fast. By using frameworks, you will seldom miss solutions to ‘standardized’ cases such as Profitability, Market entry etc. However, interviewers these days enjoy asking abstract cases such as “How will you reduce terrorism in India” or “Should Subhash Ghai sign Aishwarya or K atrina for his next movie”. You definitely can’t apply standard framework to such cases. You are expected to relate the problem to a

business situation and create your own framework on the spot. Following are few frameworks, which I (Himanshu Jain) and my case prep group including Kumar Abhinav, Prafulla Rawal, Rahul Mangla and Nipun Rastogi, created during our preparation. We are happy to share them with future batches. Hope they help you get your dream job. In case you have questions, feel free to reach out to any one of us:

Case Type: Profitability or Profit! Beginning: This problem is very vast and can come i n various dimensions. It’s very important to scope the problem in the

beginning itself – so that you not solve the wrong problem 

Definition: Please help me understand what exactly do you mean when you say that profit is down? o The aggregate profit or profit margin? o o o



Ask: Is it gross margin/operating margin or net margin which is facing the decline? Product Mix: Has the decline in profitability in all the products or specific products in the mix?

Comparison/Trend: o o o



{If interviewer says profit margin or Profitability}

Since when has been this trend in low profits been visible and my how much? How has the industry performance been over this time frame? – benchmarking. Anything particular which changed - did you launch some product/slash prices/competitor do something/Macroeconomic aspect?

Define Success: [Say that this is a broad based question]-How would the client define success? o What kind of increase in profit do you want to achieve – what will be ideal?

Profit = Revenue – Cost (Is a first principle)

Price Revenue Volume Profit Variable Cost Fixed

Say: There are two drivers – Revenue and Cost. Which one would you want me start of first?

Cost: 

Ask what % of unit cost is Variable vs. Fixed – this would help you understand some key trends o In a high fixed cost business there is very high temptation of price wars.

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ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 o

Remember it can be a product specific problem or a product mix problem something such as that we are selling more of higher cost product.



Ask and then draw out the value chain Raw Material



Inbound Logistics

Warehousin g

Manufacturing

Outbound Logistics

Distribution

What is the percentage split of costs across these different processes? o In case one particular head has highest % say 50% or more then you can ask the interviewer that you would want to look at this head to start with. o

Many a times there might not be one major head and there could be two heads with 30%-30% split. In these cases you’ll need to explore both heads and also see that the profitability decline could be

partly because of one and partly because of another. 

Broadly at any point there are two issues o o

Price at which you get or operate (vis a vis Competition) Your efficiency (Any wastage due to efficiency problem in terms of people/process/technology)- You can employ the other PPT framework for this)

Exploring each head one by one 

In case of manufacturing Industry o

Raw Material Cost: 



Start by asking type of good (Perishable/durable)? Where does Competitor source from – does it get better prices? If says same price, ask about efficiency – conversion ratio/wastage/efficiency for us?



If the problem is higher price or higher overall procurement cost then:



Resolutions





Better Negotiation/Bulk Order



Time of Sourcing (Opportunistic) – order when cheap



Currency Hedging – Use forwards/futures if prices are expected to rise. Also use call or put options for the variable part of future demand.

o



Substitution (Different Raw Material)



Value engineering (Use lesser Raw Material)



Standardization of Parts Backward Integration – ordering more of same type of good



- Same supplier - bulk order/syndicated demand?



- Cheaper material - indigenization/rationalization?



- Cheaper supplier - china etc?

Inbound Logistics:  Do you and your competitor use the same Mode of Transportation? 

Do you incur the same rates and same overall cost?



Explore Distance Travelled – could be that the rates are same but your factory is further away from the supplier base. Are you ordering at the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) – Trade of between Set up cost,



holding cost and expected demand o

Production/Operations: 

Explore Labour cost and efficiency vis-a-vis competitor.



Inventory Cost (EOQ)



Overheads such as Electricity/Rent same or higher? 9

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 



Machine Utilization: % Downtime - High? 

Machine broken? Maintenance/spare cost



Power outrage?



Labour unavailability?



Total availability will be a function of (% of time labour, % time machine available, %

Idle time) Resolution – additional dimensions: 

Outsource



Economies of Scale/Learning curve

Labour cost arbitrage Distribution/Outbound Logistics: 

o



o





Installation



Service or Warranty cost?

Gross margin is same but Operating margin has reduced: o Marketing & Administration – SGNA o o o



Explore same as (Inbound) Post Sales Cost:

R&D cost Restructuring cost Licensing and regulatory costs

If NOPAT is down o o o o o o

Depreciation & Amortization Interest Expense Tax rates – which geographies (VAT) does our company operate in? Inventory Write off Gains/losses or external investments Loss due to some catastrophic event.

Revenue:  

Explore Price and Volume and ask for preference to explore one first. Caution: Remember it could be that your Prices, total volume and total cost everything is same but the revenues are down because you are selling more of the less priced product – Mix problem

In case Price has reduced: 

Questions: o o o o

Has this been for a particular product in the mix? Is this product a differentiated product or a commodity? Competition: Has competition taken any particular action (reducing prices/launched new products) Customer: 





What customer segments? Are the customer preferences changing?



What about price elasticity?

Resolution: o Product Differentiation –  Better features 

Better brand



o

Better packaging Innovative Pricing Methods 10


Loss Leader Pricing/ Captive Pricing (Razor Blade),



o

Bundle Pricing Different methods of pricing: 

Value based Pricing (Premium Pricing & Price Skimming),



Cost plus Pricing

o

Comparable (Parity) Pricing Bundling & Cross selling

o

Consolidation: Acquire other markets players – Charge premium price, Have more units sold.



Units Sold Decline: It is a function of Market Share and Market Size. 

Questions: Market Share is a function of o

Are customers aware of your product - Share of Voice  Promotion related 

Inadequate Promotion



Improper Training



Improper targeting

Messaging is not as required – impacting perception Do customers like your product - Share of Mind 

o



  o

Product/Service Related factors 

Poor Quality



Problem with product mix – Inadequate depth breadth of product/service mix



Network effects with other products/Complementary Products



Training Adequacy – Curriculum/Frequency of Training

Substitutes? Better competitive offerings?

Is the product available - Share of Distribution 

Distribution Related: 

Penetration (No. Of stores), Percentage shelf space



Trade Mix – (Retail Segment targeting-do customer buys from these channels)





Service Level/Lead time (Number of days of Stock outs-Is the product available when the customer wants it?)

Questions: Market Size is down – what’s happening in the Industry? o Population * % of a particular segment o o

Usage rate Suggestions:  Can we do something in collaboration with the industry to increase the segment size?   

Can we explore new customer segments? More users – same market or new geographies?



More usage? Alternate usages? Can enter Allied/Related Product segments?



If demand is seasonal – then come up with schemes discounts, promotions



If demand is elastic then cut the price to increase the total revenue

Increasing Volume There are four methods of doing it.

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Case Type: Market Entry Beginning: These are the initial dimensions you need to understand from the interviewer before you deep dive in your analysis. 

Motivation: Let’s understand - what is the primary objective of the client to enter this market. o Profit Increase (by expanding his revenue base) o Investment in some growth industries – promising (Will pay off in the long run) o

Diversification Empire building – expansion plan

o

Vertical Integration (Can be backward or forward – can result in cost synergies)

o



Return: What is your target rate of return and (what timelines are you looking for) o Hurdle rate/cost of capital vs. the Internal rate of return o o



Target Revenues or Total Profits Total Capital you want to invest

Define Success: [Say that this is a broad based question]-How would the client define success? o

What kind of market share do you want to achieve

Question about the current business 

What are the geographies of interest?



What are your products presently?

How exactly does this business work – finding about the overall players and dependencies. (Birds eye view) The most important things to start about the business of interest: 1. Statement: I want to understand which stage of Industry lifecycle are we in - Nascent or Growing, Mature or 

Declining 2. Question: Please tell me the overall market size, potential/profit and growth rate 3. Which part of this business do you want to enter? (Draw a value chain of this particular part) 4. How do you want to enter – Green Field, Brown field (JV, M&A), Franchise (Evaluation Matrix below) 5. High Growth High Margin (2*2) matrix Analysis: Let’s look at it from three perspectives – External view, internal view and exact mechanics of entering

Industry Attractiveness Competitive Advantage Barriers to Entry

Short Term

Competition Long Term Customer Value Chain Substitutes Costs & Risks

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ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 

Industry Attractiveness: o Barriers to Entry:          o

o

Switching Cost (Network effect) Distribution Network

Market Shares

 

Competing on Product, Service, price, quality, features? Strength/Weaknesses – channels



Contractual Lock-in for customers

Buyer:

   

Segment and Growth Willingness to pay Channels preference Demand-Supply Gap Pricing Power – Customer concentration



Threat of forward integration Present Perception of different products



Preference evolution - Promotion required

Value Chain:  Supplier: 

Consolidated or fragmented



Market Shares



Threat of backward integration



Alternative buyer options for suppliers



Switching costs of buyers



Distribution Network



Raw Materials availability Manufacturing resources – including talent availability



Substitutes:  



Human Capital Economies of scale or scope





o

High Capital requirements R&D - IP or Patent Brand equity

Competition:  Consolidated or Fragmented



o

Government Regulation Any barriers to exit?

Any peculiar substitutes Consumer behaviour evolution

Competitive Advantage: Understanding companies strength once inside the market o

Short Term: (Fit) – Does it make sense for this company to enter the market? 

Prior experience in moving to new markets





Business model needed ideally to succeed in this industry Synergy with existing operations? Tactical decisions 4 P’s (Product, Place, Promotion, Price)



Game Theoretic perspective and strengths and weaknesses of each player



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ISB Casebook – Class of 2012  o

Competitive response

Long Term:  How can we create competitive advantage in the long run? 

What Barriers to Entry or Exit to erect to deter other new entrants? 

Contracts/Product differentiation

Evaluation of different methods of entering: 

Evaluation Matrix: Weights

Investment/Payback Period/Break-even

40%

Management Control

20%

Cultural Fit

10%

Risks

30%

Availability

Essential

Time

Essential

Green Field

Franchise

M&A

JV

Various sources of Risks 

Financial Risk: o What is the cash position of the parent firm? o

What % of companies total cost base will go into the new market? Implications: What will be the impact if this new venture fails



Technology Risk



Political Risk



People Risk

Wherever you can execute the process in a standardized manner (You can tell outsiders how to do it) and not much subjectivity in measurement

Understand that there can be different kind of questions: 

Should I enter? (Industry attractiveness)



Which method to enter? (JV/M&A)



Exactly where should I enter? – (Where to play – how to play) need gap analysis required along with max profit and max customer priority sector 15


Case Type: Problem Diagnosis Situation People – Process – Technology

People:

People Tangibles

Intangibles

Salary (Basic)

Prof. Development

Incentives

Personal Develop.

Perks: Money Value

o

o

Professional Development 

Growth

 

Research opportunities Learning and training facility



IP (Doctors, Engineers and IT guys may need this)

Personal Development  

Status within the company Brand of the workplace



Culture



Work life balance

Process: The following are the first few steps:

Identify Process Map

Identify Critical Path

Identify Bottleneck

After identification of the Bottleneck, explore the following for improvement: 

Utilization improvement o o o



Reduce idle time - Scheduling (Trucks to port case) Batching /De-batching (Grouping examples from factory examples in operations class) Setup time/Run Time (Complete solution will depend on combination of the two)

Re-Design o Process improvement o

Capacity Expansion (units of flow rate) 

Reduce time



Add additional machines



As X increases, Flow Time increases (bad) and capacity increases (good)

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As X decreases, Flow Time decreases (good) and capacity decreases (bad)

Technology & Infrastructure:

Technology Compatibility Employee familiarity Internal Compatibility

Capability Speed/Rate Suitability

Lack of Training

Sometimes it may not be clear where the issue is then use: (this is good from understanding how the business runs) 1) Man 2) Machine 3) Method 4) Materials 5) Measurement 6) Mother Nature (Environment)

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Case Type: PE Investment Following key aspects need to be evaluated in case of any PE player is considering making an investment: We need to start with the fund’s motivation to invest and the attributes of the firm

PE Firm Characterstics Fund Size

Industry Attractiveness

Target Specifics

Market Size & Growth

Business Model

Profitability Fund Style

Barriers to Entry

Sources of Returns

Operational Effeciency Management Capability Willingness to Sell

Competition Portfolio

Revenue - Profitability

Unlock Potential

Customers IRR

Costs & Risks Suppliers

Exit Period

Substitutes

Market Share & Growth Product/Services Use Leverage Valuation

18


Case Type: Capacity Expansion Do we need extra capacity?

Do we need Extra Capacity? External Factors

Internal Factors

Total Demand (Size/Growth)

Our product’s share & Growth

Supply Dynamics

Present production rate

Suppliers – Global/Local

Is New Technology available? Can I use Economies of Scale?

Future Supply Projections Game Theory – Price War Substitutes

How to Build Extra Capacity? Investment Organic - Resources

Improvement People/Process/Technology

Acquire – M&A framework Outsource Crucial Points: 

Matrix of evaluation is in Market Entry Case – Keep in consideration the Investment/Payback Period evaluation



Reducing or increasing capacity will affect the market clearing price – thereby the profitability

19


Case Type: Turn Around Information about the company: 

What has been the failure trend?



How was failure defined?



How long has the failure been observed?

After this go into the basic industry information situation: 

Product



Customers



Company – Strengths and Weaknesses (any major changes in the time period of failure)



Competition – (any major changes in the time period of failure)



External factors – regulations, taxes, substitutes, trends such as technological advancements (digital for Kodak)

Now again this is either revenue increase or profitability increase. Only thing to look out is to check if there is a conglomerate then divest a branch! Profitability or growth: 

Always ask about the other product.



Material part diversification – is not possible

20


Case Type: Growth Strategy Beginning: Current Business: What is the context (customer/product/geography segments) in which you are presently operating in and what is the current position of your firm? Lifecycle of the Industry? Ambition: What level you want to grow? 

If you want to surpass the Market growth rate that means you want to eat away in other people’s market

share. 

What are the options you are looking for: Think about the ansoff matrix – to understand the growth from – for scoping the problem

Structuring: To understand growth we need to look at overall demand and supply dynamics of my product. There could be a scope of improvement on either side. 

“Demand side”: Market is contracting or demand for my product is falling.



“Supply side”: Demand is there but I am not able to supply enough. o

This can lead to both lost sales and lost customers

Strategic Options:  

Improving the profitable or promising part of the business. If nothing looks promising then you can consider o Spin off: Creating part of the business as a separate business o o

Divesture: Reduction or sale of assets Acquisition: Get yourself acquired by a competitor/sister company or potential entrants

Understand how the business works in each segment of customer: 

Understand the value chain and decision making process for the customer?



What part of the value chain am I catering to?



Say: This particular player is the market leader – let’s try to understand what is it that he is doing different?



Comparison with the competitor o Offering: Complete value prop in terms of 

o



EVC, Service, warranty etc. Commodity or Differentiated



Has the competitor erected any BTE: Brand/Network effect/Switching costs

Price: Why has the competition got it lower?  Cost Structure 

o o

Economies of scale

Promotion: Sales Force or Marketing expenditure - Efficiency and Total Expenditure Distribution Network: Also understand who are the stakeholders and any particular reason why they prefer the other product over ours.

Analysis: As we know it can be of two parts – Volume and Price. 

Volume: o

Note: When we talk about penetration for same product/same market then think from two perspectives: 21


You can increase the market share





o

Increase the market size itself. Also think about can you increase volume by better utilization of existing capacity – hospital

o

Think of 2/2 matrix for volume increase say penetration or market development

Price you have to go to the profitability framework to understand the customer segment contributions and whether they can sell at a higher price or sell more of the costlier product.



Penetration: More Users/More Usage



Product development: Innovate/Improvise



New channels?



New Geographies?



Maintain Customer Loyalty



Convert customers who are using alternatives or substitutes



New competitive arenas - vertical integration

22


Case Type: M&A There are two ways any M&A can generate value – 1) Value of Control 2) Value of Synergy. The actual value of how the acquirer benefits will depend upon the premium paid. There are two types of M&A. 

Strategic: o





Value Generated = (Vat – Va – Vt) + (Va- Va’)

Non Strategic: o Value Generated = (Vat – Va – Vt) Opportunity Cost: (Va – Va’) o

Competition

o

Industry

Synergy Operational

Financial

FCF

Tax Savings

Long Term Growth

Bankruptcy Cost

Abnormal Growth

Decreased Agency Cost

Ra

Less Asymmetry info

Time of Abnormal G

Type of Synergies Operational: 

FCF = EBIT (1-Tax) + Depreciation – Change in WC – Capex o EBIT = Revenue – Cost  Revenue = P * Delta Q + Delta P * Q + Delta P * Delta Q 

Delta Q: Ability to sell more o Better Product o

Combining Strengths: Examples: Distribution network + Sales force, Access to cheap funds, better geographical reach – say more offices, Increased Management Bandwidth, Combining Sourcing capability with Distribution

o

Reach Cross Selling: Doing this is very risky though Bundling

o

Up-selling

o



Delta P: Ability to price higher o o o

Low Competition New products or Better quality Increase pricing power in case of Strategic acquisition 23


Cost 

COGS decrease o (Dis) Economies of Scale/Scope: There can be losses as well if there are coordination problems or management bandwidth issue. o o o



SG&A reduction o Remove duplication of Sales force o



Sharing technology

Reduction in threat of Hold up cost o o o

o

Promotion Streamline

R&D cost reduction o Linking innovative capability o



IT budget streamline Pooling of technology Reduction of overhead

Future Price Increase Not in time supply Not appropriate quality product

Depreciation Tax Shield 

o

Asset write up: One time gain as assets are market up to market value on acquisition Change in Working Capital  One time gain in case acquirer has better receivable management practice

o

Capex investment 



Growth: Long term Growth doesn’t change generally o o



Look for opportunities that enable permanent competitive advantages

Abnormal Growth: o

Ga = ROC * Reinvestment Rate  





If Asset Turnover (Sales/Assets) increases then less Capex investment required in future

ROC can increase due to higher EBIT or higher Asset turnover RR can increase due to availability of more positive NPV project

Abnormal Growth Time Period o Can increase due to erecting barriers to entry Ra o

Beta or systematic risk can reduce in case you combine:  Cyclical (Corporate Banking) + Counter Cyclical (Bankruptcy Advisory) 

Cyclical (Luxury Business) + Non Cyclical (Tobacco)



Vertical Integration sometimes reduces risk

Financial Synergies 



Tax Savings: o Tax loss carry forward from a winding business o Ability to take more debt – hence more tax shield Bankruptcy cost: o

As per MM, if Bankruptcy costs exist (that is there is destruction of value) then this adds value  Lost Customers  Lost Employees 

o

Lost Supplier relationships

Reasons for default: 24


o 





Cyclical business

 

Cash Flow volatility Competition



Technological obsolescence

If Bankruptcy costs exists then savings happen due to merger

Reduced Agency Cost o Debt brings discipline Reduced Information Asymmetry o Internal capital markets (use of most economical source of funds) o

Exploit any mis-pricing in the markets

Analysis of RISKS 

Fit 

Cultural Fit o o

Are the cultures of the merging entities coherent? for e.g both are entrepreneurial orgs Are the cultures complementary? For e.g. an entrepreneurial design org and a highly organized sales org.

o 

Strategic Fit o o o



Do we expect significant cultural clashes on merger? For instance formal vs. informal Are the long-term strategies of the merging firms in tune? Will the merged firm evolve a new long-term strategy? Costs associated with percolating new strategies through the merged org.

Organizational Fit o Degree of similarity in org structures. Matrix, functional, divisional etc. o

Management overlap and talent.

25


Case Type: Business Situation Framework – Victor Cheng Videos Beginning: Whenever you are stuck anywhere you can use this framework.

This framework can also be considered as the first principal way of solving: (Gathered from Akshit Shah –Project Manager - BCG) “It makes sense to find out where the problem is, you can’t reach much depth if you keep working on an aggregate level”

1. Understand the Value chain (Company) 2. Customer Buying behaviour (DMU) 3. Understand the product segments and customer segments: Make a grid and find out where the problem is. (Customer – Product) 4. Competition Victor Chain: 

Products: How much does our company’s p roduct meet the needs? o Commodity or differentiation? o

o

Substitution? Product Lifecycle

o

Packaging

o

Depth and Breadth of product line

o



Customers: o

Segments % contribution to total revenues and % growth trends

o

Present Needs and future Preferences evolution

o

Willingness to Pay and Price elasticity

o

Channels

o

Any Promotion preferences

o



Company: o

Capabilities and expertise Distribution Channels used

o

Cost Structure (Compare to the Industry – what is more suited for the situation and what does this

o

company have?) Intangibles

o

Financial Situation

o

o o 

Complementary products?

(Optional) Organization Structure – how is the sales team organized – is it client friendly? (Optional) Investment Cost

Competition: o

Market Shares

o

Consolidated or Fragmented Barriers to Entry

o

Best Practices

o

Industry Lifecycle

o

26


Mckinsey & Co.

27

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Name of Candidate

Samudra Dasgupta Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Nalinikanth Gollagunta

Interview Number

Round 1 Interview 1

Personal Interview Question

We had similar backgrounds in terms of education. We chatted about technology trends, his projects, etc. He asked me what other jobs I was looking at apart from consulting. Told him about finance and GM. He advised me to stick to consulting as he had a feeling I will do well in it. I felt more confident after this.

Case Type

Profit and Loss

Case Question

A fruit juice making company in HP was suffering losses. Help them.

Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible

Extremely simple case. No numbers. I asked 1-2 probing questions. He asked me for a gut feeling analysis. It was about old equipments.

What do you think went right/wrong?

He seemed to have made up my mind about me. He wasn’t interested in doing the case it seemed.

Any tips for the future batch

If you can hit it off with the interviewer in PI, nothing like it.

Outcome

Round 1 interview 2

Name of Candidate

Samudra Dasgupta

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Rajat Gupta

Interview Number

Round 1 Interview 2


What will your friends want to change about you? How will your friends describe you? What are your ISB accomplishments that you are proud of? What questions do you have about me (I had read about his background before going in, so could ask relevant questions)

Case Type

No case

Case Question Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible What do you think went right/wrong?

I kind of made sure he runs out of time for asking a case by making the PI interesting (completely unreliable strategy)


Again, if you can hit it off with the interviewer in PI, nothing like it.

Outcome

Round 1 interview 2

Name of Candidate

Samudra Dasgupta

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Sasi Sunkara

28

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Interview Number

Round 2 Interview 1


Very general PI. Describe your work experience. What all did you do in ISB.

Case Type

Organizational behavior

Case Question

A bank is facing a problem in that its traders are not signing the daily PnL records. Why do you think that is the case?


This wasn’t about any framework based case cracking. He was asking me a real life case question he had faced before based on my work experience. He wanted me to list down 5 factors.


I wasn’t very satisfied with my answers. However he didn’t express any dissatisfaction.


Be very precise and logical in your answer. Avoid irrelevant remarks.

Outcome

Round 2 interview 2

Name of Candidate

Samudra Dasgupta

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Shirish Sankhe

Interview Number

Round 2 Interview 2


PI was limited. Some discussion about my achievements at ISB. I asked him some relevant questions from him field (public policy).

Case Type

Revenue maximization

Case Question

How will you maximize the retail revenue from airports?


Laid down the various revenue levers: footfall in airport, what percentage visit each store, at what frequency, what kind of stores (luxury/commodity etc), sales for each kind of store (books/leather bags/food&beverages etc) Turned out that the location optimization was the key which I missed out.


He was very happy with the interview even though I didn’t crack the case as such.


A pleasant cheerful attitude helps more than you think.

Outcome

Offer was made.

29


Himanshu Jain Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Sachin Haralkar

Interview Number

Round 1 Interview 1


What is the formula of getting 4.0 CGPA at ISB? Tell me something about yourself? Asked more information about the venture I started? What are the challenges you will face as a consultant?

Case Type

Estimation

Case Question Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible


Estimate the market size of Third party services such as security, housekeeping, gardening etc. Divided based on users: Residential, Corporate, Government, Hospitals etc. Interviewer asked to focus on residential. Then divided into number of households for different income level. Tried to estimate the average spend by each of these segments – taking into account gardening & security for high income and housekeeping for middle income. Arrived at the answer. A lot of calculations were involved in the interview. Was given decimal number of calculate. I was fast and accurate will all of them.

Any tips for the future batch Outcome

Moved to Next Round

Name of Candidate

Himanshu Jain

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Renny Thomas

Interview Number

Round 1 Interview 2


Tell me something about your start-up?

Case Type

Business Situation

Case Question Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible

Why do you like consulting?

A high end beauty care company offers a large FMCG company 2% commission for using its distribution network in network? Tell the CEO of the FMCG what to do? Started by asking initial questions about the FMCG company – its size, its profitability, its current product portfolio and its future plans. It turns out that the FMCG company was not dealing in beauty care products. I started my breaking down the distribution channel to see the costs & margins at each level. I asked for cost of the distribution house, margin of the distributor, dealer margin etc. It turned out that costs came out to be 15%!! > 2%. Renny cleared my confusion by telling me that the beauty care company will give 2% profit over costs. I then started analyzing the situation using the profitability framework. This is what I made: 30


Revenue

2% Commission

Costs

Potential Loss

Scale up Costs

Profit

Contingency Costs

I started by explaining costs. The contingency costs will include any legal suits on the beauty care products ‘distributed’ by our company, loss of goodwill amongst customers and distributors in case of the product line flops, etc. The scale up will include costs of hiring more people, more space and vehicles to accommodate for sales of beauty care products. On the revenue front, there will a potential loss of future revenue – If we intend to start this business line under our brand – as the global brand would have already captured a large share of the brand. Another concern on the revenue front was the amount of commission we could earn. It seemed that the global player will use our network for few years to establish itself and then kick our company out of the contract. Renny asked me to focus on this issue and asked me to suggest solutions. I had the following solutions: 1) Innovative contracts: We could have call options in the contract, where we get to share the upside in case the products did well. 2) Partnership Arrangement with other company – Where the FMCG buys a stake in the local arm of the beauty care products. 3) Co-branding the products of beauty care company with ours Renny asked me to stop and told me that co-branding was the solution Mckinsey suggest to this FMCG player.  What do you think went right/wrong?

Nothing


Nothing

Outcome

Moved to Next Round

Name of Candidate Company Name

Himanshu Jain Mckinsey & Co

Interviewer Name

Jaidit Brar

Interview Number

Round 2, Interview 1 (16th Interview of the Day)


I looked completely exhausted when I entered the room. This was my 16th consecutive interview. Therefore, Jaidit didn’t ask any questions. Rather, he asked how my day has been, do I need coffee or food, and did some casual talk to get me relaxed. After some time, I insisted that we do a case. He smiled and said ‘Let’s do a simple estimation case’.

Case Type

Market Estimation

Case Question

Estimate the Pet food industry in India. 31

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible

I started by listing the categories of Pets majority of households keep including Cat, Dog, Birds etc. Jaidit asked me to focus on dogs. Assuming the population to be 120bn, I said that we will have around 30bn households assuming average size of each household to be 4. These 30bn could be further divided into High income, Middle income, Lower income, and below poverty line. Using Tendulkar committee report (GSB Course), I cited that 60% of people will be below poverty line. Of the remaining 40%, I drew a graph showing presence of dogs will be positively skewed based on income level.

Again the consumption of dog food for any income category = %of households in the income category having dogs X Frequency of Pet food feeds X Volume/Quantity of each feed X Price per unit of dog food. I reasoned that amongst high-income category the number of times dog is fed Pet food (instead of home food), the cost of unit, the frequency and volume of such feeds will be more compared to that of a middle income group. Jaideep appeared to be satisfied with my responses. What do you think went right/wrong?

Wrong: I was completely stressed out during the interview. Thanks to Jaidit for supporting me all throughout the interview.


Ensure that you carry enough chocolates and energy drinks with you. The d-day can be extremely stressful and tiring.

Outcome

Made an Offer.

32


Raman Chadha Company Name

McKinsey & Company

Interviewer Name

Sachin Haralkar, EM @ Mumbai Office

Interview Number

First Round, First Interview

Personal Interview

Not much, Sachin asked few basic questions about my experience / interests.

Question Case Type

Very broad market sizing case. Unusual case which required estimation of several streams.

Case Question

A PE fund is looking to invest in a firm that deals in professional services (such as catering / office maintenance / pantry / lawn maintenance etc) [my interpretation -> kind of what Green Park does at ISB]. They want to estimate the size of this sector.

Narration of the case, as

I was totally lost. It was a very open ended case and I did not know where to start. I

descriptively as possible

had to estimate the market size of an industry with so many different streams. I started by asking some basic background question – industry size is India specific. Time line of investment, etc. Which all streams (out of catering / office maintenance / building management, etc) should I estimate – he said ALL  I knew that no traditional estimation approach (top down / bottom up) would work, so had to think differently. I took Macroeconomics funda to estimate the size of industry with multiple streams. I said, I can estimate it on ‘income based’ i.e. estimate total number of people

employed in such industry, and then estimate what average income they make. By multiplying the number of people with average income, I can estimate industry size. I mentioned approach is similar to estimating GDP of a country. He said the approach is interesting but what else I can do? I said I can take an expense based approach i.e. look at various institutions / firms that need such services, and estimate how much they expense out. Alternatively, I can take a sample city, say Delhi, look up the yellow pages and call a few professional services firms and interview them for their turnover. This will give me a ballpark number. I can extrapolate it to pan-India. Also, I can look at a representative country, say China or Russia, and get secondary data on their professional services sector size and then do scale down / up for India. He wanted me to proceed with Income Based approach. I said I will first estimate the total workforce in India. Then figure out how many professional service people we need to support that population. Sachin said go ahead! I said population of India 1,200,000,000 Life expectancy is around 60 (I said it’s on the lower side but makes calculations easy, he was ok with it). I assumed UNIFORM distribution across age (assumption that I 33

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 stated upfront). Therefore, we have 20,000,000 people / age. Working age bracket is from 20 to 50 (again this is on average with retirement age varying across sectors) So, total workforce (including professional college students), is 30 * 20,000,000 = 600,000,000 Out of which Urban is approximately 30% (this was based on prior project I had done for NUS). So URBAN LABOR POPULATION is 180,000,000 Out of which, some may be unable to work or voluntarily sitting out (Macro Eco fundas), some home-makers, etc so I said I would take 70% of that as actual. URBAN WORKFORCE = 70% of 180,000,000 = 126,000,000 I said I will assume professional services are needed in urban setting only. Now I said, I would take a hint from ISB. There are about 570 students on campus, plus another 50-100 student researchers, and another 100 families. So 1500 people at a given time. I said based on my observation, Green Park has about 50 people to manage ISB (this included people in cafeteria, dining hall, room cleaning, etc). Using the same ratio pan-India, I can 126,000,000 * 50/1500 = 4,200,000 people in professional service industry. Average salary of a particular employee would be approx INR 5000/mo. Giving an annual industry Gross Production of – 4,200,000 * 5000 * 12 mo/year = INR 252,000,000. Converting to US$ at exchange rate of 50, I got approx US$ 5,000,000,000. Number looked reasonable. I had erred in the last conversion and calculated US$ 50bn instead of US$5bn. I pointed it out to Sachin that the number looks very high!! He said it is and asked me to check my calculations. What do you think went right/wrong?

Wrong - One goof up was that I did not get to know the name of my interviewer beforehand (there was some change in assigned interviewers), so could not know anything about him. I had to ask him during the interview about his background and work. But it came across as genuine and he understood the situation. Wrong - Screwed up on simple multiplication (interview day jitters!). So please practice your numbers. Sachin had informed the next interviewer to test me on quant  I was honest in admitting to him that I screwed up because of nervousness. Right - Being the first interview for Sachin, he did not have much of an anchor / benchmark to compare against (I am assuming). I was able to strike a repo. Feedback I had received during practice case preps with McK folks was that I had good ‘presence’ and ‘energy’ during interview. I tried to maintain the same even though the case was

tough and did not go that well according to me! Any tips for the future

Take estimation cases seriously. Draw on the parallels from coursework during

batch

interview. 34

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Outcome

Moved to 2nd interview Round 1.

Name of Candidate

Raman Chadha

Company Name

McKinsey & Company

Interviewer Name

Rajat Gupta, Director at Mumbai Office

Interview Number

First Round, Second Interview

Personal Interview

Quite a few! First half was based on my ‘story’ (tell me about yourself, your family,

Question

parents, etc)

Case Type

Market Estimation

Case Question

A chemical manufacturing company is looking to enter the water treatment industry and want to estimate the size of it. What would you tell them?


Rajat started off by asking me about myself, my parents, interests, hobbies, etc.


It was a serendipity that he was from the same town that I grew up in (Allahabad). So we stuck a good rapport! I asked him which part of Allahabad, etc which school (He even went to the same school as I did). Initial half of the interview was my story only. He asked about my interests, future, what I am passionate about. Case – I started off by asking what kind of water treatment the client is looking to enter. He said, why don’t you identify them.

I said, Pool Cleaning, Water Filtration for home-use, Water treatment for commercial usage (power plants, etc). He said focus on pool usage. I said as per my understanding, pool cleaning is done by adding some chlorine based chemicals on a continuous basis. He said yes. I said I will estimate total pools in India and then determine total installed capacity (in volume terms) and estimate annual demand for chemical agents. He was ok with approach. He suggested, take a sample city, let’s say ALLAHABD ( ) and estimate number of

pools there. I said major drivers for pools are – -

Schools

-

Hotels

-

Sports Facilitates Townships (I grew up in one so I knew about them)

-

Private Pools / Residential Pools

He said ignore Private Pools. I said Allahabad has 5 good schools with one pool each. There are 3-4 good hotels with 2-3 pools, so total of 15 35

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 There are municipal sports facilities, and then there is Sports Arena, so approximately another 10 pools. Allahabad has several townships (societies with pools), so another 10 such (I could name several such townships, so we assumed 10). Total of ~ 40 pools in a town like Allahabad. Average size of pool I said is 20 m x 50m. He said that is for Olympic sized pool and not all pools would be Olympic size. He said take quarter of that. I said then average depth varies across pools but I would take 2m. He said why? I said 6 ft is about 1.8 m, so another half a feet on top of that gives me 2 m. He said ok. I multiplied to get volume / pool of 20 m x 50 m x 1/4 x 2 m = 500 m3. In between he had given me usage of 3 g / m3 / day. I had not made a note of it but did remember it. I said most pools don’t open throughout the y ear (Winters, rainy season they are

closed), so I assumed average # of days open as 200 (including other maintenance days / holidays). Multiplying – 3 g/m3 * 500 m3 * 40 pools * 200 days/year = 12,000,000 g/year for Allahabad. Converting into tons, I said 12 tons/year for Allahabad. Now he said what about pan-India. He said you have 30 sec. I said approximately 100 such cities across India including metros, etc. Total demand of 12000 ton/year. He said ok. What do you think went right/wrong?

Right – Connected very well with the interviewer. st

Right – held my nerves even though Rajat said that feedback from 1 interview was to test my quant. Right – had a good story and could tie different pieces of resume / education together.


Estimation cases are important

Outcome

Shortlisted for 2nd Round

Name of Candidate

Raman Chadha

Company Name

McKinsey & Company

Interviewer Name

Rajiv Lochan, Partner at Chennai Office

Interview Number

Second Round, First Interview

Personal Interview

General stuff about my resume, my work-experience in the US, Rajiv was from IIT-

Question

Chennai and played in inter-IIT sports tournaments and I had also done the same. So some talk around that.

Case Type

Business Situation

Case Question

Why are the airlines in India losing money? What would be your approach to determine the factors affecting profitability? 36

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Narration of the case, as

Rajiv mentioned that he wanted to discuss in general (I knew that structure still has to


be there). He said as an outsider to the airline industry, he was perplexed about the lack of profitability. He said give me three hypothesis that you would work on to solve the problem. I said before getting into hypothesis (there were no general industry landscaping question as knowledge about the industry was in public domain. He expected me to be current with the industry happenings!), I would take a step back and analyze the last few years data to see if there is a blip or sudden drop in profitability. This will help in determining exogenous factors that might have affected profitability. He said assume we can’t do that and have to work with current data. I said in that case, there are two ways to look at it – Either Revenues are Low and / or Costs are Too High (Basic Revenue – Costs). On Revenue Side my hypothesis would be that pricing structure of tickets is not appropriate i.e. pricing too low compared to value offered. Secondly, overall load-factor might be low (i.e. some operational routes don’t see adequate demand). On Costs side my hypothesis would be that fuel costs are affecting profitability. He said good, and wanted to focus on pricing issue. Then we went on to the detail of calculating the value added by flying vs taking a train. Train takes about 15 hours between Delhi and Mumbai and costs ~ 2000 whereas a flight takes about 2 hours and cost one-way 5000 (off peak-season). I said I would assume that business travelers are price insensitive. Average yearly earnings of a flyer ~ Rs 15,00,000. So for 2000 hrs / year (40 hrs * 50 weeks), it comes to about Rs 750 / hr as earning potential. So basically, if a flyer can save time commuting, he can use it to earn at this rate. Then potential price difference between train / flying should be 13 hrs * 750, which is ~ Rs 10,000. But currently it is too low!! He said what else? I said that by pricing higher some folks might switch from flying to trains. We did some analysis on that assuming 40% switched. Still it was profitable for airlines to increase price. Then we went on to discuss as to why airlines price this way. I talked about ‘anchoring’

because of LCCs such as Deccan in the beginning. General Discussion went on for another 5 mins. What do you think went right/wrong?

Could connect with the interviewer because of his background (IIT / MS from USA and inter-IIT) Was direct in my approach

Any tips for the future

Know the industry news and happenings

batch Outcome

Made an offer 37


Name of Candidate

Rahul Mangla

Company Name

McKinsey and Company

Interviewer Name

Dr. Shirish Sankhe

Interview Number

Round 1, Interview 1


This was my third interview of the day. I was still quite fresh, thanks to the healthy doses of chocolates and Redbull ! I had interacted with Dr. Shirish Sankhe during one of the McKinsey events. He’s a director at McKinsey and talked at length about his work in public policy particularly GST. The public policy work was quite interesting and I had followed the space on and off since then. We discussed GST and the recent steps towards its implementation during the interview. Tip : It’s useful to listen to the leadership team at the post -shortlist events. You don’t have to participate in every discussion, but listening helps as you’ll find something interesting, read more about it and will be able to strike an intelligent conversation on the interview day. About 30% of this interview was PI. However, most of the PI discussion happened towards the end of the interview (after the case). In the beginning, the interview started with the usual ice-breaking question – Tell me something about yourself. I narrated what I believe was longer than ideal summary ‘about myself’. Dr. Sankhe followed up with questions on my work at Microsoft as a Program Manager and examples of leadership at work. I had some content to share on these questions and the conversation was flowing (always a good sign )

We then dived right into the case. (more details on the post-case PI discussion below) Case Type

Revenue expansion and Operations

Case Question

We are working with one of the major airport operators in the country. They want to increase their ‘retail revenues’. How would you help them?


To start with, this looked like a fairly standard ‘increase revenues’ case. Nevertheless, here’s the process I followed: 1) Scoping: I started probing around to gather more information on the problem. As a thumb-rule, I always underlined part of the question statement itself, that I first wanted clarified. So I asked: a) What he meant by ‘retail revenues’: Was immediately asked to answer this one myself. As it is quite obvious, it was the revenue generated through the sale of goods and services for e.g. the restaurants, the book store etc. at the airport. b) Can you qualify ‘increase’? Where are we now and where do we want to be – Was given some numbers c) Any timeframe - more numbers were shared. In general, in our case group, we kept the following picture in mind when scoping the problem. This helped immensely to ensure everything is covered.

38


2) Structure : Given that it was a revenue maximization problem as split the problem in a fairly start way: Revenue = Price X Volume Volume = Market Share X Market Size Going from here I parked prices aside for some time and focused on volumes (price is easier to tackle later usually). For volume I drew the Ansoff matrix :

Tip : Always ensure that you bounce off every part of the structure with the interviewer. This is critical. As I verified mine, he asked me to continue and then later also focus on the operational aspects! 3) Analysis: The analysis was more of discussion with Dr. Sankhe and what all can be done in each of the 4 quadrants above. I kept bouncing off ideas with him and 39

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 filling out things on my sheet that made sense. It was the creative part of the case. Some of the possible solutions included: a) Increasing the potential size of the market – promote more air travel and get more people to the terminal. b) Market segmentation – We can look at business and leisure travelers separately, create separate services for each segment I don’t remember all the ideas that came up, but I do remember the discussion was lengthy and we discussed not only ‘what’ but also ‘how’. Dr. Sankhe finally mentioned what I can do on the operations side. I mentioned depending on the segment, we need to tune our operations – speed and efficiency for business travelers vs. comfort for leisure.

4) Synthesis: I was asked to summarize the case, which I did mentioning the recommendations that we had discussed. I tried splitting the recommendations into near-term and long-term goals for the airport, which I think was liked by the interviewer. Dr. Sankhe agreed with most things and mentioned that they had made similar recommendations to the client. He mentioned however that in addition to all I said, they also suggested ways of improving airport check-in and security check facilities, as efficient systems will allow passengers to spend more time at the airport  They’ll buy more! Great point and I m issed it! 5) Follow-up PI: Dr. Sankhe then asked me if had any questions for him and we then discussed GST as it was in news recently. We also discussed cars (I sometimes read about super cars and he owns one!) which was good fun. What do you think went right/wrong?

There are two aspects to any interview - Content and Delivery. Let me try and evaluate the interview from this lens: Content 1) Things that went well – I think I had thought through some of the possible PI questions and therefore had the content to share. Further, given that I had read about the interviewers work, we could engage in a smooth conversation over GST 2) Things that could have been better – Couldn’t stop kicking myself for missing the Airport Operations part. He had given me a hint and I was way too lost in my structure to catch it. Delivery/Presentation 1) Things that went well – The conversation was smooth and the interviewer seemed engaged in the problem solving process. I ensured that I drew the structure and my mind map clearly on paper. I also tried to think aloud wherever I was stuck. 2) Things that didn’t go well – Rambling on ‘tell me about yourself’ could have been definitely avoided. Should have written down the hint around operations somewhere as I missed it completely towards the end.


PI is important! You’ll all be cracking cases left and r ight by the time you are done preparing, but often we forget that the company is hiring an individual and not a ‘structuring machine’. It’s imperative to know yourself, your story clearly. The interview is a discussion. The more collaborative, engaging and fun it is, the better!

Outcome


40


Rahul Mangla

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Rajiv Lochan

Interview Number



Rajiv Lochan is a partner at McKinsey and has worked extensively in the banking strategy and operations space. He had worked with American express and US Air before joining McKinsey. Tip: It’s important to know the interviewer as you can then research more about their work and have a few questions lined up for them. Also, in all probability, the cases are real-life examples from their work. Rajiv had a very different style of interviewing and I could sense that very early. As I walked in, after the greetings, Rajiv asked me to sit on his seat. His rationale was that he’s here to listen and I am the one driving the interview! I was then explained the structure of the interview. He wanted to spend some time upfront in getting to know me (the PI), he’ll then move on to gathering some ‘free consulting advice’ (aka the case interview) and finally we’ll close with any questions I have for him. 1) He began by asking me general things (sort of tell me about yourself). 2) He then asked me ‘Why consulting’. I had thought this question through and drew a graph that I thought best conveyed what I wanted to say. He seemed quite interested in understanding the graph better. 3) I was again asked a lot of question around leadership. It’s partly because most of my work and co-curricular revolved around leading teams. 4) Rajiv however, asked me a few tricky ones like three words to describe me as a leader. I stumbled and came up with a few adjectives. 5) He then asked me to come up with three more words that others will use for me as a leader – you cannot possibly prepare for questions like this, however if you have your story straight you’ll be able to come with an answer. We then moved to the case.

Case Type

Process Optimization

Case Question

A hospital has 4 operation theatres that can be used for open heart surgery. Currently the hospital conducts 12 surgeries/week and the aim to take that number to 18 surgeries/week


1) Scoping: As described in the framework above, the attempt was to clarify the problem statement. Given that this was process optimization case, I focused on understanding: a) The Process itself – How are the operation theatres used? How is the scheduling done? b) What are the resources required – doctors, nurses, equipment and patients. c) What is the capacity of the various resources in the system – turns out there are 6 doctors only who can perform this kind of surgery and they all have different levels of efficiency based on their experience. A typical operation takes 6 hrs. d) Any scheduling constraints – The patients need be readied for the operation, which takes about an hour before the operation. The theatre then needs to be cleaned for the next procedure which takes an additional hour. As I asked more questions, I got loads of numbers in this case. I drew a process chart and wrote down the various numbers: 41


Prepare 

Nurses  Support staff  Patient

Operate  doctor

Cleanup  Support staff

 nurses  Patient

2) Structure: Given that it was a process problem I thought split the problem using the usual PPI framework, which is: Process, People and Infrastructure. I discussed with Rajiv that the hospital is performing sub-optimally due to one of the above and we can explore each one-by-one. Though he agreed with the framework, I could see that he wasn’t satisfied. After a little probing he mentioned that he wasn’t sure how would I solve the operations problem using this framework.

That was my clue. The framework went out of the window and I focused on trying to remember whatever I could from Ops Management. 3) Analysis: Now that we are trying to optimize a process, my approach was: a) Find the bottleneck – Any improvement in bottleneck should lead to a consequent improvement in the overall process. I had all the data, so I started quickly crunching the utilization numbers for all resources (the bottleneck should have a utilization of 100%) b) Doctors had the time, the operation theatre could do more and there was always a queue of patients at the hospital for this surgery. It seemed that some of the resources were not being used optimally. The operation theatre it turned out was always the issue. It was never available for some reason, though it had the capacity to perform more operations. As I probed further, Rajiv asked me why a flight is usually late – because of the incoming aircraft, I said. That was a useful hint – In case of the operation theatre the surgeries were scheduled one after the other. If one is delayed all others got delayed and finally the last one of the day was cancelled – spilling over to the next day. The reason – doctors don’t show-up on time. After all the soul-searching the crux of the matter was the fact that doctors would book the operation theatres for a surgery, but 70% of the surgeries didn’t start on time leading to the spillover effects. 4) Synthesis: I was asked to synthesis the long discussion and I stated the recommendations in the following way: a) Near-term goals – Low hanging fruits. Improve utilization by more efficient scheduling. Don’t let a late surgery start as it would be affect all o ther surgeries lined up for the day. Instead look for other operation theatres which may be available to perform the delayed surgery – Explained this cross-scheduling using an example. b) Long-term goals – Behavioral change. The doctors’ incentives can be tweaked to incentivize them to start the surgeries on time. 5) Follow-up questions – Given that Rajiv had worked in the banking sector I was curious to know how things are different when it comes to dealing with the 42

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 public sector giants vs. the nimbler private sector banks. He had some interesting insights to share. What do you think went right/wrong?

Content 1) Things that went well – Was able to find the core issue (with some nudging from the interviewer). The PI was smooth overall, was able to come up with some answers to the offbeat PI questions. Tip: If you are asked something very different it’s perfectly f ine to take some time to formulate your answer. Don’t jump in if you don’t know what to say. That said, for basic things like ‘achievement at work’ etc. you should have the answers on your fingertips. 2) Things that didn’t go well – fumbled with the numbers here and there. Got confused between weekly, daily and monthly data. Was able to recover, but it’s usually a good practice to keep the units consistent across all numbers

Delivery/Presentation 1) Things that went well – The conversation was smooth, the initial PI helped break the ice. The interview itself was very collaborative and it was good fun solving the case with Rajiv. 2) Things that could have been better – I had made a mess of the calculations, they were all over the page, which pretty much ended up confusing me in the interview. It’s absolutely important that you do your calculations neatly. Any tips for the future batch

Will reiterate what I said earlier. Case solving ability is a hygiene factor or as we would say in our engineering days – a necessary but not sufficient condition. What differentiates two people who solved the same case – the people they are and the conversation they strike. Consulting is a client-facing job, you need to be able to solve the problem and interact with the client. Therefore, don’t ignore your story, who you are and why you stand out.

Outcome

Moved to Round 2

Name of Candidate

Rahul Mangla

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Rajat Gupta

Interview Number



Rajat is a director at McKinsey and has been with the firm for 20 years. He has extensive experience across sectors and currently heads McKinsey’s Energy and Materials practice in Asia. Like the interviewers before Rajat focused on making sure that the interviewee was comfortable and started with general ice-breaking questions about my background and work. The interview didn’t have any case and it was general discussion about the work I had done at Microsoft, my strengths and weaknesses and my career achievements so far.

Rajat then shared some positive feedback I had received from the partners who had interviewed me so far (which I guess was a good sign). By now I must admit, I was quite restless to know the result. 43

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Finally, we shook hands with the statement “welcome to the firm”.

Case Type

Not Applicable

Case Question

Not Applicable


Not Applicable


Not Applicable


Life’s fair in the long-term and that thought usually helps keeping your nerves in control. The D-day may decide what firm you’ll join out of campus, but it absolutely cannot swing the long career in front of you.

Best of luck, do well and stay in touch! Outcome

Made an offer.

44


Aditi Sharma

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Meghana Narayan

Interview Number

Round 1 – Interview 1


Tell Me about your most challenging assignment to date(First question that was asked the moment I took my seat). Follow-up questions on that.

Case Type

Understanding the cost drivers

Case Question

UK Government hires you as a consultant to help them curb public spending that goes into healthcare

Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible What do you think went right/wrong?

The main problem lie with the size of population a particular healthcare professional was employed to serve. There was underutilization and hence higher spending.


After the PI part, the time left for the case question was a little under 10 minutes. Keep a check on time and focus on making as exhaustive an initial structure as possible. That‘ll often be your best chance at showcasing your skill. The case discussion will mostly not go on till the very end.

Outcome

Moved to Next Round

Name of Candidate

Aditi Sharma

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Jatin Pant

Interview Number



What all do you think it takes to be a good consultant?

Case Type

Market Entry/Estimation

Case Question

A Korean company is entering Indian market with 0.5-ton capacity ACs. For building plant capacity, help them estimate the market for the product in India.


Took the vanilla market estimation approach…affordable housing, second or third AC fitting in residential/commercial office spaces. Was stopped there.

Why should we hire you over others?

Was asked to suggest alternative methods for market sizing. Brief discussion on market research techniques. Interviewer was looking at a specific approach to sizing this market. Finally proposed the analog method. If possible, looking at the market penetration of 0.5-ton AC in a market similar to India in terms of demographics and/or geography. Following discussion centered around choice of reference country – Latin American nations, South East Asian countries etc. Interviewer said at the end “Now, we have cracked the case!” What do you think went right/wrong?

Switch approaches quickly. Think beyond the way you would like to approach a case. The interviewer is many a times looking for something completely different.


Most of what I discussed with the interviewer was what I could remember from the 45

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 batch

ENDM course-was pretty useful. Built on that stuff during the interview. Most important, make conversation as you solve the problem.

Outcome

Moved to Next Round

Name of Candidate

Aditi Sharma

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Renny Thomas

Interview Number



Tell me about yourself?

Case Type

Sourcing – Insource/Outsource

Case Question

A chemical major in India is considering setting up their own power generation facility. What is the capacity of the plant that they should build?


After inquiring more about the operations of the company and the motivation behind this decision, proposed three options for sourcing electricity – Make, Buy and Make+Buy. After this, the discussion mainly focused on make+buy option. We started discussing the chemicals business – cyclicality etc. Cost of electricity production - inhouse was more expensive that purchasing from government utility. But the chemicals business was reverse cyclical to domestic peak demand for electricity in summer. The company had the option of putting the generated power on grid and selling it to power utility at power-exchange determined rates. So, make+buy made sense. Then we discussed about the baseline production capacity and the variation in demand we see around that – where the baseline production for electricity should lie in that case. Risks such as sourcing of coal were also discussed.


Make+Buy option.


Moved to Next Round

Name of Candidate

Aditi Sharma

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Shirish Sankhe

Interview Number



About work experience and responsibilities at previous company.

Case Type

Market Estimation

Case Question

Number of cements bags sold in India annually


Commercial and Residential Space construction. Grouped Indian population into different income brackets. As a ball park, assumed that every household can afford to spend nearly 30% of their income on housing. Based on this and prior knowledge of 46

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 per sq. ft. rates for residential (triangulated for 3 metros), came up with t he different brackets of house sizes and the number of households that fall into those brackets. If average life of construction be 10 years then found the number of sq. ft. of residential construction annually. Assumed a per capita (household) commercial space consumption based on the same brackets and came up with total sq. ft. construction. Multiplied it by cement bags reqd. per sq. ft. Interviewer supplied relevant details where necessary and looked happy with the approach. What do you think went right/wrong? Any tips for the future batch

Engage the interviewer. Propose and then discuss alternative solutions for a problem at hand.

Outcome

Received a job offer!

47


Vamshidhar Reddy Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Jaidit Brar

Interview Number



Questions on my background. Tell me something that is not on your resume and follow up questions

Case Type

Profitability

Case Question

Ship company making losses for last three years


Asked basic questions on the business model of the company, number of ships in its fleet, the routes it serves, and its geographical presence. The company owns 1000 fleet of ships serving all across the globe and mainly used for transporting cargo. I used the revenue and cost framework. Revenues actually increased from $ 4B to $ 5B (in last three years) but the costs had increased significantly (from $ 3.5B to $ 5.5B). I checked for the industry trends and was informed that the overall industry was facing high cost issues. Now I started to deep dive into the costs a shipping company faces. I drew out the entire value chain and started identifying the major cost buckets for this company. After some discussion, we identified that the key issue was the rising fuel prices which explained the losses. Then we brainstormed on the recommendations including hedging, more efficient utilization of fuel etc. Turned out that ships were travelling faster than the optimal speed and they could be made more fuel efficient by decreasing the speed of the ships. We had a brief discussion on the implications of reducing the speed of the ships - other miscellaneous costs and customer impact.


Drawing the value chain helped me think clearly on the different costs. This being the first interview with McKinsey, I was a bit rusty.


The value chain framework is very helpful. Anytime you are stuck, thinking through the value chain and the basics will be helpful.

Outcome

Name of Candidate

Vamshidhar Reddy

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Faridun Dotiwala

Interview Number



The interview was mostly PI focussed. There was a brief 5 minute discussion on a case (discussed below). We had a discussion about my story, and reasons for each major decision in my life - IIT, Work, ISB and why I came back to India. Next, we discussed about my ISB experience, key learning’s, major challenges I faced and areas of improvement for me going forward. There were a lot of other questions specific to my profile.

Case Type

Growth

Case Question

Increasing ISB revenues


This was a growth case where Faridun wanted me to identify 5 sources for increasing the revenue of ISB. He wasn’t looking for specific details but a high level discussion on how to increase revenues for ISB. I identified the major buckets - fees, additional campus, vocational training, executive education programs, tie ups with corporate for 48

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 leadership programs and optimizing the current operations. We had a brief discussion around these points. This was a very short case and most of the interview was PI focused. What do you think went right/wrong?

I was able to connect with Faridun and this helped me to have a good discussion with him on my story and other PI questions.


Practice PI well. It is as important as cracking the cases.

Outcome

Shortlisted for R2

Name of Candidate

Vamshidhar Reddy

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Sasi Sunkara

Interview Number



The interview started with basic PI questions - Tell me about yourself, why consulting etc.

Case Type

Increasing Profitability

Case Question

Increasing ROE of UK Bank


The client was a UK bank. It was the market leader in SME segment. It wanted to increase its ROE from 12% to 25%. A few basic questions helped me understand that even though the bank was the market leader in SME segment, its ROE was much less than that of competition. We talked about revenues and cost and Sasi asked me to focus on the costs. I said that costs for the bank can be broken down into cost per branch* Number of branches. Cost per branch was higher. He asked me what would be a good metric to benchmark against competition and after a little brainstorming; I mentioned that cost per serving a customer should be the metric we need to compare across branches. Then I deep dived into the major costs incurred by the bank and zeroed in on bad debt expense and front end people costs to be the major factors. Sasi asked me to focus on how to reduce costs for front end people. We discussed the different ways to reduce people costs in a bank - hiring, effective deployment, controlling attrition, increasing productivity. Sasi asked me to give three recommendations for increasing productivity of the employees. I mentioned that productivity could be increased through training, incentivization (fixed vs variable pay) and automation of low level tasks. Sasi was happy with the recommendations and ended the case.


This was my best interview of the day. I was able to connect with Sasi and was able to have a good discussion on both PI and case.


Name of Candidate

Vamshidhar Reddy 49

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Rajiv Lochan

Interview Number



The interview started by Rajiv asking what drives me in life. Then we had a discussion about important traits of a leader and follow up questions on my leadership style.

Case Type

Pricing

Case Question

Airline Industry and ticket pricing from Delhi to Hyderabad


We initially had a good discussion on airline industry and my perspective on Kingfisher and future trends. Next, we did a brief case to understand whether the current Kingfisher airfare was reasonable. I mentioned that we can look at three ways to decide whether the price is appropriate - value to customer, competitors’ prices, and costs incurred to serve a passenger. Rajiv asked me to focus on the value to the customer. The major value for customer comes from convenience and time saved. We discussed other alternatives like train and compared the time value of money. Train costs Rs 2000 and takes 24 hrs to travel from Delhi to Hyderabad and plane costs Rs 6000 and takes 4 hrs (including security, check in etc). So a customer is paying an additional amount of Rs 200/hr At the face of it, it looked like a small number considering the customer segment. After a brief discussion, we looked at the average salary of a person travelling in economy (middle class). I assumed it to be ~ Rs 8 lakhs. An average person works ~ 2000 hrs per year which comes to ~ Rs 400/hr. After some discussion, we concluded that the air fare was too low and the intense price wars were making it less profitable for everyone in the airline industry.


This interview was towards the end of the day and by then I was completely tired. In hindsight, maintaining the energy at the end of the day and being able to connect with Rajiv were the biggest positives in this interview.


Students with multiple shortlists will have a lot of interviews that day. Maintaining your energy till the last interview is the key - eat well during breaks. Practice giving 6-8 interviews towards the end of preparatory phase (mock placement day, case prep groups etc). All the very best!

Outcome

Was made an offer

50


Sachin Kumar

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Sasi Sunkara

Interview Number

1-R1


Interview started with some general questions about my background. Lot of discussion involved my family background and my journey to ISB. Sasi showed a lot of interest in my background and let me do the whole talking. He was asking few questions in between, but It was me who was guiding the whole discussion. There were no “why” (why McK/Consulting) questions.

Case Type

Estimation

Case Question

Can you estimate the financial losses in US from subprime crisis of 2008?


I opened the case in standard manner and asked for few seconds to think about the problem. Then, I drew following value chain which was involved in subprime crisis. Home Owners

Subprime Lenders

Investors

Investors were different banking institutions and managed funds. I talked about the financial losses at each stage of value chain. I mentioned that because a lot of liquidity dried up, banks did not have money to lend to industries. So, there were indirect losses as well because of the projects where industry could not invest on account of shortage of funds. Sasi was OK with the value chain and asked me to ignore the indirect losses. I said that I will estimate the losses at each stage of value chain. Here, Sasi helped me in figuring about that all the financial losses are correlated. Securities in which investors invested had houses as underlying assets. When values of houses dropped and home owners were defaulted those securities became junk securities. In the end whole problem boiled down to calculating the loss in value of houses in subprime crisis. I started my estimation from US population of 300 million. I calculated total number of houses. I made assumption about how many of those houses are on loan. Sasi gave me figure for percentage of home owners defaulted on their loan. One important point was that if loan holder did not default, there is no loss in value, even though value of his house is reduced in the crisis. Sasi gave me figures for average value of a house before and after the crisis. From this data I estimated the financial losses. I forgot to include the payment made by loan holders from the time loan was issued till they defaulted. Sasi pointed that out and ended the case.


I connected well with Sasi during PI part. He seemed impress from my background story. Alums told me that if you can make interviewer remember your name after the interview, you have good chance of making through. I think I passed that test as Sasi came to me after whole selection process was over and talked to me about my background.


Don’t ignore PI. I think many alums will give same suggestion but still we end up giving 95% time to case prep and only 5% to PI. Lot of people will perform well in cases; there is less chance that case performance is going to be game changer. PI will give you more opportunity to connect with interviewer. Don’t ignore this. Write down your whole story. Think about what makes you who you are. What makes you unique? If you think

51

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 you don’t have anything interesting, I am sure you have not thought hard enough.

Another thing which helped me was I listed down at least 10 instance of my life highlighting different aspect - leadership, hardwork, performer, handling difficult situation. After that whatever question is asked, chances are atleast one of the story will fit into the answer. Simple public speaking 101 - Always give examples. Don’t just say I have leadership skills, exemplify it. Outcome

Next interview

Name of Candidate

Sachin Kumar

Company Name

McKinsey

Interviewer Name

Prashanth Vasu

Interview Number

2-R1


Prashanth is one the most jovial person you would ever come across to. He would make you feel at ease instantly. He is always smiling, so you would never know whether you performed well in case or just screwed it . Again, lot of questions regarding my background. No usual questions like why McKinsey or why consulting. He was interested in knowing me in more detail. So, I told him what was not there on Resume.

Case Type

Profitability

Case Question

A tire manufacturing company wants to increase its profits by 7%.


I don’t remember much of the detail of the case as Prashanth did not allow me to take my notes. I will write down what all I remember. I started with few exploratory questions regarding, competitors, customers and product. Found out that company was making tires for 3 wheelers and 4 wheelers. In 4 wheelers there were 2 market segments company was serving- car manufacturer and service centers. There were a lot of numbers. I talked about various aspect of profit increasing such as increasing the price, focusing more on high margin products and customers. I kept proving different suggestions to increase the profit until we reached the target of 7% increased profit.


I made few mistakes in calculation. This could have been detrimental to my chances of making to second round.


Be comfortable with little bit of number crunching, especially handling percentages. For example, if sales of product “A” is just 20% of overall sale and you can increase price of the product by 20%, how much overall profit will improve. You may be good with numbers but doing numbers in pressure situation is different ball game altogether. So, try to do number calculations in your mock case interviews.

Outcome

Shortlisted for 2nd round

Name of Candidate

Sachin Kumar

Company Name

McKinsey 52

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Interviewer Name

Rajat Gupta

Interview Number

1- R2


I got dinged from other companies I had shortlist with by this time, so I was already nervous. I knew this was make-or-break for me. Rajat’s serious demeanor also did not help much. He started PI without wasting much time. This interview involved questions which every one prepares. Following are few of the questions.      

Tell me about yourself If I go out of this room and ask about you, what will your friends tell me? What would your friends tell me about your weak points? What are you doing to overcome your weaknesses? What are your biggest achievements? Tell me about instances when you demonstrated leadership?

When I answered the question about my weaknesses, Rajat suddenly seemed more interested and asked me to elaborate. I said to myself “shit, why did I say that?” I made honest attempt to describe in detail what I meant. I made sure that he also knows about my efforts for overcoming those weaknesses. I had the feeling that I am being grilled. After around 20 mins of PI he said, “Let’s do a case”.

Case Type

Open Ended

Case Question

How would you reduce carbon emission of India without jeopardizing the economic growth?


I was comfortable with this case question because my ELP work was related to carbon emission only. So, I knew a lot of facts. I started by dividing the carbon emission in 2 parts – Industry and Household. Industry    

Energy generation Steel Cement Other manufacturing industries

Here, I talked about replacing coal based energy with renewable sources. Improving the technology in other industries. I gave suggestions for different industry. Rajat seemed impressed by my knowledge of facts and asked me how I knew all this. I told him that I did my ELP in same area. Household    

Lighting Cooking Traveling Agriculture

I missed the agriculture here which Rajat reminded me. He told me that lot of green house gasses are generated from the farts of cattle . I asked him what out the breathing of cattle and human beings. He said that’s an interesting thought and it would be interesting to find out the impact of that. I took over individual header and started tacking that. For example Carbon emission from travelling = number of vehicles x average emission per vehicle 53

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 I said we can limit the number of vehicles. To do that promote the public transportation and apply higher tax on sale of private vehicles. We can reduce the average emission per vehicle by making sure that no vehicles older than 10 years are running on road. Similarly I covered all different sectors. In the end Rajat said “Ok, but what was my original question?”

I skipped a heartbeat. I told him that question was to reduce the emission and not impact the economic growth. That’s why I talked about alternate ways of reducing the emission and not recommended to shut down some activities. I said to achieve double digit growth power sectors needs to grow atleast by 6 % (I read it somewhere), that’s why I suggested investing in renewable energy sources while reducing the dependence on coal based energy gradually. What do you think went right/wrong?

I knew a lot of background information on emission space which impressed Rajat. I covered various ways of reducing emission and followed MECE structure always. I was breaking problem in sub problems and handling them independently. I was evaluating my answers in the interview which made me even more nervous. Certainly not the best thing to do in interviews, or anywhere you are performing for that matter.


Be confident before you enter the interview room. Don’t judge yourself. Believe that you are performing well. Leave the evaluation part to interviewer.

Always follow a structured approach. Answer is not important, especially for open ended cases. It’s the approach that matters. And think loudly so that interviewer can know what is going on in your head. Outcome

Then they told me in person, “Welcome to the firm” 

54


Shreerang Godbole

Company Name

Mckinsey & Co.

Interviewer Name

Renny Thomas – Partner

Interview Number

R1-Int -1


Specific to work experience. On my key learning and outcomes

Case Type

General

Case Question

You are the head of an Indian FMCG company. A large foreign multinational FMCG comes up to you and says that it wants to use your powerful distribution chain. What will you do?


There seemed to be no logical framework for this. I thought of this as a Mergers case and mentally labeled each of the companies as Acquirer and Target. Once I had a fix on this the rest seemed to flow logically. The sequence of questioning was as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.

What do the companies do? Who are their customers What are the motives of this proposal? What is the Synergy and the Opportunity Cost for the Indian company for not entering into this agreement? 5. What will be the pricing for this arrangement? 6. What will be the key risks? I laid out these questions in front Renee and then we proceeded on our discussion. It turned out that the product set was non-intersecting and the foreign MNC was looking at understanding the Indian market. It had a powerful brand and great marketing skills. However, the customer set was the same. Therefore I talked about all the cost savings for the entrant on account of this proposal. For the Indian company it was about being associated with a large brand and learning a lot from them in terms of skill sets. The opportunity cost was that of the foreign entrant moving to a competitor Indian company and it attaining leadership position in the market. The key risks were of the foreign entrant looking at targeting my customers after a certain time period. This could be taken care of by non-compete agreements and contractual clauses. The key issue would be that of pricing this scheme. The interviewer seemed to be pretty much fine with what I was saying. We then had a long chat about Talent Management and how Mckinsey manages its talent processes. What do you think went right/wrong?

I think there was nothing great that I did. Remained calm and importantly kept on saying my thoughts aloud.


None

Outcome

Moved to R1-Int 2

Name of Candidate

Shreerang Godbole

Company Name

Mckinsey & Co.

Interviewer Name

Rajat Gupta – Director

Interview Number

R1-Int -2

55

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Personal Interview Question

Grilled… Grilled… Grilled…..

RG: If I asked your friends what is that one thing that they dislike about you what would you say? SG: (I replied…) RG: Okay… tell me one more… SG: (I replied…) RG: One More… SG: (I replied…) RG: One More… SG: (I replied…) RG: You don’t angry too often but when you do you lose your top.. don’t you? I have no clue how he go to that…!! I simply said yes…. (Be brutally honest)!

Wow.. !!! For a moment I thought I was a Demon incarnated !!! At the end of it Rajat smiled and nodded in acknowledgement. I think he just loved the fact that I was straightforward and saying everything right from the heart. The case followed. But I knew that I had created an impression. Case Type

Pricing

Case Question

There is a hovercraft service operating from North Bombay to South Bombay.. how will you price the tickets?


Pricing elective to the rescue… I simply rattled off the theory.

1. Cost Plus 2. Competition Based 3. Value Based First understand what the various modes of transport are and what the performance parameters on the dimensions of price and time to reach destination. Next, look at who the customers are. This should be followed by the basic principles of value-based pricing. What are the benefits that they would derive from reaching their destination early. Took one example – Increases available working time. Maybe one can meet more clients. Translates into x number of clients per year. Probably of getting an order from a client is p. Therefore so much business generated. In my opinion the key point was to value the time saved by using the hovercraft. Also mentioned other revenue generating opportunities on the hovercraft that could subsidize the actual ticket prices.


Perfect…


Just be yourself…. And say what you really mean….

Outcome

Moved to R2… Offer made

56


Akshay Sethi

Company Name

Mckinsey & Co

Interviewer Name

Nikhil Lalwani – Associate Principal

Interview Number

Interview 1, Round 1


Tell me about yourself Why consulting Tell me about your personal failures

Case Type

Market Entry + guesstimates

Case Question

I want to start a helicopter service to ferry people from Nariman Point to the CS Airport in Mumbai. Should I?


This was a very open ended case where I had to assume numbers and walk him through my thought process. I started off by asking him some basic questions to set the ground work. Such as : -

What is your motivation? Current skill set Any targets/timelines

After setting the landscape, I put a structure to the problem. Said I will look into this case in the following manner: 1. Establish if the industry/business is attractive. 2. Do you have the resources and the skills to proceed & successfully run the business 3. Can you sustain the business 4. How to establish the business. Majority of my interview was based on Step 1. Industry attractiveness. I did numbers here and customer segmentation. I was asked to assume, number of trips, number of seats, occupancy rate, and fuel cost + misc expenses. I was asked to defend each number. My numbers got messy and I was able to round them off and quickly give him an estimate. He liked this. Under Step2, I discussed infrastructure requirements, capital requirements, human resource, training and his previous skills. Under Step 3, briefly discussed possible threat to his business from external factors such as new train lines and new highways. Pressures on pricing and changes in regulations. Etc. Didn’t have time for Step 4.


The case went well. I was structure and was able to ask him appropriate questions. I was able to work well with number


Stay calm

Outcome

Next round

Name of Candidate

Akshay Sethi

Company Name

Mckinsey & Co 57

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Interviewer Name

Faridun Dotiwala – Assoc Principal

Interview Number



Why consulting Why do you think you fit in Do you think are a leader? What would you peers says about you? What are your weaknesses

Case Type

-

Case Question

I was asked a case out of the blue and during the conversation. If you had to remove one member from study group at ISB. Who would it be and why?


At the onset I told him that this is a difficult task because I enjoyed everyone’s company and we did well in getting our assignments done. If I was forced to let someone go I told him I would prefer attitude over skill. From the 2 people I had narrowed down to I said one had the skill but a poor attitude while the other found it difficult to cope with theory part but was sincere in his attitude and effort. I picked the latter.


The interview went fine. I had answers to the soft questions and was prepared for them. I thought the case was very short.


Prepare for the softer questions and not only cases! Spend some time reflecting on what motivates you and your long term plans. Further, reflect on the decisions you have previous made and why did you do so.

Outcome

Next Round

Name of Candidate

Akshay Sethi

Company Name

Mckinsey & Co

Interviewer Name

Jaidit Singh Brar – Principal

Interview Number



Tell me something about yourself

Case Type

Profitability

Case Question

A shipping company is seeing a drop in profitability. Explore.


I started off by asking the ground setting or landscaping questions

Why consulting.

-

Explain the business of the company Customer? What kind of ships and hence what kind of products do they ship Competition? Current industry landscape

At this point I drew the profitability framework and explored that with him. I prefer the frame work from Co2010 casebook written by mouneesh Sinha and I had modified it little as I prepared for cases. Once I established that the revenues are in line wi th the market growth, I jumped into the cost side. I spent time exploring the costs and cut out various options that could have increased 58

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 costs. I also ran through the value chain I had drawn with his help. Eventually I figured that the increase in cost was due to higher waiting time at congested ports which reduced ship’s t urn around for the company. The company invested in faster more efficient ships that were stuck at congested ports and this countered the company’s competitive advantage. After figuring out the problem I gave a few solutions to it. Apologies, this case was long and I can’t recall the entire conversation and numbers. What do you think went right/wrong?

Reaching the solution was the ‘aha’ moment. Further, the solution included both the run of the mill suggestions and some innovative ones. The innovative ones help you stand out if they are appropriate

The case was number heavy and I got stuck with the numbers a bit. Any tips for the future batch

Go slow on numbers and walk the interviewer through your thought process. This will help in case you get a number wrong because the interviewer would be able to help you.

Outcome

Next Round

Name of Candidate

Akshay Sethi

Company Name

Mckinsey & Co

Interviewer Name

Rajat Gupta - Director

Interview Number



Tell me something about yourself Why consulting Family background Previous job Why did you like it? Skills you picked up?

Case Type

NA

Case Question

NA


NA


Clarity and preparation for PI was sufficient.


Prepare for PI. Especially for Mck!

Outcome

Another interview!

Name of Candidate

Akshay Sethi

Company Name

Mckinsey & Co

Interviewer Name

Renny Thomas – Partner

Interview Number

Interview 5, Round: don’t know

Personal Interview

Tell me something about yourself 59

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Question

Why consulting.

Case Type

na

Case Question

na


na


This was a 15 min fit interview.


Offer!

60


Dhruv Vatsal

Company Name

McKinsey & Co

Interviewer Name

Rajiv Lochan, Partner

Interview Number



a) Tell me about your leadership experiences. b) How do you define leadership? c) In your opinion, how is leadership different from management? I remember drawing a Venn diagram at this point in the interview, and identified management as a subset of leadership, alongwith multiple other traits that a successful leader would exhibit.

Case Type

Profitability

Case Question

What is your opinion on the reasons for the current situation of the airline industry in India?


Opening question: Industry experts say that there is a lot of overcapacity, which is what is driving down prices. Do you think that is right? I said no, and that overcapacity was not the problem. I justified this saying that airlines would not have delivery of aircrafts lined up if this were the case. Therefore, causality being inferred was incorrect, and that price decline was not being caused by overcapacity, but by competition. At this point, I also drew a game theory 2X2 and argued that players have been unsuccessful in signaling to each other, and therefore a prisoner’s dilemma exists. The interviewer countered back saying that price wars are not a recent occurrence, but existed about 5 years back. Why then has the industry gone into such a state recently? I broke down the first part of the discussion on ‘Yield’ and ‘utilization’. Yield was average price per occupied seat, and utilization was occupied seats/ total available seats. Discussion on these two metrics itself lasted a good 15minutes, and I don’t remember the details of it now. Later, he asked me to think of more reasons, so the discussion went onto fuel and personnel as being the major cost drivers. Ever increasing ATF prices were causing financial strain for all the airlines. I also mentioned that airlines were allowed by policy to source from Indian Oil and not directly procure from the international market, and this added a cost overhead as well. At this point, I think I became highly unstructured, and discussed a lot of facts that I was aware of. . I rattled out facts on why within the airline industry there was such disparity, and Indigo was able to do better than Kingfisher because of the way its aircraft servicing contract was designed, and the way it accepted new deliveries. This was quite irrelevant to the case, and did not quite go in my favor. Closing question: What are the two most important things you would try and find out to understand this problem? I said that trends in two metrics need to be studied to come to a conclusion on this. I don’t remember the metrics that I came up with though.


What went wrong? The entire case was all over the place. I know that of all 3 interviews with McK, this one did not go well at all, and therefore might have been a possible point of contention during the final decision. 61

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 What went right? The PI questions went better-than-expected in my opinion. I was able to define leadership and clearly articulate differences between leadership and management using instances from my experience in the factory. The Venn diagram put across a concise picture of these concepts, and went in my favor I guess. Any tips for the future batch

PI’s important 

Outcome

Next round

Name of Candidate

Dhruv Vatsal

Company Name

McKinsey & Co

Interviewer Name

Dr. Shirish Sankhe, Director

Interview Number

Round 2


Nothing out of the ordinary. Why consulting? Why ISB?

Case Type

Market Analysis

Case Question

Assume that the Indian Government is your client. Can you advise them on ways to improve the mining industry over the next 10 year horizon?


This case was by far the toughest, since I had no idea about this sector. The opening remark by the interviewer was, “I have a feeling you’re not too familiar with the sector.” We started with an overall discussion around the sector. The questions

Surprisingly, none of the McK interviewers asked the question “Why McK?”

i.

What do you think are the most important minerals that are mined in India? I took a vague guess on Bauxite, which I think turned out to be correct. Thereafter, I discussed a bit more on Iron Ore, Manganese and attempted (unsuccessfully) to broadly identify the hot-spots for these in India. ii. The topics then went onto current affairs, and of the 3 news items he mentioned, I had no clue of any. At this point, the comment made was “You should probably start reading the newspaper”. 

Nonetheless, I proceeded to attempt the case as follows: a) I identified an analogy with the Oil n Gas sector, and laid out the value chain for this sector as follows:

Exploration

Drilling/ Mining

Marketing/ Selling

Then I proceeded to evaluate each component one by one. All questions revolved around policy only, as the client was the government of India. b) Exploration: The key thing here, as with the Oil and Gas industry, was that there were specialists required to do the exploration. My line of questioning delved into whether the requisite talent was available in India, and some others. The interviewer pointed out that these specialists are usually based outside, and have 62

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 to be hired specifically for this purpose. I asked a few more questions trying to understand if the costs were prohibitive for private firms to engage in these activities and all. It eventually turned out that the problem with the policy is that these ‘specialists’ could not claim any ownership of land. Therefore, once they found out a deposit, they had to hand over the rights back to the owner of the land. . c) Drilling/ Mining: I tried to evaluate reasons why drilling/ mining would be constrained to grow, and within a few questions, I was able to identify land and environmental issues as the primary reasons. Mining involves a lot of displacement of people, and rehabilitation is a big policy concern. Also, mining is an extremely polluting activity, and getting clearances to start the same is a tedious process. d) Marketing/ Selling: There was some policy related point here as well, but I don’t remember it now. What I do remember is that this point was closed by the interviewer as “This one’s difficult to figure since it requires industry specific knowledge.” What do you think went right/wrong?

What went right? a) I think I was forever speaking in a confident tone, even though just the mention of the mining industry had completely shattered all hopes of cracking the case. b) I was able to quickly draw up a parallel with another sector about which I had a faint idea, and this allowed me to draw out the value chain. c) Kept asking relevant questions, as I was completely thinking of various reasons how policy could affect the value-chain component under discussion. What went wrong? a) Had no idea on current affairs! b) I had completely ignored this sector during preparation.


Keep your cool even if the case is highly unfamiliar. Just a logical thought process will get you past a lot of hiccups.

Outcome

Offered

63


Sonali Gupta

Company Name

McK

Interviewer Name

Jaideep Brar (Partner)

Interview Number

Interview 1 (Round 1)


Tell me about yourself and some conversation around that (he happened to be from my school, this helped in setting up some initial rapport)

Case Type

Logistics (Operations)

Case Question

A logistics (shipping) company wants to increase its profitability


This is a third party logistics company and its USP is on time delivery. It wants to increase its profitability. Asked some initial questions about the number of ships, routes, capacity utilization etc Did some numbers to establish that they were currently going through losses. I don’t remember the exact numbers but I was given information on cost data and something on revenue, utilization, number of ships, different fleet sizes etc. I was not given all the data that I asked for. He intentionally missed some numbers and told me that you have all the information that you need to arrive at the answer. I stumbled a bit initially for 12 mins but finally hit the point. Jaideep was very supportive throughout.

We finally concluded that fuel cost was high and efficient utilization of fuel can solve the problem to an extent. He asked me to move to the recommendation side. Gave a long list of possible ways to tackle this: 1) Hedging the fuel prices in the commodity market 2) Long term contracts with suppliers 3) Consolidating of suppliers to achieve economies of scale 4) Alternate fuel; alternate supplier; geographical proximity 5) Charging higher prices for shipping (passing on some cost to the customercompanies) Listed a few more (forgetting). Jaideep could kind of sense that I was disappointed about the initial mess up (and I indeed was – because this was my first interview for the day). He encouraged me by saying that I was infact doing very well and if I could think of someother recommendation? I asked could there be some spillage etc happening or something going wrong in the way fuel is being re-filled. He said that could be the case but think of a big ticket thing. The hint helped. I asked if fuel efficiency and speed are related in some way and if yes, then due to this technical reason may be we the ships are not being run at a speed that can achieve the optimal fuel efficiency. He said that is indeed the case, the ships are running faster than they should. If we reduce the speed then fuel efficiency can be achieved. At this point I immediately got reminded that the initial problem statement said that “on time delivery was their USP”. Hence, I pointed out – “but by reducing the speed they might lose their original value proposition!” I think he was quite happy with this and wrapped the interview by asking me if I had any questions for him.

What do you think went

Stumbled a bit and was visibly disappointed. It’s best to forget about how you are 64

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 right/wrong?

performing and just keep moving on with the day. The right thing was connecting all the data points and being ready with multiple options/solutions/recommendations.


Never forget the case question or key points as you go into the case details. Being able to connect different data points helps a lot! Also, if you can find flaws in your own answers/assumptions and improvise them as you move forward. It really leaves a good impression on the interviewer.

Outcome

Sent for next interview

Name of Candidate

Sonali Gupta

Company Name

McK

Interviewer Name

Sachin Haralkar (Engagement Manager)

Interview Number

Interview 2 (Round 1)


1) Walk me through 3 most significant achievements in your resume

Case Type

Market Sizing

Case Question

Estimate the $ revenue of a facilities management company


Started by asking about the services provided by a facilities management company. Includes things like plumbering, laundry, gardening, baby sitting, cleaning etc.

2) Cross question on career progression and responsibilities

These services can be used by upper middle class and above households as well by commercial institutes, malls etc. Was told to focus on the households. Used bottom up (population) approach, estimated number of households, took urban – rural split and divided the urban households into income segments. Estimated the number of households which use this service. Then estimated the number of laborers required per household per year, multiplied this with the ballpark yearly average salary of a laborer. Was told to extend these numbers to the commercial side without going through the whole process of estimations and assumptions. He just told me - now please give me the final total yearly revenue number in 10 secs. I think the idea was to see if I can make a reasonable ballpark estimate confidently. We had a discussion on any other alternate ways of estimating this. I suggested the following: 1) Using some other country as a proxy and using data from there 2) Using secondary reports, one facilities management company’s data and extending it for other 3) Estimating the revenue of a similar services business


The numbers and assumptions went right. Maintained my calm. Could have handled the PI better.


Be well prepared with PI questions. I would suggest writing down the answers for every possible question that you think can be asked, based on your resume. If this is done, there may not be a need to go through the 100 PI questions or any other alternate list that gets circulated. 65


Moved to Round 2

Name of Candidate

Sonali Gupta

Company Name

McK

Interviewer Name

Rajiv Lochan (Partner)

Interview Number

Interview 2 (Round 1) – Final Interview


Rajiv - Please be seated on the interviewer’s seat. I want you to drive the interview because I see partner potential in every candidate that I choose to hire. I have seen your resume but I want to know YOU as a person .. A light conversation followed after that ..

Case Type

Industry Related

Case Question

I wonder what is going on in the airline industry these days, please analyze the situation for me.


A very open ended case! I started by looking at the case from 1) Demand and 2) Supply side factors. In the first few mins, it was established that demand is not a constraint. There are enough passengers who would be willing to travel by airlines (this includes AC train travelers etc), provided supply side factors are favorable. Moved over to the Supply side. Started by looking at the operational efficiency, cost structure etc. We had some discussion around this and established that there is a lot of scope of improvement in this area (drew a close parallel to the South West airlines – thanks to Prashant Kale!) Next I started looking at the prices. To be more precise, are the airline tickets overpriced, underpriced or correctly priced? Prices can be determined either by : a) looking at the company’s cost str

b) looking at the passenger’s willingness to pay c) Price of substitutes – in this case train In this case option b) and c) made most sense, because cost is a function of utilization and utilization is function of price along with other factors. He was convinced with the argument. Looked at a typical passenger on Delhi -> Mumbai route. If he travels by train he would pay around Rs 1500 – 2000 (confirmed my assumption with him) depending upon train class, whereas for an air ticket he pays Rs 5000 on an average. If we consider that he saves 20 hrs on choosing flying vs train, then he pays a premium of around 3000 for 20 hrs. Hence, values his 1 hr at Rs 150 which is fairly less for a business passenger or even leisure passenger who stays in a five – star hotel at his tourist destination. Hence, the airlines seem to be underpriced. Rajiv - What is going on here? Why are they underpriced? Me - If we take a step back and go back to the time when air deccan and other low priced airlines came with dirt cheap prices, due to increasing competition to increase utilization they killed each other through price war and now the consumer expectation is set such that, we are unwilling to pay high for the airlines. Infact some 6 years ago we would be willing to pay Rs 6000 for an airlines ticket, now despite a yr on yr 66

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 inflation of 7-8%, we consider Rs 6000 to be a very high price to pay for a domestic air travel. Rajiv – What do you feel we can do about it? Me – Consolidation, is one option. Rajiv – They did try it i t through takeovers and all. What else? Me – May be a foreign player or foreign investment can help? Rajiv – Exactly, that’s what they are trying to, 49% FDI in airlines industry is an effort towards that. But how would that help? Me – Prices are all in the consumer’s mind! If we draw a parallel to medical tourism industry, consumers are willing to pay a higher price when they see foreigners (doctors or patients). Deep inside, we as Indian consumers still value a foreign brand better! Rajiv – Convinced! Loved talking to you. I can go on and on but I am running short of time. Any questions for me? Me – Rajiv, I don’t want to hold you up, you seem to running late, maybe we can just skip this? Rajiv – No please go ahead, it’s my obligation to answer all your questions. Me – As industries become mature, mature, they start their internal consulting practice, do you see that as a threat to consulting industry? He liked the question and answered comprehensively. What do you think went right/wrong?

I think, this was my best interview i nterview of the day! Just logically followed one step from the other. Didn’t worry about any framework and stayed composed throughout. Infact I enjoyed the discussion very much.


General awareness about about the current issues helps a lot. An open case like this enables you bring a rich analysis to the table, hence it works in your favor if you get a weird case! (atleast this is how it was in my case). Since, everyone around you is so well prepared with the cases and frameworks; a case like this gives you an opportunity to differentiate yourself. PI prep really helps – by the end of the day (generally when you are in the final interview round with “the firm”), you get so exhausted that it’s really tough to think everything on your feet. A well prepared PI helps set up an initial rapport and gives the confidence to do the case well. An initial rapport helps to get the interviewer on your stride in the first few mins. If you have a good sense of humor – do try to bring that up during the interview. It does help!  At the end of the day, every interviewer just sees whether you are a kind of person they would like to have on their project or not. Consider the interviewer interviewer as your peer and and try to have a very mature / intelligent conversation with him/her.

Outcome

Offer

67


Boston Consulting Group

68


Rahul Mangla

Company Name

The Boston Consulting Group

Interviewer Name

Shweta Bajpai

Interview Number



My first interview of the day and it started with a 30 min PI ! The interview started with the usual ice breaking question – Tell me something about yourself. After a brief discussion on my background, Shweta asked me why I was interested in consulting as a career. I drew a graph that I thought best conveyed what I wanted to say. The interviewer asked a number of clarifying questions on the graph. Tip: Drawing graphs etc. for PI questions is a high risk r isk strategy, since consultants are inherently comfortable with graphs, 2X2 matrices etc. You can expect a lot of questions. However, if you believe that a graph best conveys the idea you have in mind, then it could be a high return strategy as well. We then moved on to talking about my career goals, what motivates me and some resume based questions. Overall an engaging discussion that pretty much consumed 60% of the interview time. Tip: Cannot stress enough on having your story straight, particularly if you don’t have a typical consulting candidate profile. A good opening conversation never hurts. It helps set up good rapport with the interviewer and eats away time that could otherwise be spent on a grilling case  Finally, the interviewer realized that we had spent significant amount of time on PI, so we divided right into the case.

Case Type

Revenue expansion

Case Question

Your client is a manufacturer of blades that are used in turbines. The blades are made using a very specific kind of high durability steel. The client wants to double the revenues of the company. company.


1) Scoping: Using the framework described below (in the McK interviews), I attempted to gather more information on the company’s business and the problem itself. It turned out that the company company operated in a duopoly domestically domestically and also faced competition from imports. Further, there were no specific time constraints on achieving the target of 2X revenues. 2) Structure: Revenues are a simple function of pricing strategy and volume. As a probed further, it turned out that we didn’t have much control over pricing. Therefore, the only means to increase revenues was through increasing the volume two fold. Now, Volume = Market Share X Market Size This brings us again to the Ansoff matrix that can be used to cover all aspects of volume expansion exhaustively:

69


As described each quadrant, the interviewer was satisfied with the overall structure and then asked me to drill down into each quadrant – I must admit, I was a bit taken aback here, normally you would expect the interviewer to focus on one of the quadrants. 3) Analysis: As we dug in deep through each quadrant, I tried to come with ideas for Market penetration through differentiation (idea was shot down), New product development (not possible), exporting etc. I was running out of ideas, when the interviewer reminded me that I had not explored one the quadrants properly. It was the diversification quadrant, which is seldom the source of any useful solutions. In this case, it turned out that the company can use their expertise in dealing with high durability steel to manufacture other parts that require similar properties. 4) Synthesis: We covered a lot of options throughout the case interview that lasted about 20 mins. Tip: It helps in synthesis if you label key points throughout the case interview. I attempted to capture key recommendations first and then narrate in brief the reasons behind each recommendation recommendation.. The Interviewer then asked me, if I had any follow-up questions for her. I asked her on her field of work, which she intently answered. This was the longest interview of the day and lasted almost 50 mins in total. What do you think went right/wrong?

The long PI in the beginning helped. The conversation conversation was a good start to the day and and helped overcome any early morning jitters. I think I could have done a better job at wrapping up the case quickly as it seemed to be a fairly standard case.


When solving the case, keep the interviewer engaged and get buy-in on your structure.

Outcome


70


Name of Candidate

Rahul Mangla

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Ashish Iyer

Interview Number



My second interview of the day was arguably the shortest. Ashish has specific questions in mind both for the PI and the case. On the PI front, after inquiring about my background, I was again asked to justify why I wanted to do consulting and why BCG specifically. Same answers and the interviewer seemed satisfied with the response. We then started discussing the case

Case Type

Organization Structure

Case Question

An Indian client follows a functional structure and has recently bought a competitor in Dubai. Due to lack of integration between the parent and the acquired entity, the company is facing some problems. The functional structure leaves no ownership of the end business goals on the functional teams and this is hurting the overall business. What can be a better organization structure?


I was honestly not expecting a case on organization structure. I had no clue how to structure an org structure case  That said, Ashish made it very clear that he didn’t expect me to go through the problem like a traditional case. Instead I was asked: 1) Name the possible org structures that a firm can have. I named the ones I remembered but he said I was missing 5-6 of them! After some soul searching I could recall a few more. I wasn’t sure if the interviewer was satisfied with the response. 2) I was then asked to pick the top two that would be best for the organization and explain how I would evaluate the options. My answer – Create a scorecard listing key performance criteria for org structures (such as revenue impact, management bandwidth etc.), assign weights and evaluate all possible structures. I picked the matrix organization as the first choice and the divisional structure as the second choice. 3) Ideal Answer. I believe the model answer for this question would be: Evaluate all organization structures on the following axes:

2

1 f o e s a E

3

Effectiveness

Pick the option that lies in the top right quadrant. As simple as that. The case whole interview lasted for less than 20 mins. After which Ashish inquired if I had any queries for him. I asked him a question around the future of outsourcing in India given the increasing input costs (his area of work). What do you think went right/wrong?

I am not really sure. The interview was short and I honestly couldn’t gauge if I had solved the case satisfactorily or not. I could have come up with a better structure overall, but then the interview was quick and I scrambled to explain whatever came 71 first to my mind.

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Any tips for the future batch

You’ll see a variety Interview cases, pace, duration and the even th e interviewer style on the final day. It’s probably not worth mulling over your previous interview performance before stepping into another one. Two reason why: 1) It adds unnecessary stress 2) You’ll never really be able to guess how well or how bad you d id anyway.

Outcome

Moved to Round 2

Name of Candidate

Rahul Mangla

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Ravi Srivastava

Interview Number



Ravi is a partner at the firm and also leads the hiring for the India office. A pleasant conversationalist, he spent the first part of the interview in knowing more about me and my work at Microsoft. We discussed a bit about ISB and my experience in bschool. We then moved on to the case

Case Type

Market Share expansion

Case Question

The client is a national cement manufacturer and is looking to expand the company’s market share and revenue.


Given that a lot of cases hover around market share and revenue expansion, I would not go into the gory details of the very standard structure used for this problem. However, there was one interesting bit we discussed: Given that the case was about increasing market penetration, the problem came down to the age-old 4Ps problem (never use the word 4Ps in a case interview!). In the 4Ps to tweak: 1) 2) 3) 4)

Price - Cannot do much, is already competitive. Product – No differentiation possible, cement is pretty much a commodity Promotion – no scope here as well Place – Explore !

So the problem boiled down to expanding distribution. Here’s how I split up the problem:

Distribution

Get more dealers

Push

Sell more per dealer

Pull

I was asked to explore how to get more dealers. We can impact the distribution by: 1) Creating a pull – customers want our products and therefore more and more dealers want to stock our brand. This was not possible 2) Pushing the brand – Incentivize the dealers to stock our brands 72


Ravi asked me to explore the push strategy. I then started diving into possible solutions: 1) Better margins – not possible, the competition can also do the same. 2) Reduce dealer costs – A major costs for dealer are the cost of storage and stocking. By increasing their inventory turnover, we can reduce their overall costs. To increase turnover, you need to reduce inventory. But how? : Why is inventory maintained  Because of the lead time, the dealer needs to stock some units  Promise shorter lead times to reduce inventory requirements - Answer to the case. Tip: It really helps to be MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) in your structuring. You’ll be able to eliminate options and zero -in on the solution. What do you think went right/wrong?

Case interviews are good fun if your structures happen to fall in place  Was able to break the distribution problem and have something to recommend at the end of the interview.


Try and enjoy the process 

Outcome

Made an offer.

73

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Name

Himanshu Jain

Company Name


Interviewer Name:

Rohit Ramesh, Project Leader

Interview & Round Number



No PI question asked

Case Type:

Guesstimate

Case Question:

A company is planning to enter the auto car service market in India. You need to estimate the market size the company. Interviewer told me that ten years back there were 8lakh cars being sold. Every year the number of cars sold increase by 10%. The average life of a car was 10years.


I started by estimating the total number of cars. No of cars today = 8*(1.1^10). Then realized then that this was difficult to calculate in an interview. I knew t hat the number of cars will double in 7.2 years (72 rule). So approximated that presently the number of cars sold will be around 25Lakh. I then tried to estimate the cumulative number of these 10 years – and took a rough estimate of 1.8Crore (The interview did seem happy with this). Anyways, I proceeded and mentioned that cars will be serviced based on regular service (on time/Kms), accidents and special situations (engine break down). The interviewer again didn’t look happy. He asked me to give the total market size. I had just started calculating and then the interviewer stopped me and again asked for the total market size. I requested to give me some time to calculate. The interviewer stopped me. I believe that is was a kind of stress interview to check my nerves. 

What do you think went right/wrong in the interview?

Nothing went right. I still don’t understand why the interviewer stopped me. Probably, I didn’t understand the question well. The i nterview turned out to be a grueling experience for me.


I had just ruined the First interview of the D-DAY. But, my advice to you is to not let performance in any interview impact subsequent performances. Start every interview with a new slate. And bad performance in one interview in no way signifies that you were incapable, but it is also a function of the case type and the interviewer. Sometimes, interviewers act tough to check your nerves. Try not to be tentative when you speak. What worked for me - I quickly forgot what happened in BCG and gave my best to remaining interviews

Outcome


Name

Himanshu Jain

Company Name


Interviewer Name:

Ravi Shrivastava, Partner

Interview & Round Number



No PI question asked

Case Type:

Profitability 74

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Case Question:

A Cement company wants to reduce its cost.


A typical BCG case. I had done over 10 cement cases. The interviewer was nice and gave me time to explain things. Started by asking geography, customer, product, etc. Interviewer told me focus on cost. Made a value chain and tried to benchmark all costs components with the competitors. I found out that we are doing as well as the competition on all respect!! Then I picked the largest cost component - Raw materials. Interview told me that the company was using different coal qualities in different plants which had different efficiencies when used in each plant. Also these qualities A, B, C were available in limited quantities. I thought of giving some funda, and said that we can use linear optimization to reduce costs. The interviewer asked me to laydown the optimization model!! I wrote some model, which luckily turned out to be right.

What do you think went right/wrong in the interview?

Remembered DMOP quite well. Try to ensure that you understand the concept in detail, for which you are giving the funda. Otherwise, you might end up in soup.


Don’t panic when asked for complex problems such as optimization, utilization, scheduling. Revise operations and DMOP well before the interview.

Outcome

Interview 1, Round 3, but I was called somewhere else and co uldn’t return.

75


Samudra Dasgupta

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Yash Erande

Interview Number

Round 1 Interview 1


What questions do you have for me. Tell me about yourself.

Case Type

Organizational structure

Case Question

A retail bank is losing money. Help them.


It became clear during the discussion that there were a lot of operational inefficiencies. Analyzed it using People, Processes, Infrastructure framework. Basically poor use of physical space, sub-optimal workforce, poor IT – the bank was not being able to support the demand from customers.


First impressions make a big difference. He immediately took a liking and was very helpful all through the interview.


Smile and be nice, professional and confident

Outcome

Round 1 interview 2

Name of Candidate

Samudra Dasgupta

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Ramesh Jha

Interview Number

Round 1 Interview 2


No PI.

Case Type

Market Entry

Case Question

A global truck making company wants to enter India. Should they? How?


Completely quant case. You had to come up with the economic value to the customer for the current truck offerings in India (based on mileage, weight it can carry, etc) and then position yourself in such a way that your truck provides greater value.


Told me they did it exactly this way.


Beware of frameworks. Even though this was a market entry case, the normal frameworks were of no help.

Outcome

Moved to Round 2 (which they decided to hold immediately)

Name of Candidate

Samudra Dasgupta

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Ashish Iyer

Interview Number

Round 2 Interview 1 76

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Personal Interview Question

Not much PI.

Case Type

General

Case Question

4 telecom players (with different kitties) are bidding for 3G spectrum. How should ‘A’ bid?


He laid down the rules of the game. There were 4-5 rules. In that framework, you have to think of the optimal strategy. Unfortunately I don’t remember the rules in details but the solution was basically that you should have enough money to bid in the second round while making sure you definitely qualify in the first round.


I initially tried to employ DMOP but quickly backtracked seeing his wonderful expression. Then solved it using just normal reasoning – no frameworks.


Beware of frameworks.

Outcome

Made an offer.

77


Name of Candidate

Reshmi Ghosh

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

-

Interview Number



Started with a general chat-up about what my expectations from the day was etc. Then some standard questions- background, why BCG etc.

Case Type

-

Case Question

There is a company that installs transmission towers, which are typically made of hundreds of steel angles. The problem it faces is that whatever time it estimates for the completion of the project, it overruns it. The client wants your help in identifying the issue.


I asked him for some time to put my thoughts together to try and understand the problem better. I asked him the following set of questions initially. What range are the estimates of the time durations of the projects and by how much does the company typically overrun it? The time ranges from project to project but the approximate duration would be a year and generally it would be overrun by 50-100%. What are the steps involved in installation of a tower? The areas of the land where the towers would be set up are first identified. Then the towers are erected, with the steel angles reducing in size towards the top of the tower. After that, the wires are strung over the towers. Is the client only into installation of the towers or does it manufacture the angles and the wires too? The wires are bought from a vendor and kept as inventory, the steel angles are manufactured What are the steps in the manufacture of the steel angles? A team of designers first assesses the requirement and gives the designs (size, angle etc) to the manufacturing team. The manufacturing team then manufactures the angles. Steel is gotten from a vendor. How do the angles and the wires reach the construction site? Is the transportation owned or outsourced? Are there any delays? Logistics is outsourced. There are delays, but not significant. Where do the angles get stored once at the site? There are stored close to the installation sites in temporary storage areas. During the conversation I was drawing the process map, which turned out to be something like this:

78 I then told him that I would go step by step and see where delays could be happening.

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 I listed the following possibilities :      

Availability of raw materials for manufacture Delay by the design team Manufacturing delays (talked a bit about efficiency) Land preparation time Possibility of theft from the storage areas Tower setup delay

We had a discussion on all the points and then he said that the setup of the tower started off smoothly, but as the pieces became smaller, the time taken to erect the towers increased. I said the reasons for this could be:   

The smaller angles were not available when required It became more difficult to construct the tower progressively The labourers were incorrectly incentivized

I was able to eliminate the incentives and the difficulty level aspects through some discussion. So now it was the case of unavailability of the steel angles when required. The possibilities now came down to: The manufacture of smaller angles was not happening as required, logistical delays and theft. The latter two points were dismissed as they had already been talked about initially. So the point was that the manufacture of smaller steel angles was tardy. The possible issues now could be capacity or manpower issues Capacity: I asked if there were separate lines/capacities levels for different sizes of angles. He said no. I asked if capacity was enough. He replied yes. Then I asked a little more about the manufacturing details and was told that an angle takes the same time to manufacture, irrespective of the size. People: Since the discussion on capacity had not yielded anything, I told him that it was possible that the factory was not manufacturing smaller angles deliberately. He asked why that might be. I replied that possibly the incentives were not aligned, and they were paid on a per ton basis. Since a lighter and heavier angle took the same time to make, they could possibly be concentrating on manufacturing the heavier angles. He probed a little further and then said that that was actually the problem.


I took more time than was required to get to the part that the manufacturing mix was an issue. Once it was identified, he was happy about the fact that I identified that the incentives for employees were not aligned


Beyond the standard frameworks, many cases in which they cannot be applied get solved if you imagine the process from the start to end and explore all the nodes.

Outcome

Moved to the second interview.

Name of Candidate

Reshmi Ghosh

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Amitabh Mall

Interview Number


Personal Interview

Do not remember because nothing beyond standard questions. Just a 2 minute chat 79

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Question

up. As with the first interviewer, Amitabh also put me at ease straightaway.

Case Type

Profitability

Case Question

A fiber manufacturer wants to increase its profitability. Help.


I asked first if there was any specific reason for this objective and that if there was any quantitative target in mind. He said that the management felt that profits could be increased, and no, they had no specific target in mind. It also emerged through discussions that the their volumes were growing year on year. I started off by asking about the operations of the firm. He told me that that the firm had 2 factories in India and Malaysia. The Indian factory catered to the India and China, and the Malaysian factory was used for export to U.S and Europe. Further, it was told that China accounted for a major part of revenues. I then used Profits= Revenues –Costs He didn’t have any specific guideline as to target Revenues or costs first. So I started with the revenue side and through discussions it was revealed that neither the price nor the volumes could be really altered much.

In the costs part, I listed down the various cost heads. Describing the more important ones here: Raw materials- The raw material used was extracted from the bark of some tree, plantations of which were in Malaysia. So the raw material was sourced from Malaysia for both the factories. This also brought into picture the inbound duties under the cost heads. Manufacture and Export- I asked about the efficiency and utilization of the plants, and was told that they were as per industry standards. Through some discussion it emerged that one major cost was in transporting the fiber from the factory to the destination markets. Then, considering that the existing factories were fully utilized and that the volumes were also growing, I suggested that the client could consider opening up a factory in China. He asked me to go through the process of setting up a factory there and see if it would be advantageous. I went through the process and listed the costs- land acquisition/leasing/renting, taxes and duties , transportation infrastructure, labor cost and availability, utilities cost and availability. I also talked about some non-cost issues like the ease of doing business there, labor issues etc. He seemed fine with it and then showed me a table comparing each of these costs in India and China, and asked me to calculate the cost of per unit of manufacture. It was a fairly straightforward calculation. What do you think went right/wrong?

I think it went well overall.


Moved to the second round

Name of Candidate

Reshmi Ghosh

Company Name

BCG

80

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Interviewer Name Interview Number

Interview 3


This round I think was more of a PI than a case round. He told me upfront that he expected to have more of a conversation and know more about me, beyond the answers that I had prepared. He asked about my background. Then he asked why I really wanted to join BCG, who all I knew I the firm, how I knew them etc. We then talked a while about my previous work experience; and more than the professional learning he was more interested in knowing about the personal learning I had. He then asked what I thought was the biggest change as a person that my work experience had brought about in me. The next question was about what was the most important to me in life. Overall, the questions not the types you could really prepare for, I more than once I told him that I needed a few moments to get my thoughts in place.

Case Type

Market Entry

Case Question

An automobile manufacturer wants to enter India.


Very standard case. No surprises at all.


I think I was able to have a good conversation with Yashraj in the P.I round.


It helps to be spontaneous because by that time in the day even he interviewer is tired of hearing standard rehearsed answers.

Outcome

Moved to the 4th interview

Name of Candidate

Reshmi Ghosh

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name Interview Number

Interview 4


No P.I. Moved to the case straight away.

Case Type

Profitability

Case Question

A cement manufacturer wants to increase its profitability. Help.


This was the 10th interview and I was pretty much spent. This case was my worst one of the day, and a major part of the case is a blur; please excuse  Since it was cement manufacturer case, my first reaction was- how different can it be from the numerous cement manufacturer cases that abound all over the case books. I started with all the common questions, why does he want to increase, market share, regions of operation, factories, utilization, distribution, competition etc. Not much seemed to be an issue. As far as distribution is concerned, it emerged that most retailers stock a lot of regional brands, and very few stock more than one or two national brands. Some more discussion later, it emerged that the retailers did not want to stock national brands. He asked why that could be the case. We talked a while about ROI, and then he asked what a retailer’s investment was. I replied that the outlet itself was his investment. Some more time later, it emerged that the reason that a retailer would not be willing 81

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 to stock national brands is because he has to carry more inventory in the case of national brands because there frequency of replenishment is not as high as that of regional players. What do you think went right/wrong?

Was quite disappointed in this one. The only thing that probably saved me was that I at least touched upon a wide variety of things that could possibly go wrong.


Closer to the interview date, have marathon case sessions. At least here I had three interviews that happened in the earlier part of the day and went off well. You do not want to be in position that you mess up the first interview with a firm due to exhaustion.

Outcome

Made an offer

82


Rahul Ramaraju

Interviewing with (consulting firm)


Name of the Interviewer

Ramesh Jha, Principal

Interview Number


Personal Interview Questions

First interview with BCG and 8th for the day. Tell me about yourself? Key achievements at ITC?

Case Question

A heavy vehicle manufacturer is planning to enter Indian market, wants to analyze whether he can compete in Indian market.

Case Type

Twisted Market Entry

Narration of the case

It was a twisted version of the normal market entry case. The interviewer asked me to leave the market attractiveness (market sizing, profitability, growth, competition etc) for the time being. Interviewer asked me what are all the factors that would make the firm competitive in the market. Listed down the following parameters: 1. Price 2. Product Features a. All basic features that I could think b. Life time value to the consumer i. Base cost ii. Maintenance/ Service/ Spares iii. Fuel efficiency iv. Resale value 3. Financing 4. Distribution 5. Awareness (Brand Building) The interviewer then told me that on price front we are competitive and our features are superior to competition but still the product is not selling. No problem with distribution, people are aware of the brand. Problem was identified in financing, the banks are not ready to loan for our truck, and they are willing to do for competitors like Tata, Ashok Leyland etc. What could be the reasons? 1. Bank does not believe in the quality of the trucks 2. Bank believes that we are not going to stick around for long, so doubts on services and maintenance 3. Other players have long time relationship What can be done to improve financing: 1. Send credible signals to the bank a. Warranty b. Buy back guarantee for old trucks 2. Incentivize the banks for loans, give higher commissions to the loan agents. 3. Have your truck displayed in exhibitions, expos, increase test drives and trials. Consumers make their choice basis life time value, what can improve this: 1. Listed all parameters I had mentioned earlier 83

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 2. Missed out a critical point: More turnaround ( If the vehicle can move at a faster speed, I would be able to complete more number of trips so ROA goes up) Case ended here. What do you think went right for you in the interview?

Don’t know, I guess I laid the structure right

What do you think went wrong in this interview?

I felt I missed critical points that would have differentiated me in most cases. After 7 interviews my mind was just switched off.

Any tips for the future batch?

Practice a lot of variety of cases. Last day you really don’t think and do cases. It’s just that you apply stuff you have practiced before. After a base level of work basis the practice, the interviewer guides you a lot

Outcome

Everyone had 2 interviews in R1, so was moved to 2nd

Name

Rahul Ramaraju




Shweta Bajpai, Team Lead

Interview Number



Second interview with BCG and 9th for the day. Tell me about yourself? What do you do in your free time?

Case Question

A casting company wants to increase its revenue base from 100 Cr to 1000 Cr in 5 yrs maintaining an EBITDA of 20%.

Case Type

Growth


Was given the following information when asked:   



Client based out of India Sells castings to turbine manufacturers Castings sold by client are then fixed to turbines and then sold to power plants by customer Only 2 players manufacture castings for turbines in India both are at 100 Cr. (Key fact)

Stuck to basic framework of internal-external. 1. Internal - Growth from existing business a. Are we covering all geographies in India? – Yes b. Can we sell castings to other customers apart from turbine manufacturers? – Yes but EBITDA will go below 20% c. Can we explore new geographies? – Yes 2. External – Growth from other businesses a. Vertical Integration b. Diversified business Details in the various heads: Existing Business: Indian Market 84

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 1. Market is growing at 10%. So we would be 1.6 times in 5 yrs. + 60 Cr from base. 2. I started with market size in India is 200 Cr, get an immediate reply, what makes you think so? I said we are 100 Cr and the second player is 100 Cr. Are we missing something? 3. Huge imports exist. Did some numbers and came out with imports to be 400 Cr. So the market was 600 Cr. 4. Why imports? a. Cost b. Quality c. Service – Lead times etc. 5. There is a difference in quality. There is a specialized casting involved which requires CNC. CNC is expensive and requires trained manpower to handle. 6. Gave some stuff on how to get trained manpower and CAPEX was not a problem. 7. Install CNC, and said that max 50% of import market can be captures. So its + 200 Cr from base. Geographic Expansion: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Where do you think new turbines would be required? Developing countries. Information provided: Main markets are China, Russia, Brazil and Africa. Ruled out Brazil – Told that distances are huge China ruled out – We cannot be competitive on prices with Chinese manufacturers. 6. Russia – catered by china so rule out 7. Africa – potential scope - + 200 Cr External – Vertical Integration 1. Can we integrate into turbine manufacturing? Yes 2. Key competitors are GE, Alstom, Siemens and BHEL 3. I mentioned that it would be tough to compete with brands. Why would customers buy our turbines? 4. Interviewer prompted, we have a sister company which is into EPC, so what? 5. We can pitch our turbine as a part of the entire package. 6. What’s the turbine market? 7. 10 X of casting – 6000 Cr. Growth of 10% 8. So would reach 9000 Cr in 5 yrs. 9. I mentioned because of global players in turbine, we would be able to capture a max of 5-6% of market share. Number was accepted. 10. + 450 Cr. What do you think went right for you in the interview?

PI was good. I chipped in towards the end with some questions on BCG. Interviewer was great, and made the interview really stress free.


It was fine



Outcome

Shortlisted for R2

85


Rahul Ramaraju




Avartan Bokil, Principal

Interview Number



Interview number 11 for the day. Best of the day

Case Question

You have been in Bangalore let’s do a case on Bangalore. Two car dealers, sell similar cars. One located in MG road and other at Whitefield. MG road one has 80% MS and our client (white field one) has 20%. Client wants to improve market share

Case Type

Market Share


Started out with the term 2 framework.

How has the day been so far? – It was quite visible on my face, so no smart answers came off.

Market Share = Share of Voice x Share of Mind x Share of Distribution. Share of Voice: 

Promotions/ Awareness – Same for both

Share of Mind:    

Product – Car is the same X Price – Same X Services and Maintenance – Same X Sales Force – Better for MG Road o Quality o Quantity

Here I laid down the buyer decision cycle. Buyer Decision = Function( Search, Awareness, In store search, Sales force, After sale services, Satisfaction) Share of Distribution: 

Ease of access to White Field was deterrent

Suggested ways of improvement: Take test drive requests on phone, go to customer’s residence for trials, Servicing : Pick up and drop facility. This part got over here. Part 2: Direction of interview changed, assume both the showrooms have equal foot fall and equal conversion rate. Why do share of market differ? 



Thought for some time, is there a section that does not come to showroom to buy a vehicle??? Came up with following heads: o Travel agents/ Cab services o Hotels o Corporate o Government Target them for higher share.

Part 3: Again I the white field showroom did not exist, you had 2 options to set up a green field showroom what would you do. Case 1: No new showroom comes up in future 86




If I set up the show room in MG road o Share = 50%*(WF +MG) (US), 50% 50%*(WF +MG) (Them) If I set up a show room in White field o Share = MG(Them), WF(Us)

I will set up the show room in whitefield if in future, WF > 50%*(WF + MG) Case 2: New showroom comes up in future at Whitefield 



If I set up the show room in MG road o Share = 50%*MG(US), 50%*MG(Them) If I set up a show room in White field, I will get 50% of WF

So decision must be based on future market at White Field and also on the possibility of 3rd entrant coming in. Case went on for 40 min. After this Avartan really opened up and we started discussing on BCG’s work and his work. Discussion went on for 45 min. So in total 1.5 hr session. What do you think went right for you in the interview?

Everything


Not much



Outcome

Asked to wait for the last round

Name

Rahul Ramaraju




Amitabh Mall

Interview Number



Interview number 12 for the day

Case Question

A fiber manufacturing firm is facing loss in revenues.

Case Type

Revenue


Market share world-wide is – 25%, Market shares have been increasing. Client based out of India.

No PI

Derived that industry is in declining. Asked for information on uses of the fiber? It is sold to yarn manufacturers, who convert it into cloth. This fiber is known for comfort. So decrease in revenue can be because of: 

Consumer preference changes 87


Substitutes come up

To this the interviewer replied yes, polyester has come up which is cheaper. The yarn manufacturers have started blending our fiber with polyester to lower costs. Asked for the competition and the geographic distribution, following information provided: Our Firm

Major

Others

Competition

firms

25% MS

20% MS

15% MS each

India,

Europe

SE

Europe,

3

30 Firms

40% MS overall

Asia, China

Europe

Indonesia Mod Profits

Mod Profit

Losses

Good Profit

Costs Mod.

Costs Mod

Costs High

Costs Low

Further information given when asked for, Market is declining in Europe and is expected to remain constant elsewhere. After beating around the bush for 3-4 min, came up with a suggestion of acquiring a firm in China and growing business in China. Case ended. What do you think went right for you in the interview? What do you think went wrong in this interview?

Took time when the world wide data was given.



Outcome

Offer Made.

88


Shreerang Godbole

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Avartan Bokil, Principal

Interview Number

R1-Int -1


General Stuff.. likes-dislikes etc

Case Type

Market Entry

Case Question

An international automobile retail company is looking at entering India. Your advice?


Asked the usual questions on the 5C’s. Then got dow n to the revenue sources. So they are sales and after-sales service. We need to look at the cost structure of opening up a showroom and see what are the break-even quantities and if this actually possible.

He nodded and we then straight went to the frequency of service in a year. How many cars will be sold per month and how many actual servicing opportunities will I get. Essential point was that the money was to be made in the after-sales and was it lucrative enough to open up a business


First interview of the day.. Butterflies in my stomach… Made a few errors here and there.. but overall good.


Just be yourself…. And say what you really mean….

Outcome

Moved to R1-Int2

Name of Candidate

Shreerang Godbole

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Burjor Dadachanji, Principal

Interview Number

R1-Int -2



Case Type

Banking

Case Question

The RBI has announced that it will be awarding banking licenses. You are the head of a NBFC. How does this help you?


Well, first understand what the banking business is all about. General stuff about customers, business etc.. who are the current customers? What services do they take from me. Are there any other financial services for which they use other banks.. They do.. so fine there are some customer needs which I am not able to meet because of higher interest costs. Why higher interest costs? Because I have to borrow capital from the market at a higher rate of interest? Why do I have to borrow capital? Because I do not take deposits? And this exactly how the new regulation will help me… So I drew the Asset and Liabilities for any normal Bank and for a NBFC. From there 89

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 I looked at the Income statement of the bank. The crux of the matter was that accepting deposits would help me to lower by net interest costs and actually expand my business. What do you think went right/wrong?

Went well.


I think practice helped. During my preparation I had developed this technique of looking at the Balance Sheet and Income Statement of businesses for improving profitability. This helped over here !!!!

Outcome

Moved to R2

Name of Candidate

Shreerang Godbole

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Ramesh Jha, Principal

Interview Number

R2



Case Type

Marketing

Case Question

You are a foreign truck manufacturer and want to enter the Indian market. How will you market your product?


Used Marketing 101! Used the concept of who is the Buyer, Who is the user and who is the Key Influencers. For each identify ‘what is in it for him’ from the sale of the product. Buyer – Total Cost of Ownership (Fleet Owners) User – Truck Driver (Reliability) Influencers – Salesman (Incentive Schemes) I do not remember the details of each but TCO would look at cost of purchase + running cost –salvage value. Analyze each dimension.


Went well.


Remember the correct jargons… I could see a nod when I said Total Cost of Ownership , Influencer etc..

Outcome

Moved to R2-Int2

Name of Candidate

Shreerang Godbole

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Ashish Iyer, Partner

Interview Number

R2

Personal Interview

General Stuff.. likes-dislikes etc 90

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Question Case Type

Organization Structure

Case Question

You are a Indian conglomerate and have made acquisitions in Thailand and Middle East. What structure will you put in place to integrate the organization


MGTO –  General theory laid out – Functional, Matrix, Divisional Pros and Cons of each What is the business objective? Matches each against the business objective. Ranked all of them… And done….


Went well.


Offer

91


Ankur Bhageria

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Yashraj Erande

Interview Number

R1 – Interview 1


Yash and I had interacted a fair bit before placements so I shared a good rapport with him right from the outset. He asked me about what has (and hasn’t) changed about me in last 4 years, compared to when I was graduating from undergrad – it was a good question, something I hadn’t prepared for but was able to do a fairly good job of it and he connected pretty well with the answer himself. After having chatted for a while, we began the case.

Case Type

“Other”

Case Question

A Indian bank’s CASA (current and savings account) deposits have gone down from 23% to 17% in the last couple of years and the bank has asked us to help fix the issue.


I suspect I got this case given that Yash knew I came from a fin svcs. background and also since it was a case that he was currently doing. This was a case where no regular frameworks could be applied. It required plain logical first principles thinking. And that’s what I didn’t do. Problem definition: I spent the initial few minutes understanding the case specifics – what is CASA, who are the customers, what is the company’s business model etc. Reply: It was an Indian bank that served primarily the SME sector, as well as HNIs etc. CA = Current Account deposits i.e. liquid short-term deposits from corporate (think salaries and additional cash on balance sheet of corporate). SA = Savings accounts of retail customers like you and me. Structuring: This is where I was lost. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how I can structure this problem. I started with jotting down the standard 5Cs and Product. Me: I asked about the Company, Competitors and Customers. Yash: The bank primarily catered to SMEs, HNIs and Retail customers who held deposits with them. The CASA primarily came from SMEs and retail customers’ savings accounts, remaining deposits came from Fixed deposits and long terms deposits. Competitors typically had 40% CASA. Analysis: Me: I then spent a couple of minutes thinking about the issue, and then decided to explore the deposits issue further – I asked whether CASA going down was a company related issue or industry wide phenomenon… Yash: Mentioned that it was a good question and CA was going down industrywide and SA was actually growing for other banks. (Here I got a bit of confidence after feeling my way around for a while.) I decided to break up the problem into CA and SA and tackle them separately. I was asked why do I think CA is reducing. I suggested CA was a result of cash balance on the balance sheets of corporate clients of the bank, and as a result of weakness in the market – it’s possible that the cash balance of the firms is going down. This reduced cash balance could be either due to reduction in assets overall or stable assets but diversion of funds from cash to other assets. He said it was the former. Then I looked at SA – The savings account deposits for the client were reducing while the industry SA was growing. This was a simpler problem to tackle – I broke it down as 92

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 per a revenue framework: Asked if number of customers were reducing or revenue / customer was going down. Yash: no. of customers have been reducing, rev/customer has been steady. Me: Great. So let’s look deeper into why the customers prefer other banks to our client’s. What are the drivers behind a customer’s choice? Using the 3Ps, I listed a few things like – interest rates, quality of service (product related), branch vicinity to the customers, strength of salesforce (distribution/channel related), brand recall/perception of the bank, marketing efforts (promotion/marketing related). I decided to tackle the channel issue first – which geographies is the bank present it, which geographies are attractive and if there’s a mismatch. Yash: That’s correct. The bank’s branch network is sparse and not catering to the high growth areas. Great. The case ended here. What do you think went right/wrong?

Wrong – very shaky start. Was a bit lost on how to tackle the problem initially. Started with the wrong approach, then midway realized what needs to be done. Was a bit nervous since it was the first interview of the day. Right – Great rapport built with Yash right from the beginning (even before d-day). That helped a bit. Keeping MECE in mind helped. Picturing yourself as the client often helps as well. Regaining composure obviously helped.


Basic first principles approach helped here. Don’t try to force fit frameworks in such cases – it doesn’t help. Listen to every word of the problem statement -understand it very well, and then tackle issues from there on. Always be MECE. For e.g. it was important to break the problem into logical MECE portions here – CA and SA, then within CA – industrywide or company specific issue etc. Most importantly stay calm… most people lose the game due to tension on d -day. I almost did as well.

Outcome

Moved to next round

Name of Candidate

Ankur Bhageria

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Ramesh Jha

Interview Number

R1 – Interview 2


Directly started with the case. Basic 5 min chat at the end. Asked Deepak about the case – what happened in reality etc. Also since he specialized in FMCG practice, had a chat with him on FDI in retail in India and how it will change the industry dynamics.

Case Type

Market entry

Case Question

Global leader in truck manufacturer wants to enter India – what should it do? This case was not so much about evaluating whether to enter India or not. It revolved more around how should the company set up its India operations. What should it do now once it has taken the decision to enter the market.


Again, there wasn’t a typical market entry framework that could be applied but a simple focus on the 5Cs worked for me. Specifically I decided to focus on Customer, Company, Competitors first, and then look at Context and collaborators /partners if needed. Also, given that this was a market entry issue, an STP analysis of sorts would be needed here.

93

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Me: Can you tell me a little more about why the company is looking to enter the Indian market? What is its objective or goals? Ramesh: The company finds India to be a large and attractive market and is looking to set up a profitable operation in India. Me: What kind of offering does the company have? What kind of customers does it serve globally? Ramesh: The company has a fleet of trucks that it manufactures and serves primarily logistics companies or other large businesses who have their inhouse logistics Me: Interesting. So what we need to understand now is what do these logistics companies look for when making a purchasing decision? Why would they pick our client’s offering over another local Ind ian competitor? What are the drivers behind their purchase decision? Ramesh: Fair point. So can you identify what these drivers might be? Me: Sure – So as a logistics company some of the purchase drivers would be – Costs, performance (reliability/ mileage, capacity, maintenance costs etc.), resale value, after sales service, brand/reputation, availability and delivery time, cost of switching from existing vendor. I emphasized that given that we’re dealing with Indian customers, price and value would play a dominant role. Ramesh: I agree. So how can our client market its offering to its customers knowing these factors. Keep in mind it’s the global leader in truck manufacturing. Me: Sure. Given that our client is a global leader, what are its competitive advantages vs its competitors? Ramesh: What do you think they are? Me: Perhaps they have superior product offering in terms of technology, performance, larger array of products, better pricing due to economies of scope and scale? Ramesh: Correct. Me: So in that case, our client’s value proposition should focus on total cost of ownership to the customer since all above factors would contribute to potentially a lower cost of ownership. Ramesh: Good point. How would you calculate the total cost of ownership? Me: Sure. I’d factor in number of trucks required (could be lesser in case of higher capacity), price per truck, mileage of truck, performance/speed (which may reduce delivery times and hence factor in opportunity cost of time or value of faster delivery), maintenance costs over the life of ownership, financing costs, if any, and resale value of truck. Ramesh: Great. That’s fairly comprehensive. In what other way can our client differentiate itself assuming competitors match our client on the above factors? In other words, what competitive advantages can it leverage or look to create to sustain itself in this market? Me: (I took a couple of minutes to think about it). I mentioned that it could think of differentiating itself on after sales service or even better financing options, however I added that it would be difficult to sell this value proposition. Ramesh agreed. I realized that I’ll have to come up with some creative solutions here. After thinking for another minute, I suggested that the client can leverage its global operations and size. Assuming it will be serving large businesses (logistic cos and industry), a significant portion of them would have global operations and it could use its existing relationships with them in other parts of the world to strike deals in India. Further, it could offer much better prices if the customers purchase their fleet across countries from our 94

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 client (bulk order concept). Lastly, given that our client is the largest truck manufacturer, there would be very few competitors who can provide a similar variety in types of trucks. So like Boeing that sells a fleet of aircrafts to its customers, our client could do the same and offer end to end solutions for all the customer needs. Ramesh nodded in agreement. He seemed to appreciate the ideas. We ended the case here. What do you think went right/wrong?

Pretty much nothing went wrong. Everything went smooth,


Using examples from other industries / or cases you’ve done in b -school helps a lot. The Boeing example added that extra punch in case analysis. Always think of what unique insight you can add/bring to the table over and above the regular analysis. That ‘wow’ factor in every case.

Outcome

Moved to next round

Name of Candidate

Ankur Bhageria

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Amitabh Mall

Interview Number

R2 – Interview 1


Amitabh was by far the friendliest interviewer anyone can have. Struck a great rapport with him right from the get go. We discussed a bit on an initiative that I headed at ISB – Perspectives@ISB.

Case Type

Profitability / Expansion

Case Question

Textile manufacturer has approached BCG to improve its profitability. How would you go about helping them achieve it?


This case was a deceptively tricky one in nature. On the face of It, it seemed like a straightforward profitability framework of Revenue – cost. However, it turned out to be a market entry case.

Me: Could you please tell me a bit more about the client and its business. What geographies does it operate in? AM: Sure. Our client is a major supplier to apparel companies. It has global operations and is present across 40 countries. Me: Okay. What has been the company’s profitability in the la st few years? Has it been deteriorating / steady or increasing? How does it compare to the industry growth? AM: Overall, its profitability has been increasing at a modest rate, in line with the industry. Me: Alright, so does it have any target in mind? What is its objective? AM: The company basically isn’t satisfied with its current profitability and feels it can do better than the market. Me: Okay. So given that it has global operations, I’d l ike to understand its largest geographies of operation. Where does it derive most of its profits from? What has been the profitability trend in each of these? AM: The company’s largest segments are China, Malaysia and India in terms of profits. The company’s been doing well in China with 10% profitability, Malaysia h as been declining and is currently 5%, while India has been steady at 8%. 95

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Me: At this point we can think of two ways of improving profitability – either by identifying new high growth and high profitability markets or improving operations in existing markets. Would you like me to look at its existing operations first? AM: Sure lets analyze the company’s existing markets. Me: Great. Given that the Company’s Malaysian market has been underperforming, let’s try to diagnose that first and see if we can improve profitability there. Does that sound fair? AM: Yes. Me: Okay. So can you tell me why has the profitability been declining here – has the revenue per unit dropped or the cost per unit gone up? AM: The company’s been facing increasing competition from local players who’s cost structures are lower than that of our client’s. (At this point he showed be a slide on his laptop which had the cost structures of the client and the local competition) (amount in $) Units sold

Client

Competition

1,40,000

1,00,000

COGS

28,00,000

17,00,000

SG&A

20,00,000

13,00,000

Interest expenses

2,00,000

3,20,000

Other expenses

1,00,000

50,000

Me: The COGS for our client seems to be much higher than that of the local competition. I’d like to delve deeper into the components of COG S to see where the difference lies. (At this point he showed me the below table)

COGS / unit

Client

Competition

Raw material

4.00

6.00

Manufacturing

9.00

11.00

Transportation/delivery

7.00

-

Me: If we’re incurring transportation costs and the competition isn’t, this seems to imply that our client isn’t sourcing/manufacturing locally in Malaysia, rather importing its raw materials or finished goods? AM: That’s true. The manufacturing is being done in India due lower labour costs and cheaper available raw materials. Me: Right, however it seems that that advantage is being lost due to the transportation costs. AM: So what do you suggest the client do? Me: I would explore opening a manufacturing plant in Malaysia itself in order to save on the transportation costs. However, there would be considerations even in this move – we would need to see whether the raw material and manufacturing costs will be the same for our client as it is for the local players. It’s possible that they get better prices due to their local relationships. Further, more importantly, we would need to do a cost/benefit analysis of opening a new plant in Malaysia to the transportation costs incurred.

96

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 AM: Great. And how would we do that? Me: Perhaps take depreciation as a proxy for the annual costs and compare it to the annual transportation costs, or calculate the PV of transportation costs over the life of the plant and compare it to the investment required. AM: Great. That’s pretty much how we analyzed the case ourselves. What do you think went right/wrong?

Right: The initial segmentation was very crucial. From starting with an overall profitability issue to arriving at the analysis of cost structure of Malaysian business was the key aspect in the case. Rest of it was straight forward. Also got the calculations right at first go. Further, identifying the tradeoffs with setting up a plant in Malaysia was also crucial to the analysis Wrong: Nothing much.


Problem scoping and problem definition is supremely critical. This entire case was based on that. Asking the right questions is supremely crucial. Never forget to segment the business – either by customer / product / geography / channel etc. Also, don’t be in a hurry to solve any problem. Take your time and think through everything before saying it. Don’t jump to analysis before defining the true problem which in this case was high cost structure of Malaysian operations (and not company profitability).

Outcome

Moved to next round

Name of Candidate

Ankur Bhageria

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Avartan Bokil

Interview Number

R2 – Interview 2 (My 8th interview of the day)


No real questions from his end. I struck up a conversation on the Indian Banking sector based on a newspaper article I read by a BCG partner earlier that week. We both came from financial services background so it was easy to have a chat on the topic. I had done my homework on the sector expecting such a discussion on interview day. We chatted for about 15 mins

Case Type

Market share

Case Question

Since I was from Mumbai, Avartan took an example of an auto dealership in Mumbai looking to increase its market share. We needed to advise them on a strategy for this.


So we began the case with Avartan asking me how can we tackle the issue of increasing revenues and hence market share of our client dealership. We had a short discussion on the factors we need to look into and how we should approach the problem. I mentioned that in order to increase revenues, we need to understand competition and customers. He mentioned that for simplicity sake let’s assume there’s one other dealership at the tip of South Mumbai at Nariman Point and our client is located in the centre of the city. Me: Ok. So now I’d look at the factors customers take into consideration when buying cars from a dealership. AB: What factors can you think of? Me: Well, location would be a major factor, Price of cars wouldn’t vary much and that’s not lever we must really pull anyway, dealership service, customer experience at the dealership, servicing center costs associated with dealership, parts and accessories 97

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 prices would also be another consideration. AB: Sure. So let’s assume everything else to be the same and location is something our client needs to decide on, given that it plays a big role. How should our client decide where to open his dealership. Assume that their current dealership in Mahim doesn’t exist. Me: Location would depend on the demographics of the various areas in the city… AB: Let’s assume that the customers are uniformly spread out between Nariman point and Bandra. Lets also assume that these locations are the two ends of the city. Me: (I drew a rectangle and positioned the competitor at one end of it). Let’s start with the assumption that we’re at the other end. In this case the market will be equally divided and we will have 50% market share. But we can do better if we move towards the competitor’s dealership since we’d acquire a ll customers from Bandra upto the dealership, plus we’d split the remaining market between the c lient dealership and competitor. (Unfortunately can’t recreate the drawing here – easier to explain through that). Finally there’d be a location on the map beyo nd which the dealership will be considered “too close” to the competitor in a way that location by itself wouldn’t provide any advantages to our client. The customers from Bandra end to Nariman Point would consider both dealerships to be in the same area and would become location agnostic. AB: Yes. So what is that ideal point where our client should locate his dealership in order to gain maximum market share? Me: Let’s assume that customers within a distance of X kms radius of a dealership will by default choose that dealership for purchase. (here I struggled a bit to come up with the optimum location for the dealership. I had the logic right and I was hovering around the answer but I wasn’t being able to arrive at a definitive answer. However the good thing was that Avartan had become quite engrossed in the problem himself and was solving the same problem on a piece of paper himself, so we kept discussing and exchanging notes). Me: Also customers between the two dealerships would always be equally divided between the two, irrespective of the distance between them. AB: Right. Me: So our client should locate 2X Kms away from competitor. AB: Are you sure it’ll be 2X? Me: (I relooked at my analysis and after struggling for another few minutes, I revised my answer). If X km is the threshold for customers to begin considering other dealerships, then anything less than X kilometers between dealerships is considered “too close” and the customers from Bandra upto client’s dealership become location agnostic and the market will be equally shared again. Hence the ideal location would be X km away from competitor’s Nariman Point dealership. AB: Yes. That’s right. In fact this is a real case study and a lot of auto dealers actually carry out this analysis when selecting locations. The case ended here What do you think went right/wrong?

Right: I felt I was pretty calm and composed throughout the interview, even when I struggled towards the end. Also, we had a decent interaction at the start of the interview and we built a decent rapport. Wrong: I couldn’t arrive at the answer that he was looking for, and even made a wrong estimate (2X kms). In hindsight, I should’ve cracked this, it wasn’t too difficult, but in

98

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 the interview setting probably didn’t strike me)


It’s okay to make mistakes in the interview as long as you don’t get flustered and lose your composure. Temperament under pressure is as important as problem solving ability. A lot of talented people in our batch lost out because of lack of composure on d-day.

Outcome

This was the last of the mandated 4 rounds. Was awaiting results after this.

Name of Candidate

Ankur Bhageria

Company Name

BCG

Interviewer Name

Ashish Iyer

Interview Number

R3 (My 9th interview of the day)


(This was my final interview and probably the make or break one given that I was interviewing with Ashish Iyer who makes the final call with recruiting candidates.) If there was one person who could pull off a poker face – it was Ashish. I entered the room and he seemed exhausted from the day and very uninterested. There were no PI questions from his end. We jumped straight into the case. At the end of the case I asked him a couple questions on BCG’s brand. From whatever I had learnt about all the firms, I felt BCG had the best culture by far. I mentioned this to Ashish – I said that BCG scores well on all dimensions versus its major competitors except on brand – which is important in attracting not just clients but talented prospective employees. And research is one way to push that brand in the public domain. So my question to him was – Does BCG identify that as a channel to strengthen its brand? For e.g. BCG perspectives is still some way behind McK quarterly in terms of publishing research. What were his thoughts on that. He responded in agreement and explained their philosophy. We had a bit of a discussion on that, but that was it.

Case Type

Game theory

Case Question

Our client is participating in 3G auctions. There are six circles up for auction and 4 players participating (including our client). We have to advise them on an optimal strategy to acquire maximum circles and the most preferred circles. Our client (company A) has 3K Cr corpus, B has 3K Cr, C and D have 1K Cr each. The six circles up for auction are Mumbai (reserve price 1K Cr), Delhi (reserve price 1K Cr), Karnataka (400 cr), Punjab (400 Cr), Gujrat (200 Cr) and Maharashtra (200 cr). Our client’s mandate is to win as many as they can in the order of priority stated. Rules of the game: If there’s only one bidder and bid lower than reserve price => gets circle

Multiple bidders – If all bid below reserve price => Highest bid wins Multiple bidders – If someone bids atleast the reserve price, irrespective of higher bids, that firm moves to round 2 of bidding. In round 2, all bids have to be higher than reserve price, and the highest bidder wins Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible

This was the most testing case of all and it came at the fag end of t he day. I was fairly exhausted mentally but knew that this was the make or break case for me. So I mustered up some resolve and began.

I started off by making some mental notes and saying them out loud just so that Ashish knew how I was thinking about the problem. My approach was to analyze this auction 99

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 game from each player’s point of view in order to evaluate its optimal or dominant strategy. I noted:

1. C & D just had a corpus of 1K cr, which meant that if they went for Mumbai or Delhi, they’d have to spend all the ir money on 1 circle and given that A & B had 3Kcr, C&D would probably lose out in Round 2 of bidding anyway. So their optimal strategy would be to acquire the cheaper circles. 2. A & B would realize this as well and given their deeper pockets, their strategy would be move the bidding to round 2 for as many circles as possible. Hence they would bid the reserve price for the top 5 circles. 3. C & D would not bid for Mumbai or Delhi. Rather, their strategy would be to submit minimum bids for the remaining circles so that they can play the round 2 bidding game. Given that A & B would be least interested in Mah circle (last in terms of attractiveness as stated above), both of them would bid for Mah, and 2 of the other 3 circles. All this while Ashish gave a slight nod of the head which meant I was doing alright. He then suggested we leave out C&D for the time being and evaluate our client’s strategy with respect to B. I then began to evaluate A’s action given B’s possible moves. What would be the equilibrium strategy for both the players such that our client maximizes its return. When thinking about B’s possible moves, I realized that B sees the game in exactly the same way as A and will be evaluating its options in the same manner as well since both have the same corpus. Neither had an advantage over the other. Hence if they try to compete on any circle, in trying to outbid each other, it would prove detrimental to both.

Therefore it was in their best interest to form a tacit agreement to not compete against each other and divide up the circles among themselves by pushing C&D out of the bidding since C &D only had a corpus of 1Kcr. At this point Ashish nodded as well, and decided to end the case. What do you think went right/wrong?

Right: This was probably my best case interview in the entire day. Not just in terms of solving the case, but in terms of how smooth it was. I didn’t falter at any point in the case and solved it steadily and calmly. Also, I think Ashish liked the energy I showed, and at the end of the case we had a short chat which I think went well as well. Wrong: Nothing much.


One thing to keep in mind – Arriving at the right answer is not important in a case interview, communicating the way you think and approach the problem is more important. Always think out loud wherever possible. Companies want to understand a candidate’s thought process through these interviews. Also, keep your energy levels high, as you go through the day you build momentum and you keep getting better at solving cases. Counter-intuitive but true.

Outcome

Was made the offer 

100


Brij Vashisth




Shweta Bajpai, Team Lead

Interview Number



First interview with BCG and 6th for the day.

Case Question

A casting company wants to increase its revenue base from 100 Cr to 1000 Cr in 5 yrs maintaining an EBITDA of 20%.

Case Type

Growth


Was given the following information when asked:

Tell me about yourself? A few other questions related to work experience.

  

Client based out of India Sells castings to turbine manufacturers Castings sold by client are then fixed to turbines and then sold to power plants by customer

After assimilating the basic information, I used the following framework to start the case analyses: 2x2 BCG MATRIX Existing Products

New Products

Existing Markets

(1)

(2)

New Markets

(3)

(4)

After laying out the BCG matrix, I asked Shweta which one to target first. Existing Market structure (Revenues):     

Our market share: 100 cr Another competitor market share: 100 cr Imports: 400 cr (so high?) Are we covering all geographies in India? – Yes Can we sell castings to other customers apart from turbine manufacturers? – Yes but EBITDA will go below 20%

Then, I compared our products & service quality vis-à-vis imports. I created the following table for analysis sake: Quad

Revenue

Revenue

Potential

Drivers

+60 cr

Market Growth

(1) +200 cr

From Imports’ share

Risks

Low Risks: 

Market Growth =10%

Medium Risks: 

Quality



Price



Specialized Parts 101


Skills – manpower



Capital investment -specialized CNC machines

(3)

+200 cr (from Africa)

Turbine requirement (Developing Countries)

High Risks: Came to the conclusion that Africa is the only market that we can target after analyzing: 

Brazil (distance)



Russia (China)



China (Prices & other typical “Chinese” factors



(2)

+450 cr

Turbine market India

Africa

Risks: Medium Vertical integration into turbine manufacturing. Analyzed Turbine industry using 5 forces:  

(4)

--

--

Our sister company is in EPC Turbine market = 10 x casting (10% growth)

Risks: Very High (Far-fetched idea. Should not focus for next 5 years.)

Then, I added another column in the above table with the header “Risk mitigation”. We discussed in details how we could reduce the risks for each of the quadrants. Then based on revenue potential and mitigated risks, I came up with a priority list.

What do you think went right for you in the interview?

For the last one and a half year prior to ISB, I was closely involved in the casting process with my previous employer. I knew casting and related processes\industry really well to speak with authority about my ideas. The ideas that I gave for mitigating risks were appreciated.


I guess one or two things related to PI.


I used my prior knowledge of the field to suggest some very detailed, related, and practical solutions. Solving cases is like clearing the basic threshold. If you can mix the case with practical industry knowledge, it will give you that “high” during the interview.

Outcome

Moved to R1 interview 2

Name

Brij Vashisth

Interviewing with

The Boston Consulting Group 102

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 (consulting firm) Name of the Interviewer

Amitabh Mall

Interview Number



Interview started with basic PI questions for initial 5-7 min.

Case Question

An Indian fiber-manufacturing firm is facing declining profits.

Case Type

Profits


Asked a few basic questions about the industry & the client (on the lines of 5Cs, 4Ps) Understood the overall process flow of the yarn industry, and found out where the fiber manufacturing firm fit in – Collating this information gave me enough time to generate ideas and structure my thoughts. Then, used the basic “Profit = Revenue – Cost” framework for this case analysis. Started with “Revenues”. Had a detailed discussion about how we can increase the revenues. Some key points:   

Market for this yarn declining (many factors) Cheaper/ better substitutes or alternatives available Some countries still unexplored. This was the major factor for revenue increase. Analyzed a few markets, and created a priority matrix for them.

Moved on to the “Cost”. Studied the current operations of the firm: 

 

2 manufacturing units (India & Indonesia) (Different manufacturing costs in different countries) 3 destination – China, India & Indonesia (Different prices in each markets) Created a “process flow diagram” for internal operations of the firm lest I forget any key cost aspect

Started analyzing operational cost of the firm. Some key points:    

Raw material costs Labor efficiency Yield of the plant Systems

Then, I analyzed the logistics related costs and created the following tables to optimize it: Manufacturing

Maximum Supply

Plant

Costs of manufacturing

India

S1

C1

Indonesia

S2

C2

Markets

Demand for each market

Prices of the Yarn

India

D1

P1

Indonesia

D2

P2

China

D3

P3 103


Shipping Route

Cost

India to China

L1

India to Indonesia

L2

Indonesia to India

L3

Indonesia to China

L4

The interviewer was promptly giving me all the data I was asking for. I told him that we could use Linear Programming to optimize the logistics cost. Then, I created the following table for inputs into an LP model: Variable

Quantity

Contribution Margins

India to Indonesia

X1

M1 (= P2 – C1 – L2)

India to India

X2

M2 = P1 – C1

India to China

X3

M3

Indonesia to

X4

M4

Indonesia to India

X5

M5

Indonesia to China

X6

M6

Indonesia

Supply constraints: X1+X2+X3 <= S1 X3+X4+X5 <= S2 Similarly, I wrote the demand constraints. After populating the table above, I said that we could use any standard LP solver to find out the optimal solution. The interviewer asked me whether I could come up with a solution without solver!! I created a table and started optimizing it by allocating the quantity on the basis of contribution margins. The values were very simple. Finally, came up with two sets of solution and told the interviewer than we needed to multiply these two sets of solution with respective contribution margin to find out the best option. Phew! He nods. Case ends. What do you think went right for you in the interview?

Everything. All my tables & calculations were neat and clean. I was slow, but I made sure that there were no calculation mistakes, corrections etc.


Not much.


Stay calm. The interviewer might ask you anything. Be prepared for it.

Outcome

Moved to Round2 104


Name

Brij Vashisth




Rohit Ramesh, Project Leader

Interview Number



He made me very comfortable right from the start of the interview. He asked me whether I had lunch. He went outside and brought a lunch-box for me. He even asked me to have lunch before the interview!! Although some PI questions were off the beat, I was very relaxed & comfortable. PI section went really well.

Case Question

Auto service center

Case Type

Market entry


An automobile company has a series of service centers located throughout the country. Independent dealers own these centers. The profitability of the service centers was lower than that for other service centers. Found out more about the operating model: These service centers are for cars only and that too only by the concerned automobile company. Typically three revenue streams: 1. Automobile sales 2. Spare parts 3. Service business Dealers had invested a lot more in fixed assets for service business as compared to competition 





Used the 3U (Uses, Usages, Users) framework for solving the case. Discussed about a lot of ideas (two-wheelers, insurance, other brands…) within this framework to increase the profits of the dealers. Then, we discussed about the risks associated with each of the ideas. Used “Machine, People, & Technology” to analyze risks for each of the ideas.

Towards the end, he said I was missing out on something important. Then, I laid the entire value-chain and found out the missing link. (Important) Case ends. What do you think went right for you in the interview?

Everything


Not much


If the interviewer asks for a missing link, you should be comprehensive (MECE) in your approach to find it out. Random guessing may work, but it wouldn’t give a good impression.

Outcome

Asked to wait for the last round

105


Brij Vashisth




Ravi Srivastava, Partner

Interview Number



It was a PI heavy interview:   

Tell me about yourself. Detailed questions about my work at Schlumberger Detailed questions on my “IIT - Bachelor of Technology Project (BTP)”!! It wasn’t even mentioned in my resume.

Case Question

Cement company case

Case Type

A bit of everything


There are already many variants of cement case discussed in previous years’ casebooks.

Throughout the interview, Ravi never let me settle down. Once, I laid down a structure to analyze the case, he would critically analyze it and change everything. Everything! Then, I present arguments and structure on the basis of new information (after taking 1 min breaks to come to senses); he will again overload me with new pieces of information. The same happened three or four times.

We discussed a lot of business problems, which the company was facing - profit, revenues, costs, sales channels, marketing – 4Ps, distribution network, product-mix, logistics optimization, performance parameters, etc. We had been discussing whether Return on Investment was a good parameter to gauge performance for a good 5 min, before he ended the case.

What do you think went right for you in the interview?

No idea


I had no clue what was going on. All I remember after the interview was that we argued a lot!! Some of the PI questions took me off-guard.

Any tips for the future batch? Outcome

Was made an offer 

106

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Interview

Case Question

General direction of case

Overall Outcome


Declining profitability for client in the cement industry.

The typical thought process during the preparation Next interview had aligned me to draw up an optimization problem focusing on the cost side. The interviewer however wanted me to focus on increasing revenues. Discussion revolved around strategies to increase sales/ store and number of stores, own vs. general retail stores, wastage % and other parameters. Root cause: Increasing Inventory/ Sales ratio was causing the problem


Market entry strategy for new truck manufacturer in India.

I employed the typical market entry framework for discussing this case; however the end result hinged upon the fact that truck users in India tended to overload trucks, and this was a decision metric.

Next Round

The manufacturer’s truck wa s better in mileage, build etc., but at a premium. The truck design however did not permit significant volume overloading and therefore it was recommended to not enter the market.



Client wants to invest in the solar industry. There is an upfront capex requirement of ‘x’ Rs. 1000 MW will be purchased by the government at Rs 20/ kWH for the next 5 years. Should we invest or not.

th

This was my last interview (13 ) for the day, and the interviewer asked me upfront about my exhaustion levels.

Next Interview Offered

It was one of the simpler cases of the day. I asked for the RoI requirement, and calculated a simple NPV of the investment over the next 5 years. The result came out to be positive, and therefore the recommendation was to go ahead and invest.

107


AT Kearney

108


Bishwa Ranjan Roy

Company Name

A.T.Kearney

Interviewer Name

Shiv Shivaraman(Partner)

Interview Number

PI + Case Round 1, first interview


Tell me about yourself.

Case Type

Market Size Estimation

Case Question

Estimate the installed base for Solar Power in India in 2020.


Since I have a Power background, he was keen on asking something related to power. He also told me that it is not necessary that I have to come up with an estimate close to 20 GW (Govt of India’s proj ection for solar power installed base).

How do you think you will fit well in A T Kearney with your 6 years of experience?

I took some time to think and told him about two approaches: 1. Bottom up: Starting with installed base and looking at different reasons / locations where solar power addition will be feasible. 2. Top down: Going from total power projection and coming to solar power installed base. He asked me to choose any one approach and give reasons for it. I chose the second one, and said that first approach may not be comprehensive and there is a chance that I miss out some options. So I took the current installed base and assumed a CAGR of about 9-10% (as per projections) and arrived at the total installed base in 2020. Further I went on to the breakup (in %age terms) of total installed base in Thermal, Wind, Hydro, Solar, Nuclear and other forms of power generation in 2012 and possible break up (in %age terms) and possible reasons for this change in composition in 2020. I was giving reasons for each figure that I assumed which was backed by some policy or macroeconomic factor that could lead to such a scenario. What do you think went right/wrong?

Since this is a market size estimation from the sector I come from, the assumptions I made were critical (as I was supposed to know them well) However I checked with the interviewer if I had a doubt instead to guessing the numbers.


Know your industry well and be prepared with basic fact and stats of that industry.

Outcome

Moved to next interview.

Name of Candidate

Bishwa Ranjan Roy

Company Name

A.T.Kearney

Interviewer Name

Anshuman Maheshwary (Principal)

Interview Number

PI + Case Round 1, second interview


Tell me about yourself. Why Consulting and Why A.T. Kearney?

109

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Case Type

Identification of bottleneck to growth / profitability

Case Question

A chemical manufacturing company’s board has been reshuffled and the new director has asked you to suggest long term growth strategy in a scenario where they are witnessing revenue and profitability growth


It was a tricky situation as both revenue and profits were increasing and presence of a bottle neck was not evident. I started with asking questions on the product line, customer base, sales channels, and competition. I came to know that it’s a single commodity business, with B2B customers spread across India, direct sales channel and client being the major player in industry with 60% mkt share and fragmented competition. I was trying to see where could the company be lacking that can be attended so that it grows as per the expectations, so I used the Profit = Revenue – Cost framework, where I started with the revenue side And broke it up into, Revenue = Price * Quantity. Here I again asked several questions regarding the price and competitors’ price etc. Since this was a commodity business the price was same for all and I did not get any clue. When I asked about the quantity, I came to know that the quantity was stagnant for the past few months. After asking several questions about the possible reasons like distribution bottleneck, raw material supply bottleneck and production bottleneck I got to know that the plant was producing at 120% capacity and could not produce any more. The revenue and profit were increasing due to increase in price but the quantity was stagnant and in fact they had started loosing mkt share. At this point I was asked to stop and he asked me if I had any question.


The framework helped think in a structured manner in a situation where everything seems to be fine. Asking lot of questions helped me diagnose the problem.


Practice as many cases with variations of standard framework as possible so that you know how to use them in a new situation.

Outcome

Moved to the 2nd round

Name of Candidate

Bishwa Ranjan Roy

Company Name

A.T.Kearney

Interviewer Name

Abhishek Poddar(Principal)

Interview Number

Case Round 2


None

Case Type

In house or outsourcing decision

Case Question

You are a new power producer and want to expand very quickly. How will you decide if you should keep the O&M activity in house or outsource it to third party?


This was the interview where I faltered a lot. I tried to understand the scope of O&M and he described it as day to day operations, repair and preventive maintenance. I started with the factors that will influence the decision like timeline, costs, regulations, technological know how, strategic alignment etc and said I will compare these in both cases of doing inhouse or outsourcing. He said these are to judge if it makes profit but not the way it should be decided. I was confused I tried to look at other things like accountability, availability of personnel, long term growth etc. but he said this was not 110

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 the way to decide..after a brief discussion he told me that he was looking for a simple 2X2 matrix framework with criticality of activity on one axis and capability in mkt on another. He said this is a standard way to decide such issues. What do you think went right/wrong?

I did not know such a framework and was probably stuck in the aspect of which is a better way of doing such things.


Don’t panic even if th e case is not going as per your expectations and keep your cool. Keep the conversation going, ask questions and give some insights wherever possible even if the interviewer is giving the solution.

Outcome

Moved to 3rd round

Name of Candidate

Bishwa Ranjan Roy

Company Name

A.T.Kearney

Interviewer Name

Pamela Pattabirman (principal)

Interview Number

Case Round 3


None

Case Type

Case from retail industry

Case Question

A retail outlet is facing stock-outs very frequently. What should they do?


I started scoping the case by asking questions and got some insights like it was happening across all the stores in this chain in this area. I said that there is some misalignment with demand and supply which is leading to this stock-out. Since this was happening in all stores in this area, I explored possible common issues like logistics, warehousing, etc. but could not find anything there. I then realized that this problem can be with specific brands and found this to be true. Thus I suggested that shelf space be redistributed so that the fast moving brands get more space and slower moving brands get less space thus optimizing the inventory and avoiding stock-out. This was a final check I guess before they made the offer so there were no further questions.


I did not use any specific framework, should have been more structured in this round. However I managed to reach the solution and that was what was required.


Questions should be asked whenever you get stuck and don’t stuck to one issue if you can’t find solution

Outcome

Was made the offer.

111


Himanshu Jain Company Name

A.T.Kearney

Interviewer Name

Abhishek Poddar(Principal)

Interview Number

Interview 1


Introduce yourself? What are your weaknesses?

Case Type

Business Situation

Case Question

You are a new power producer and want to expand very quickly. How will you decide if you should keep the O&M activity in house or outsource it to third party?


This was a five minutes interview. Abhishek asked me to just speak out what comes first to my mind.


I answered that we can evaluate the decision on few grounds such as control, cost, flexibility, scale economies, and two other factors which I don’t remember (studied them in SAIT). Abhishek look satisfied with my response.


Moved to 2rd round

Name of Candidate

Himanshu Jain

Company Name

A.T.Kearney

Interviewer Name

Pamela (Principal)

Interview Number

Interview 2


Why ATK? What’s your pecking order?

Case Type

Business Situation

Case Question

A retail outlet is facing stock-outs very frequently. What should they do?


A came up with a good framework for this problem. I said that there can be problems with: 







People – Staff not ordering the products on a regular basis. Problem with delivery boys, management incentives not aligned. Process o No. of days of inventory held in stock o Inventory pooling – Centralized warehouse vs regional warehouses o Frequency with which orders are replenished, product re-order levels Infrastucture o Small warehouses/store space o Slow mode of delivery Product selection/procument o Fast moving vs slow moving items o Just in time procurement o Shelf space allotment to different products

It turned out that there was a problem with shelf space allotment as most of it was wasted to slow moving products. Also, Pam liked the idea of inventory pooling and 112

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 asked me to write down equation for the same. She was happy with all the responses What do you think went right/wrong?

I built a comprehensive framework in the start – which helped me all throughout the interview.


Had a small chat with the partner and Was made an offer

113


Booz & Co.

114


Himanshu Jain

Company Name

Booz & Co

Interviewer Name

XYZ, Principal

Interview Number

1 – first interview


Tell me about yourself? What is your pecking order? What is Booz one of your top priorities? Booz has made a relatively fresh start in India – Therefore, it offers a more entrepreneurial culture to work in. Booz offers you Associate position rather than junior consultant profiles (offered by other consulting firms) – So, you in a way get a straight 2 year jump in consulting. Also, it focuses on the fin practice – again a plus for people who want to get into private equity. Lastly, international opportunities offered are good.

Case Type

Graph interpretation

Case Question

He showed me a table with 7 investment opportunities A, B…G. Which one would you choose?


This was a bizarre case. I had never seen any such type of case before. Along with each investment, values were given such as investment outlay, IRR, Cost of capital, tenure of the project, NPV etc. The interviewer was asking rapid questions such as Which one A or B, D or E – and I was explaining rationale for each choice. I thought of structuring the problem by drawing a constraint chart and showing that the response will depend on the constraint. If investment is a constraint then we will try to maximize on NPV per unit investment. Also, in few projects IRR was very high and he questioned – why haven’t you chosen projects with high IRR. I replied that IRR assumes that we reinvest cash flows at the IRR rate –which is a wrong assumption to make. He appeared satisfied with the rationales I gave.


  




Asked questions and kept him engaged Made reasonable assumptions that I could back with logic. Used my understanding of corp finance to the fullest – I was luck as I went glanced through all the term summaries just 2 before the d-day. Be confident and calm during the interview. The interviewer will make multiple attempts to challenge your logic. Explain politely why you think your logic is right. Acknowledge situations where the interviewer has proved you wrong, instead of arguing with him

Outcome

Moved to next round.

Name of Candidate

Himanshu Jain

Company Name

Booz & Co

Interviewer Name

Ashish, Partner

Interview Number

3rd interview, (Don’t remember the 2 nd interview)


How was your experience of starting your own company? Why did you leave your own venture? Why should we hire you?

Case Type

Business Situation 115

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Case Question

TRAI has approached you to help select amongst telecom companies bidding for the 4G spectrum. You can give it to one large company A, or 3 small companies B, C & D. A is offering more price than the cohort of B,C & D. Help TRAI decide how to design the bidding process and which option to go for?


Another bizarre case from Booz. I had a smile on my when I heard the case as I thought that I am out of Booz for sure. I asked initial questions about the companies, the operational bit, and monopoly practices. I figured out soon that giving the spectrum to company A will result in economies of scale and scope, but it will also led to a monopoly problem. The case became an economics problem where you had to maximize the consumer surplus. I started making few graphs of consumer surplus, monopoly and monopolistic situation with Ashish. I reason out to Ashish that even though the marginal cost curve of players in monopolistic/perfectly competitive market are higher than those in a monopoly – but you can still maximize on the consumer surplus as price charged will be lower. But, TRAI will be losing on the additional bid amount company A is paying. We again started another round of discussions – MC, MR, AC, AR….Ashish appeared to be satisfied with my responses.




Clarity of concepts taught in class is extremely important.


From my personal experience, I can tell that companies don’t look for straight forward answers. Rather, they want to see your thought process. Make logical and reasonable arguments.

Outcome

Was made an offer.

116

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Name of Candidate Company Name

Dhruv Vatsal Booz & Co




Why Booz?

Case Type

Guesstimate

Case Question

How many golf balls in the air at the moment?


I structured this analysis in the following manner:


What is your pecking order of firms?

a) Divided the world into time-zones, with the assumption that I’d focus only on golf being played during the day. b) Developed vs developing countries and an approximation of the number of 9hole and 18hole golf courses. a. Used number of major cities as an underlying parameter to come up with this number. c) Number of people playing at that instant. (which was at 1:15pm IST) d) Out of that, how many people would be playing a shot at that very instant. a) PI bombed quite badly, as I am not sure I was able to convince him of my reasons to join Booz. b) The guesstimate went fairly well. The thought process was quite logical and structured, and I took his yes/no during the entire assumption-making process.


It’s not enough knowing your reasons; one needs to be articulate in the responses as well.

Outcome

Was asked to wait for next interview, but I was called somewhere else and couldn’t return.

117


Parthenon

118


Nipun Rastogi

Company Name

The Parthenon Group

Interviewer Name

Matt (Principal London Office)

Interview Number

1st interview of round 1

Personal Question

None as such. Matt was more inclined towards a case.

Interview

Case Type

The case was primarily related to a market entry situation.

Case Question

So there is an education firm that is looking to expand internationally. What are the things you would look at? And then the case developed from there.


After the question, I tried a couple of scoping questions. I wanted to understand the motivations and objectives of the company. However, Matt was looking for a list straight away. I tried to evaluate it on two orthogonal metrics, industry attractiveness and company strengths. I added that industry attractiveness was a combination of barriers to entry, market size, growth and margins (money potential), value chain players (suppliers like teachers etc) and competition and existing players. The company competency included skill sets, degree and programs or domain and technology, cash and other powers. Then I added that the strengths need to counter the possible risks that the business could face and also to build a long term sustainable competitive advantage for the entrant. At this point Matt told me that the company had more strength in terms of distance education and they were experts in high technology video conferencing kind of education system. He also gave me a sheet of paper which talked about the four countries targeted – India, Brazil, Spain and Germany (not too sure on the countries). He asked then to determine one factor that would be of the greatest significance. I thought for a few minutes and discussed the importance of regulation in the space. I believed that international player entry can be greatly impacted by the kind of rules for international players that we have in the system. I am not too sure if the answer was correct or not as Matt was quite serious throughout the interview. He then showed me data on the possible distance education markets in the different countries. It had some trends and numbers. I think in Brazil the marketing was rising very fast and had a growth rate of 67% or so. I did a couple of calculations and saw that Brazil could be one of the biggest markets. Then Matt asked about any inherent assumptions that I would have made in the calculation. I was a little skeptical about this and hence asked for a minute on this. The Brazil market growth rate was one of the numbers, India’s adoption of technology in education and another country’s reduced support in distant education were some assumptions I questioned in no particular order. I qualified it with the statement that since Brazil’s assumption made the m arket real attractive so it would be really critical. In the end, we had a discussion on the aspect of the strategy to enter the market. Where would we need partners, where the government would be most receptive and similar things? The session ended with a couple of questions I wanted to clear from someone in London office. I asked about the kind of projects and their difference from projects in India. I knew a lot about the kind of workload in India office and clarified how busy London office was.


I was pretty confident during the interview and I think that was one thing working in my favor. In fact I even made a calculation mistake in the interview but did not let it faze me. I was talking throughout although there were instances when Matt left the room and it was a bit awkward. 119


Be ready for surprises in the interview. One cannot prepare for case interview like the interviewer leaves the room for five minutes. Also, don’t get bogged down by the data thrown at you. Consolidated tips at the end of my McKinsey interview .

Outcome

Proceeded to the next compulsory interview.

Name of Candidate

Nipun Rastogi

Company Name

The Parthenon Group

Interviewer Name

Aastha Bajaj (Principal Mumbai Office)

Interview Number

2nd interview of round 1

Personal Question

This was a more elaborate interview of the classic types. Aastha ensured that I was not feeling nervous and laid out the interview timeline in front of me. She said the first 10 minutes would be personal interview followed by a 15 minute case and 5 minutes for a few questions from my side about the company.

Interview

PI began with questions about my previous interview with Matt. Then it moved on to the discussion about the luxurious room we were in. The interview was in those faculty towers and we were in the rooms for visiting faculty. It was lavish and we discussed how being a professor is a very good option to pursue. Then she asked me about what I was in real life. What hobbies I pursued and how it fared for me in life. We talked about what I chose to pursue at ISB and what I thought was important in getting the most out of the experience. Somewhere my answers connected with her as she was nodding as we were talking and I could get her to comment on some of the things. I am not writing the answers to PI questions for a couple of reasons: a) Uniqueness: When you read PI answers, you might start modeling your own on what you read. A strict no-no for PI. b) Contact: You want the answers, contact me at [email protected] or Facebook . Case Type

The case was primarily related to a market estimation.

Case Question

Estimate the two wheeler market in India.


I owe a lot for this case to Kumar Abhinav (my case group mate) and Sudeep Laad (my buddy from Parthenon). We had developed a specific method to go at the estimation cases. First I divided the question into two approaches: Supply side and demand side. Supply was manufacturers and demand was population based. Since supply was unconstrained I was inclined to go on the demand side. I took the interviewers agreement on the same and she nodded. I also clarified that triangulation was important for such estimates and hence suggested that we can do by population and income segments of the people. The cross-verification could be done by using the technique of breaking country into small territories and extrapolating. With the approach out of the way, I laid down the basics. I put down that we will go by population and income estimates and then see if we need to make an assumption and can that be verified by any secondary data. Then I proceeded with dividing the Indian population (1.2 billion) into households (300 million). Then I divided the households into low income, lower middle, upper middle and rich segments. After this I had to define income segments that would put these guys into separate buckets. What I did then I think was something that made my case and prospects in the 120

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 interview. I initiated by talking about disposable income and defined it via the EMIs required to pay off the amounts for the vehicle. For instance, I said that a bike is typically 40,000 and is bought in 20 EMIs then each month needs 2000 INR spare. This I multiplied by 12 to get annual disposable income as 24,000. I said a poor family would spare a significance portion of their income to get this kind of a vehicle which I said like 20% for this segment. This meant a 120,000 as annual income for the year. Similarly, I broke down each and every segment in terms of their income. The interviewer wanted to check my thought process in the entire estimation exercise. She asked me why I did not break down into rural and urban divide. I explained to her that I wanted to do that but then again I avoided it because my personal experience of Munger and Saharanpur and other cities (close to the rural domain) show that there are bikes and other two wheelers in abundance. She was real impressed with this (at least this is what I felt as she nodded and gave her consent). After this I added that certain households will change their two wheelers every five years and some would do that every 15 years. Based on this the total number was found which as a number was immaterial but the process was important. I think it was up to the expectations of the interviewer. Then we shifted to me asking questions about Parthenon and busy schedules in the company. She discussed her perspective on the same and we also talked a little about the double project allocation system at the company. What do you think went right/wrong?

The entire framework and process of arriving at the number was impressive to the interviewer. I could engage her in discussion and checked for her approval at every crucial juncture is what gave me confidence and also kept us on the same page.


Stay focused on the number to be found in such estimate questions. Bring in the experience from your daily life as well as reports you have read. Try to think of two or three ways to achieve a problem and pick one that is comfortable for you. Check with interviewer for the same.

Outcome

Sent to the final round.

Name of Candidate

Nipun Rastogi

Company Name

The Parthenon Group

Interviewer Name

Ashwin (Partner Mumbai Office)

Interview Number

1st and only interview in round 2

Personal Question

None.

Interview

Case Type

Presentation of case based on data provided.

Case Question

There was a set of 18 slides provided which were to be interpreted and the basic questions were to be answered. The questions were not known then.


I cannot describe this case in detail here. Basically, it started with me getting the data which had information about a company and its business and their competition as well. I was given about half an hour to read it. But the interview before me finished early and so the partner sat in front of me and was waiting for me to start. I got slightly perturbed and started the discussion. I think I could not focus on the case in the last few minutes and was not in the best conditions. Anyways, the discussion began with the partner asking me about the problems in the company. I pointed out certain things that I noticed were problematic. He seemed 121

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 unimpressed and asked me to discuss an issue I had kind of ignored. We then discussed how it could be a great problem. After this setback, there was another question about the competition. In that as well, I think I missed something that was important. Again there was discussion around it for some time. I was losing confidence in myself because of these slips. The points that I was making made sense but then something crucial was always overlooked. Finally, when we were discussing recommendations to solve the problems, I again floundered on one aspect of it. Overall, I had a sunken feeling about the interview. What do you think went right/wrong?

I kept missing key aspects at crucial junctures and hence was never in the control of the situation.


Stay calm when things are not going your way. Do try to prepare for this round, I don’t know how though.

Outcome

Did not get through. I think there were comments like the partner was disappointed in me.

122


Varun Mimani

Company Name

Parthenon

Interviewer Name

Jitin

Interview Number

1 – first interview


Tell me about yourself & most riveting experience at ISB. Probed me about my experiences at work specifically with regards to leading teams/initiatives

Case Type

Market estimation

Case Question

Number of passports issued in India in an year


Just a one-liner as mentioned above




 








I highlighted that we could solve the case using 2 approaches – demand side and supply side. We discussed them in brief and then he suggested that I take the demand-side approach Asked questions and kept him engaged Involved him in solving the case to make it more like a discussion being led by me Made reasonable assumptions that I could back with logic Take it easy, don’t stress out. This is especially important for Parthenon as they are not looking to put you under pressure for no reason Smile and sound refreshing. Remember the guy at the other end might have sat through more interviews than you can imagine!

Outcome

This was the first interview of the first round. Everyone had a minimum of 2 interviews

Name of Candidate

Varun Mimani

Company Name

Parthenon

Interviewer Name

Danesh

Interview Number

1 – second interview


  

Tell me about yourself. How was your interview with Jitin? Why Parthenon?

Case Type

Qualitative factors to look at in a due diligence scenario

Case Question

What are the critical qualitative factors that you would look at in a reverse logistics mobile repair company if you were a PE player wanting to invest in the same?


  






 

Business – mobile repair reverse logistics firm Collects damaged phones from retailers Repairs them and gets them back to the retailers for delivery to the end customer Once I solved the case and highlighted the factors, he asked me what the threats to such as business could be? Asked me about exit options for the PE firm if the firm were to make an investment. I drew a diagram of the operations Again, kept the interviewer engaged by asking questions 123









 

Followed a structure but did not sound like I was bound by one – the case required one to be imaginative and innovative When asked about exit options, suggested that PE firms typically exit in around 5 years which showed by understanding of the PE domain When I was not getting one of the exit options that the interviewer was looking for, instead of beating around the bush and suggesting silly options, I simply said that I needed help to move forward – sometimes its juts better to be honest when you are stuck! I got most things right because of the diagram that I drew. Be genuine and straightforward Take your time and think before you ask questions. Show that you have done an MBA by talking about things like the PE firm’s exit objective tha t I highlighted. Most people know these things, but in the eagerness to concentrate solely on solving the case, miss out on highlighting their knowledge about these things nd

Outcome

Moved to the 2 round of interviews

Name of Candidate

Varun Mimani

Company Name

Parthenon

Interviewer Name

Ashwin, Partner

Interview Number

2 – Partner round


None

Case Type

Presented a deck of 20 slides and asked to make a presentation to the Partner. Given 30 minutes to prepare

Case Question

 


   




  


  



Highlighted the problems being faced by the company Suggest solutions It was a deck of close to 20 slides Data heavy slides Was from an industry I had no clue about – medical equipments A number of slides had share price movement graphs I highlighted the problem correctly. Don’t mix the problem and the symptom. Eg – share price falling is a symptom, not the problem itself. I maintained my cool with the Partner I was a good listener when the Partner was talking Asked questions about things that I was not clear about

Time is short in this round – be quick Pick important things from each slide and move fast Create some sort of index of the slides so that when you are presenting you know where a certain piece of data is in the deck Do not lose your composure in front of the Partner

Outcome

Shortlisted amongst the final 4 people for the Mumbai office

Name of Candidate

Varun Mimani 124

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Company Name

Parthenon

Interviewer Name

Amit, Senior Principal

Interview Number

3 – casual conversation on Day 1 as Parthenon came as an international company earlier


None

Case Type

None

Case Question

None

Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible What do you think went right/wrong? Any tips for the future batch Outcome



I asked a lot of questions as to where the firm is going etc Was very positive in my approach



Remember - this is not the end of life!



Made an offer!

125


PRTM

126


Name of Candidate

Prashant Kr Gupta

Company Name

PWC’s PRTM Management Consulting

Interview Number

Case + PI – Round 1


Why PRTM?

Case Type

Based on the Govt of India’s MMRCA (medium multi -role combat aircraft) deal for fighter airplane.

Case Question

A consortium of tier-1 suppliers is preparing a bid for the MMRCA deal for 120 aircrafts worth $200 million apiece. As per the regulations the vendors have to disburse 30% of the contract value in India in form of sub-systems and products.

Answer was weaved around the culture of the organization which is more “collaborative” than competitive. Also PRTM has a 4 day travel and Friday is an office day.

The client is one of the many tier-1 suppliers in consortium and comes to us for help. The client wants to understand what does the regulation mean for him and how to proceed ahead? Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible

Note: this is how I had approached the case. The same case was asked to other candidates as well and they may have a different approach and may have reached a different solution. During the case Interviewer was also involved in solving the case and driving it forward 1) what is the dollar value to be disbursed: 0.3 * 200 * 120 = 7.2 billion 2) Established who has the responsibility of disbursing: there are two ways of fulfilling the obligation. a) Consortium decides who the tier-1 suppliers can source their parts and tech from? b) tier-1 suppliers are given a part of the obligation which they decide on how best to source from India 3) it was the 2nd approach so I went to assess the obligation of our client: our client was 1 of the 4 main tier 1 suppliers. The client was manufacturing power systems for the consortium. The other tier-1 suppliers manufactured a) structure, b) avionics & c) general systems. To decide the obligation on our client the consortium could choose many ways: a) it divides the obligation in 4 parts equally; b) divides the obligation according to the revenue of each of the 4 suppliers; c) divide the obligation based on the number of parts required or any other way the consortium deems fit So it was the 2nd approach again. The consortium had a 20% margin on each of the planes and the each of the 4 parts costs 25% of the total cost of plane. => this meant the revenue for each tier-1 supplier is same and hence the obligation has to be equally divided. So cost of each plane = 0.8 * 200 mn = 160 mn. Revenue generated for the client = 120 * 40 mn = 4.8 billion (the interviewer had not calculated this number). Obligation = 7.2 / 4 = 1.8 billion. This means that the obligation is 1.8/4.8, approx. 37% which is quite huge. (Again this number was not calculated by the interviewer and hence probably the aha moment of the case) 4) so now we have zeroed on what the regulation means for the client. The client will 127

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 have to disburse 37.5% of his revenues in India. So how can he achieve this? Interviewer: It took us 6-8 weeks to reach this far. Me: all smiles 5) value chain for a power systems (engines) manufacturer here would look like: R&D -> testing (instruments & services) -> manufacturing (needs parts) -> sell to consortium -> after sales services 6) Evaluate capabilities within India and what is strategically viable for the client to source from India. a) R&D at first is not a good option because R&D for an engine manufacturer is strategic competitive advantage b) testing may be a viable option c) parts if meet the design specs can be sourced from India d) This needs to be clarified or negotiated with the govt. if after sales services form a part of the obligation or is it on top of the obligation? Interviewer: now suppose if the dollar value of all possible options except R&D is 0.5 billion; what can be done? Me: R&D is something that one can always look at but this will not be advised. Obviously it depends on how the industry is. R&D is not critical to all industry but this one it seems to be. We need to validate this fact. The alternatives can be JVs, buying tech from an Indian company. If need be the client can look at setting up a manufacturing plant in India based on an economic viability. (NPV calculation) 7) Interviewer finally told me that in such cases they will advise the consortium to go back to the govt and tell them that such disbursements are not possible and hence the regulation needs to be looked into again and a middle path needs to be negotiated. What do you think went right/wrong?

Since I had once conducted a feasibility study for weapons upgrade of a MI-35 NPS helicopter with the IAF, I was very comfortable with what constitutes the parts and was able to relate to the problem. I think the idea there was to see how do I approach the problem rather than arriving at a solution.


Name of Candidate

Prashant Kr Gupta

Company Name

PWC’s PRTM Management Consulting

Interview Number



So tell me why are you here today? (nice tone) I was thrown off for a minute. I wasn’t expecting such a question before I was even seated.

TIP: be prepared for a sensible answer to such questions Why do you want to join PRTM and why do you want to do consulting? Explained, I like solving problem, across industries and functions etc. PRTM is into 128

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 operations strategy & implementation. I love operations, I have done it for 4 years etc. I used a lots of words like “operational excellence”, “operational efficiency” etc.

TIP: for some reason I was phaffing a lot instead of answering in crisp pointers. What do you understand by OPERATIONS? Me: hmmmm Or tell me where PRTM can help its client to streamline their OPERATIONS. Since I come from oil & gas industry, I will give you a small example. So if slb has one manufacturing plant in Europe which is serving to their global operations. Suddenly slb gets a stream of new projects in India. They need advice on whether to set up a new manufacturing unit in India or should they source their equipment from Europe. How should they go about either of the two solutions? CASE So do you have questions for me I asked about how teams are formed for projects? And are there any energy projects that PRTM is doing in India? The discussion then went on to understand how a practice is built and I showed some interest in building an energy practice in India :P So does this mean you will not be happy if there are no energy projects? No, as I said before the traction for consulting is because of the opportunity to work across industries and function. Case Type

Open ended – no numbers

Case Question

So slb calls me at midnight and says: “I want to set up a m anufacturing plant in India. Help me!”


Before we even think of setting up a plant in a new location we need to understand the demand-supply gap to ascertain if a capacity expansion is required. If it is a temporary increase in the demand there is no point in setting up a new plant. Interviewer: the client has specifically asked me to help him set up a manufacturing plant and he is paying me money to do it. Should I even consider telling him what to do? Well, I think we should advise the client to consider his demand to ascertain whether he even needs another manufacturing plant. In case the study indicates that it’s a temporary increase we can save a lot of money for him. Interviewer: Let us consider some wise guy has already done that study and he is paying me money to help him set up the plant. So what are the factors I should consider? 1) Investment 2) Location 3) Supplier Base 4) Talent Explained why. We evaluate the parameters and tell the client it is feasible and profitable to set up a plant in India 129

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Interviewer: Leave the strategy part out. If the client is hell bent on setting up the plant. What can you do? At this point, we can do an industry benchmarking and help them identify the best alternatives for each of the key factors identified above and then go about securing those assets on ground for them. Interviewer: So let’s talk about each of them and suggest possible alternatives. Investment we can think about later. Location? Which Location will you choose? Any location which satisfies the requirements of the manufacturing plant, like constant water and electricity supply, a good supply base at a suitable distance from the plant, and available talent pool is good. I said Gujarat may be a good place after being probed further, reasoning was govt. support. Supplier Base: Depending on the kind of production, JIT, make-to-order etc we may choose whether we want supply base to be closer to the plant. Talent: The talent will be important, we will have to bring some people from the European plant to build upon the learnings of the 1st unit and then look for suitable talent at both engineering and labor level. Interview: Since you said location is dependent on so many options, tell me which one will you choose if you had these two options: Location X

Location Y

Good Supplier Base

Ok Supplier Base

Ok Talent Pool

Good Talent Pool

I will choose Location X, as Talent is poachable, it can be compensated to work in a remote location where the company gets subsidies etc. But building a supplier base at any desirable location may be very expensive and hence Location X. Interviewer: Good I would have chosen Location X too. Any other factor you would have considered. Another important factor is proximity from the customers. Now since this equipment will be used either on the east or west coast of India so we are fine locating it anywhere. Interviewer: you are partly right, it also depends on the logistics. Suppose you are going to export the product which is true in this case. You are better off being closer to the ports. What do you think went right/wrong?

I think the small talk (ask me any questions) went pretty well. I kind of made an impression that I was interested in sales as well. We also had a small discussion on how Indian businessmen find it difficult to pay for feasibilities studies which may help them in their businesses. And my experience of dealing with one of them while I was at Evalueserve and I had tried to sell a project.


130


Accenture

131


Vikash Sinha

Company Name

Accenture

Interviewer Name

Mr X

Interview Number

1

Personal Interview Question Case Type

Increasing Market Share

Case Question

A mobile manufacturing company looking to become number 3 player in Indian market. How would you help this company


Candidate: Can you please explain little more about the company. Their businesses, product line and for how long they are in India. Interviewer: The company is a consumer electronics major in India. They are operating in India for more than 10 years. However, they are relatively unknown in mobile market. Candidate: can you be little specific about the target for the company. Kind of market share they are expecting and in what terms: number of mobile handsets sold or revenue. Interviewer: good question. The company is targeting 10% market share in 2 years. Currently they are at 4%. Let us assume the number of handset vs revenue market share is same for the discussion purpose. Candidate: Can we get information about the currently number 1, 2 and 3 players? Regarding their market share and kind of segments they are serving to. Interviewer: Number1 player is Nokia with 40% market share. Number 2 has 20% and number 3 is at 10% market share. They serve to all the segments.. Candidate: Okay. I would like to understand about the product little more. Do they offer mobile products in all the segments and how are the products priced. Interviewer: Their products are priced competitively and they have range of products catering to all the segments. However, the focus is on lower and mid cost phones. They do not compete on price. But they provide better features compared to the competitors for the same price. Candidate: How many distributors the company has and how are the competition positioned? Interviewer: The company has about 45000 distributors all over India, while Nokia has about 90,000. Candidate: Are the distributors common for all the manufacturers? Interviewer: Yes. Its s mix. Some distributors are only for the client, whereas some others are common. Candidate: The number of distributors are lesser compared to number 1 player. Does it mean that the company is not able to reach all the consumers? Interviewer: Well. The client is relatively new in the mobile market and Nokia is there for a long time. Hopefully that explains. But increasing number of distributors is not an option at this moment. Candidate: Okay. Do we have any idea about the retailer and distributor margin for the client and Nokia. 132

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Interviewer: Nokia provides about 4% margin to the distributor and our client gives about 7%. The retailer margin is same. Candidate: Well. I assume that since Nokia is a much stronger brand. The volume must be compensating for lesser margin for distributors and it is a pull market. So increasing distributor margin may not help. Is there another channel other than store? Interviewer: Exactly. The client cannot compete with Nokia on this. At the time of the case there was no other channel. Candidate: What about the promotion strategy? Interviewer: They do TV promotion, other forms of media and in store promotion. Candidate: As you mentioned that the c lients’ products have better features compared to competition for the same price. It is very important to communicate this to the end consumers. The sales people in the store should be educated about the product feature, which are ultimately the face for the consumers. We need to provide incentive in the form of better retailer margin for them to participate.

Interviewer: Well. Providing a training program to all the retailer would be expensive and not practical. Candidate: do we have date regarding the handset sales from all the retailers. Interviewer: No. Candidate: Can we get the sales trend data from our distributors? Interviewer: Yes but that may not be accurate. Candidate: Do you think I am going in the right direction. Interviewer: Yes. You are asking right questions. Candidate: Thank you. As the company is looking to go from 4% market share to 10%. We probably do not need to target much wider segment, but take a focused approach. Using the data from the distributors we can divide the retailer in high sales, medium sales and low sales for low/mid cost handset. Then target those high potential retailers: train them, incentivize them. Apart from this I would recommend value based communication in marketing and having client’s sales people in some stores. Interviewer: Right. In fact we also suggested very similar strategy to have own sales people in the store and that worked. Good analysis and discussion. Do you have any question Candidate: Did I miss anything in the analysis. Interviewer: Yes. You did not ask anything about number 2 player and their distributor margin They are providing 10% margin. However, our client did not want to compete on distributor margin. Anything else. Candidate: Some question about Accenture India Consulting business. What do you think went right/wrong?

As mentioned earlier I completely missed about 2nd/3rd player. What is did good was putting everything on paper in structured format, doing some quick calculation. The interviewer also commented regarding my good analytical skill and took the paper on which I was putting everything.


Be cool. Be sure that you understand the problem right. Ask question if the problem is vague. Think of the whole thing as a discussion. If you think things are going wrong, it is good to seek advice and come back to track.

Outcome

Selected.

133


Rahul Chakraborty ACCENTURE


3 rounds of interview. One based on a small case


Why Consulting? Why Accenture The service/functional groups in Accenture that I was interested in Why not apply to a PE fund (given my experience in Valuation/CF) Learning’s in ISB

Case Type

Business Valuation case

Case Question

How to value a company and decompose the stock price to understand market expectations as well as diagnose the value drivers to make sense of the stock performance over time


A company was performing exceptionally well in the capital markets and the share price had increased significantly. Analyzing the historical operating performance (revenue growth, margins, etc) suggest declining operating performance. I had to suggest and reason the increase in share price in spite of the declining operational metrics


My prior experience in company valuation helped me structure my views and build a value driver tree to move from share price to actual operating performance drivers.


Think out aloud. Research about the service lines. Read the publications on the website

Outcome

134


Richa Gupta

Company Name

Accenture Management Consulting

Interviewer Name

Don’t remember the Name. Was a Lady , Senior Consultant

Interview Number

Round 1 , Case Based interview + PI


Walk me through your resume – was stopped in between the process to understand intricacies of what I was saying. – lasted 30min

Case Type

I have marketing background prior to ISB and hence the case was also a marketing case.

Case Question

Give the targeting and branding strategy for ayurvedic fairness face creams in India.


Once the problem statement was given to me, I confirmed if the category of consumers was known. The interviewer asked me to assume that ayurvedic fairness creams are a fresh product category and that I need to figure everything, except the product and price, about how to make it appeal in the market and ensure targeted sales figure. I began by finding the target customer base – Male/Female. The interviewer confirmed it to be for females. I then moved on to segmentation among the female group – Demographics - Age wise split. On discussion, we narrowed in on the 18-40yr age band for market of fairness cream users. Young and working/student woman population. Moved on to tactics for creating reach among this customer base – Promotional elements- Media employed, distribution tactics etc. Main question asked here was the right retail channel where the product should be placed. Then went to details of each strategy suggested.


The purpose of the case was to check the soundness of understanding of the past work experience you have had.


Know your work experience well, basic case preparation helps in atleast tackling an unknown case with confidence. I did not do any case preparations, but I had participated in LIME which had helped me think through marketing issues well and I believe that helped me crack the case.

Outcome

Moved to Round 2

Name of Candidate

Richa Gupta

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Don’t remember the Name. Was a Lady , Senior Consultant and Head of HR

Interview Number

Round 2 , PI


Walk me through your resume ; Strengths and Weaknesses ; Dwelled into the details of my work experience- why I took the decisions I did in my career switches- lasted 3040min

Case Type

No Case asked

Case Question

No Case asked


No Case asked

135

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 What do you think went right/wrong? Any tips for the future batch Outcome

Moved to Round 3

Name of Candidate

Richa Gupta

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Himanshu, Partner

Interview Number

Round 3 , PI


Walk me through your resume , Asked about which function of consulting I would like to get involved in and why ; why Accenture; given a client situation and asked marketing strategy for it- mainly B2B marketing – lasted 45 min.

Case Type

No Case asked

Case Question

No Case asked


No Case asked

What do you think went right/wrong? Any tips for the future batch Outcome

Given the offer

136


Archishman Ghosh

Company Name

Accenture

Interviewer Name

Don’t remember

Interview Number

Case Interview, Round 1


None

Case Type

Market Entry

Case Question

A foreign hotel chain wants to enter India. What should it do?


I clarified the problem before structuring it. Based on my questions the interviewer told me that the hotel was targeted at business travelers in the upper mid to premium segment and a key strategy was that they always wanted to be located near an airport / railway station. In case of problems related with hotels etc. it is always a good idea to check out whether there is any constraint with respect to the location. My approach was to look at the top 7 cities in the country and the tier II & III cities separately. In the top 7 cities land acquisition would be a key issue and hence I suggested that the hotel go in for management contracts with existing properties instead of building from the ground up – the interviewer appreciated this point. In case of tier II & III cities, I suggested going in for Greenfield projects in placed where they had a first mover advantage, for two reasons. One it would act as an entry deterrent because newer players would have to risk oversupplying a nascent market and second it would position the chain for future growth opportunities given India’s increasing urbanization. I prepared an evaluation table with parameters such as incoming business travelers, projected industrial activity in the city and presence of existing hotels and recommended ranking each city and thus arriving at the point of entry.


Although the interviewer was mostly quiet and gave zero indications of whether I was on the right track or not, I maintained a calm façade and explored different facets of the problem. I think that helped.


I had read a recent Knight Frank report on office and residential property valuation projections for India and that had helped. A basic understanding of the sector and some of key aspects such as occupancy, management contract vs. outright ownership of hotels was also helpful.

Outcome

Went for Round 2.

Name of Candidate

Archishman Ghosh

Company Name

Accenture

Interviewer Name

Sammak Banerjee, ISB Alum

Interview Number

Case Interview, Round 2 & 3


A lady from the HR department was also present during the interview so I had my HR round combined with the round 2 interview. There was some discussion about handling teams and I was asked about my prior experience regarding the same. We also had a chat about how my ISB experience had been overall. She finally asked me about location and vertical preferences.

Case Type

Operations

Case Question

A utilities company wants to reduce transmission and distribution losses. Recommend 137

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 solutions. Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible

I structured the problem as follows – T&D losses can be on account of two reasons, technical losses and non technical. Within technical, it can be purely I2R losses (heat losses due to inherent resistivity), unmetered power distribution, obsolete technology etc. Within non-technical losses, it can be on account of consumer theft (underreporting or outright theft), inaccurate billing (deliberate or accidental), power that is diverted from its original usage (e.g. agricultural power is highly subsidized but it may be used for other commercial / personal purposes). Based on the data he gave, it turned out that the nontechnical losses was the major chunk. Then we had a discussion on the possible remedies. In case of habitual offenders who tap electricity illegally, steps can be taken starting from frequent power outages to the specific geographical areas to taking action with the help of local administration. Other behavioral aspects were also very important, such as whether the electricity utility employees are colluding to under report, therefore technological solutions such as smart grids can be put in (long term solution), or a third party audit can be done (short term solution). The case ended on these notes and the interviewer was really happy with the breadth and depth of the discussion. As per him the people aspect was the most important to get in this case.


The case went very smoothly.


Get an understanding of certain sectors – power, telecom, cement, banking are must knows.

Outcome

Went for final round with Partner

Name of Candidate

Archishman Ghosh

Company Name

Accenture

Interviewer Name

Don’t remember

Interview Number

Round 4, with Partner


None

Case Type

Operations

Case Question

Equipment in a process line is suddenly showing very high downtime. How would you identify the problem?


Here the interviewer clearly specified that he was looking for a clear approach and not any solution per se. He actually told me to think for 10 minutes and draw my approach on a piece of paper. I utilized my understanding of the Six Sigma process and completed a detailed approach using the DMAIC system (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control). The entire interview revolved around this and at the end of it the interviewer actually took my paper and told me he would keep it for future reference.


The systematic process map I drew was the clincher.


For ops cases, even a basic understanding of the DMAIC process is a very powerful to help you structure the problem. Look it up in the net or better still ask your batch mates who have experience in Six Sigma to explain it.

Outcome

Made an offer 138


Rajeev Reddy Accenture

Interviewer Name

Senior Manager, (Resources vertical)

Interview Number

1


Q) Tell me about yourself? A) I was obviously prepared for this, so started off.. background->college (IIT Madras) > ITC Limited -> ISB … After sometime, he said let’s do a case

Case Type

Optimization of supply chain and profitability

Case Question

Case Details : Our client is an Oil field services provider like Schlumberger, who operated in both upstream and downstream side of business. He has currently identified an opportunity to provide a new petro chemical. Tell me how should he go about producing this chemical?


Since I was not from Oil & gas sector, I tried to clarify the question further. I asked him a few more details about what is downstream, what is this new product like : raw materials used, their availability etc His answers were very short and gave a few details it’s a polymer product that can be used in making cans/tins etc. Raw materials for the product would be available in most countries.

Then I asked him about the capacity of the plant that client was planning to setup. He said it was a good question and provided some capacity details. Then I took two min to put down a structure on how we can go about choosing where to locate the manufacturing facility. I started off saying that plant should be chosen to have an optimal cost and lead time to its customers. To understand cost further, I drew a value chain from Raw material -> Inbound logistics -> Manufacturing -> Outbound logistics -> Warehouses -> End customer. I said we will have to look at costs involved at each step of the value chain and calculate the landed cost for the product. I said that we should also look at the risk involved like Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental. I started asking questions about cost of raw materials etc … He was satisfied with the progress and changed the discussion. Now suppose we have chosen a country, say UAE to set up the plant, how would you setup the plant? I said we have two broad options. One is to have an own manufacturing plant, the other is to have an outsourced production. Again I delved into a cost benefit analysis of both the options. I said the direct material cost would almost be the same, whereas the direct/indirect labor and manufacturing overhead costs would be different among these two options. So he asked, tell me how will you estimate these costs? I said the first option is to look at some of our existing manufacturing facilities producing similar products. He said product is completely new for the client. Then I said we will have to gain some competitive intelligence on how others are doing it. I gave a few more options…. What he specifically wanted was “just visit one of outsourced production units” to get an idea of the costs of operation. I was like “oh shit...why did I miss that!


Taking sometime in the beginning to define the problem correctly helped me get into relevant issues. 139

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Having frameworks in your mind of how to approach the case. Practicing a lot of cases helped a lot. Any tips for the future batch



 



Be thorough with all the frameworks that are in the ISB case books. But never make it look that you have mugged up all frameworks and just solving the case mechanically. Engage the interviewer in a healthy discussion. Cover a lot of breadth in your framework and refrain from jumping into details too early. Form a case study group, and make your groups own frameworks on things like Profitability, Market entry, Market sizing, Growth, Mergers & Acquisitions etc.

Outcome

Moved to Round 2

Name of Candidate

Rajeev Reddy

Company Name

Accenture

Interviewer Name

Saurabh Bhatnagar, Senior Manager ; HR Manager

Interview Number

2


Interviewer was ex-ITC, ex-HUL, ISB Alum 2003 batch Q) Let’s talk about the Confectionery category of ITC Foods Business. Why do you think ITC is in this business?

A) ITC started the Confectionery business in 2003 because 





Confectionery was part of the vision of company to be No.1 in FMCG in India. Confectionery was attractive with good growth potential, lot of unorganized sector, not high competition Chance to leverage the tremendous distribution network because of cigarettes division. Gave a few numbers on the reach of ITC in terms of number of retail outlets, revenues etc. Good brand building capabilities – history of creating Wills, ITC welcome group.

Q) What is ITC’s strategy in Confectionery?

I answered saying that ITC wants to leverage its capabilities to become the market leader in confectionery. 

   

Innovative products like Toffichew launched every year to steadily gain market share Backward integration: Sourcing raw materials from e-choupal etc. Outsourced production to keep the manufacturing costs low Deploying technology to optimize the supply chain costs also. It developed offers mint for adults & ‘candyman’ brand for children

Drawing a parallel from southwest case of how, it engaged in many mutual reinforcing activities to support its low cost strategy, I explained how all these factors were mutually reinforcing to differentiate ITC from incumbents in the Confectionery market in India. Q) Tell me about your of working in teams in ITC? I prepared for this answer pretty well.. talked about when I was handling a team of executives in setting up a plant for ITC 140


Case Type

This round, there was no case

Case Question

NA


NA


I think being able to clearly communicate my experience at ITC, relating learning at ISB to ITC experience seems to have worked well


Be very confident about your previous experience

Outcome

Moved to Partner Round

Name of Candidate

Rajeev Reddy

Interviewer Name

Himanshu Tambe, Partner

Interview Number

3


He started by asking a few details about me and my family. Once I told him I am from Hyderabad, he also mentioned that he started his work here in Hyderabad and we talked about how much has changed in Hyderabad in last ten years. Then he gave me a small case about how you would go about identifying the profit drivers in a consumer goods company. I started off with a value chain, said I will analyze the cost of raw material, manufacturing conversion cost supply chain costs and compare it with Industry benchmarks. Then he asked in supply chain, how you calculate the costs. I talked about fixed and variable costs. Variable costs would be the transportation costs from node to node. To understand the inventory pipeline, I would look at the demand pattern, delivery lead time and service quality to calculate the optimal pipeline inventory required at each node of supply chain. This would give an ideal benchmark that can be compared to the actual costs. He was satisfied with the case and moved on to some questions about my work experience from ITC. He asked me to describe a situation wherein I went against the norms and brought about a change in the company. Fortunately I prepared for this kind of question, so explained about a situation wherein I convinced the senior management in company to invest in a radically new manufacturing technology, challenges involved and how I overcome all of them to finally commission this new technology at all the six plants of ITC across India. He moved on to generic questions like why Consulting, why Accenture etc.

Case Type

Small case, already mentioned above.


I think being able to communicate my thoughts very convincingly helped me get through this round


Cases are very logical. They need to be answered in a conversational format and not necessarily in the interview question answer format.

Outcome

Was made an offer to join Accenture 141


Name of Candidate

Meenatchi Jagasivamani

Company Name

Accenture India

Interviewer Name

(ISB Alum)

Interview Number

Round 1


Why did you want to pursue MBA after a long technical career?

Case Type

Market Sizing

Case Question

Estimate the market for light bulbs in Japan in 2012

Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible Any tips for the future batch

Use population as a metric for the number of light bulbs needed; segment based on residential and commercial needs. Specify a growth rate for new buildings year-onyear.

Outcome

142


PWC

143


Name of Candidate

Siddharth Pai

Company Name

Pricewaterhouse Coopers

Interviewer Name

Shyam

Interview Number

Round 1


Tell me something about yourself? I spoke about things not on my resume to bring a different flavor to discussion; I mentioned my love for coffee which is something that Shyam enjoyed as well. What did you do at EY? Spoke about the kind of work I did including my international stints. Then he went on to explain about the role on offer as PwC did not have a PPT.

Case Type

Profitability

Case Question

Your client is an auto manufacturer who has not witnessed any drastic changes to his financial statements for the last three years. What would you tell the client?


I identified certain aspects that I would ask about: -

Profit Change in market share Any new investments undertaken in the last few years Growth Strategy Competitive landscape

Against these parameters I tried to do some benchmarking. I started with market share; market share was stable for the last three years so that was ruled out; then I decided to use the 4 A framework to analyse if we could increase the market share

Awareness

Availibility

Affordibility

Acceptance

Shyam let me amuse myself for sometime and then shot down the idea saying that we could not increase the market share. Then I moved on to profit; the company’s profit was around 10% whereas the industry benchmark (competitor’s profits) was around 20%.

Immediately, we decided to focus on profitability. I decided to use the profitability framework.

144


Profit

Revenue

Cost

Product portfolio

I decided to check the product portfolio to understand what products were being sold and what the margins on each product were. This was done to ascertain whether the company was selling more of less profitable items. Again, I listed down the products (bikes, scooters and mopeds) and identified what the sales pattern was; it turned out we were primarily selling the most profitable items. Hence I determined our sales mix was fine.

Moving on to revenue, I broke it down into Price and Quantity. Since we had already established that the market share was constant I assumed that the quantity being sold was also constant. I asked about how were we priced in the market and was told that it is competitive. Again, I reached the conclusion that revenues seem to be fine and Shyam agreed.

Finally to the costs I broke it down to Fixed and Variable. Regarding the fixed cost I asked if we had undertaken any new fixed investments over the last three years; Shyam mentioned that we had built a new factory. I immediately asked him questions about whether we have recovered that fixed cost or would he like me to calculate the break even time. I further asked him did we pass on this cost to the consumer or did we absorb the cost. Shyam asked me stay away from the break even calculation; so I stopped by saying that out profits would go up as soon we recover the fixed cost of the plant. I took this as a good segue to move to the value chain analysis. I quickly drew the value chain to identify the major cost heads/ drivers.

Raw Materials

Inbound logistics and warehousing

Manufacturing

Sales and distribution

Outbound logistics and warehousing

I started the standard benchmarking analysis to determine what the costs break up is across the heads and was told a break up by Shyam (which I do not remember); also I asked for a competitor bench marking and deduced that the company was lacking in the manufacturing head. Drilling deeper into the manufacturing process I brought up costs like: 145

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 -

Labor costs Maintenance costs Machine efficiency Rentals etc. I also brought up machine utilization

Shyam mentioned that machine utilization was an issue with the company. After then it was a just wrapping the case properly. I spoke about error with demand forecasting or the batch sizes. At this point Shyam asked me to stop.

He then asked me what financial metrics you would look at before making an investment. I listed the following: -

IRR NPV ROIC etc.


Giving the case a good structure right in the beginning.


Practice cases. If you haven’t it shows in the interview and you might be all over the place.

Outcome

Moved to round 2

Name of Candidate

Siddharth Pai

Company Name

Pricewaterhouse Coopers

Interviewer Name

Marc, Partner Human Capital

Interview Number

Round 2


This round was more to check the fit than anything else. Marc started by introducing himself and asked me to do the same; he specifically asked me to focus on my time at Ernst & Young. It was a very generic conversation with Marc where we spoke about what I like to do in my free time. We also spoke about my international stints.

Case Type

None

Case Question

None


NA


Being natural


In HR or fitment interview make sure you keep the interviewer engaged. Research about the company to ask questions; in my case I asked about five questions about the company.

Outcome

Made an offer.

146


Name of Candidate

Aeckarth Malik

Company Name

PwC

Interviewer Name

Anurag (Principal Consultant)

Interview Number

Round 1


1. Tell me something about yourself and run me through your professional experience 2. Personal questions around extra-curricula’s and ELP 3. Why do you want to come back into consulting (I had previous experience in consulting) 4. Situational questions around leadership

Case Type

Market Entry

Case Question

A group of HNI’s (who have expertise in infrastructure development) want to set up a five-star hotel in the city of Gwalior, how would you go about advising them? (the case was specific to my previous industry experience)


I began the case by asking whether the decision to enter the market had been taken or if it was a go / no-go decision that the clients wanted advice on. Anurag told me that the client was certain they wanted to invest in the hospitality sector but which product to invest in (five star, budget hotel, service apartments etc) had to be decided. I followed up by enquiring if they wanted to look at this as an investment opportunity or as a sustainable business model (I picked this up since Anurag mentioned ‘the client was certain they wanted to invest’). The i nterviewer told me that the client had a 5 year horizon in mind. I then asked some generic questions around the trends in the industry, on which I was asked to share my knowledge since I had experience in the hospitality sector. After clearly understanding the problem statement and stating / discussing some fact about the trends in the industry I sketched a framework to arrive at a solution: External Factors

1. Market: growth rate in the market (for assessing future demand in the industry) – was told the market looks attractive and is growing at approx 12 – 13 percent annually. Compared the market growth figures with the returns the investors were looking for. Further questions about the market potential of Gwalior – was told that its predominantly a tourist destination so I assumed that Gwalior does not witness a lot of business travelers (be sure to state your assumptions and cross check with the interviewer if he/she is fine with those assumptions). Asked if there were any regulatory / clearance (risks) which could pose a potential threat to our clients – was told to ignore the regulations 2. Competitors: On asking who our direct competitors would be in the 5 Star category I was told that there is another luxury brand hotel which is part of a very large hospitality chain in India. Asked about the competition in other products ( budget hotel etc) – was told there wasn’t much competition in those segments 3. Customers: Asked questions to understand the type of tourists that visit Gwalior and their preferences of stay, length of visit etc. Anurag mentioned that a majority of tourists are 2 day visitors who stay overnight. Also such tourists prefer staying close to modes of transport (airport / station). I then divided the customers for the hotel in 147

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 different segments based on the revenue generating modes for the hotel:   

Guests (room booking) Dining (restaurant & bar – F&B) Banquet bookings (business & social use)

Finally concluded that decision to open a 5 star will depend on the revenue that can be generated from all 3 revenues streams. 4. Suppliers: I listed down key supplies that are required to run a hotel   

General products (for the kitchen, rooms) Electrical & Mechanical Manpower (human resources)

After a lot of cross questioning Anurag commented that there were apprehensions around being able to recruit the right people to run / work in a 5 start hotel and the competitor (the existing 5 start) definitely had an upper hand because of their own talent pool.

Internal Factors

1. Financial: I began by asking what were the sources of funds for investment and whether investing a smaller amount in a budget hotel / service apartments was a feasible option (financially in terms of returns). Anurag stated the investors had no shortage of funds but returns would depend on the business model. I also evaluated other source of investments that could be compared to the returns generated by the hospitality venture. Anurag then mentioned that I should assume the returns are highest in the hospitality venture. (important to be exhaustive with your options) 2. Exit options: I discussed the possible exit options that the investors would like to evaluate:   

Strategic sell out (to a competitor) Continuing with the business model by expanding (if returns are still high) Sell their own stake to other investor(s)

3. Core Competence: Since the investors had a background in infrastructure investments, running and managing a hospitality investment would require different skills – they could hire a management to run and manage the hotel (costs will increase) Finally, Anurag asked me to conclude the case and give my recommendations. I quickly concluded the main points and recommended that the investors would be better off investing in a budget hotel where traffic of customers would be higher and is placed better to target the customer segment in Gwalior.


1. Through knowledge of the industry I worked in 2. Presence of mind – Anurag gave me a couple of cues that I was able to pick up 3. The case was more of a conversation that went along with the framework I built, hence being able to connect with the interviewer was important


Though frameworks et al are important parts of solving a case, be flexible in your approach and be ready to include / exclude factors based on your judgment. In the middle of solving the case I was suddenly asked ‘what is 23 X 7’ – it’s meant to throw you off guard. So remember not to panic when such surprises come up.

148


Moved to Round 2

Name of Candidate

Aeckarth Malik

Company Name

PwC

Interviewer Name

Marc (HR Director)

Interview Number

Round 2


1. Tell me something about yourself and run me through your professional experience 2. Personal questions about – interests, hobbies, passion (outside work) 3. How do I fit into the culture of PwC 4. What are your expectations from PwC 5. Short term – Long term goals 6. Situational questions 7. Asked to comment on the growth story of India

Case Type

None

Case Question

NA


NA


1. Clarity on the role / company 2. Having an opinion on current affairs 3. Being able to engage in a conversation and keeping my energy levels up (since it was th my 7 interview of the day)


None

Outcome

Moved to Round 3

Name of Candidate

Aeckarth Malik

Company Name

PwC

Interviewer Name

David (Director Strategy)

Interview Number

Round 3 (telephonic interview)


1. Tell me something about yourself and run me through your professional experience 2. Questions on my CV – specific projects I have handled, my role in those projects 3. Challenges I faced at work and how I worked around them 4. Questions related to my skills in financial modeling 5. Instances of my leadership experiences at work and in my personal life

Case Type

None

Case Question

NA


NA 149

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 descriptively as possible What do you think went right/wrong? Any tips for the future batch

Telephonic interviews require you to be very clear and concise in your conversation.

Outcome

Moved to Round 4

Name of Candidate

Aeckarth Malik

Company Name

PwC

Interviewer Name

Shashank Tripathi (Partner Strategy)

Interview Number

Round 4 (telephonic interview)


1. CV base questions – engagements I had done and my role in them 2. Why consulting and why PwC 3. Industry preference (I replied that I was industry agonistic since I knew PwC hires as generalists - do your research about the roles the company offered in the previous years)

Case Type

None

Case Question

NA


NA


I knew my chances of being made an offer were high but I took the last round with the Partner very seriously and kept my energy levels high


None

Outcome

Made an offer 

150


Arjun Sharma

Company Name

PwC Consulting

Interviewer Name

Anurag Saxena

Interview Number

1


1.)Quickly take me through your resume

Case Type

New Market Entry

Case Question

A major Ready-to-Eat player wants to enter the restaurant business? Should it or should it not?


I started by asking what was the rationale behind the decision and what did the company want to achieve. He said that the company wanted to have concept stores so that the customers could taste their product and hence increase trials and customer loyalty.

2.)What did you do in your ELP? This question guided my case. I had done my ELP for a retail company and he chose a case on retail

After this I asked for time to structure the problem. Using the basic market entry model I started asking him questions on 1.)NPV calculations,2.)Macroe calculations,2.)Macroeconomic conomic environment,3.)Competition, environment,3.)Competition, 4.)Regulations,5.)Other marketing avenues Initially we were going in circles on macro stuff and competition but soon he focused me on profitability. Thereon we focused on whether it be worth opening the store versus other options. With this I started to create the income statement for the first year of the restaurant and understand the breakeven figure. After putting in the real estate costs, product margins, estimated volume, labor costs etc we got to a number but at those volume levels the plan would not work and the business would have sapped money. We then briefly discussed on how we could increase volumes (footfalls (footfalls or order amount) and if not then what would be other marketing avenues. That was it. What do you think went right/wrong?

Wrong: Tried to stick to the book initially and do a porter’s. I think what matter’s in consulting interviews is to get the main question right. Right: Right: Brought it down to the right heads in the income statement and and quickly got to the breakeven.


Don’t overdo the frameworks or you would miss the actual question. Also stay calm.

Outcome

Passed to second round which was a basic HR session. Final outcome got selected

151


Avneesh Singh

Company Name

PWC

Interviewer Name

Mr. Shyam

Interview Number

Round - 1


He asked questions related to career progression, why I chose the career path etc. Mostly CV based questions.

Case Type

Profitability case for a 2 wheeler automobile client in India. The case was more on performance benchmarking. benchmarking. During the interview, only the problem statement and the framework to be applied were agreed upon. The two possible frameworks are plain income statement analysis for a quick analysis or a complete value chain analysis for benchmarking. The value chain analysis would involve analyzing each part on various parameters. We mainly discussed various aspects of the framework only.

Case Question

Elaborated above


Elaborated above


Everything was fine. The most important thing was clarity on the question why consulting and why PWC.


Clarity should be there on each statement in the CV. Also, the reason for applying for the role, the fit as one sees it and why that company is important. Clarity should be there on frameworks and be confident to defend them.

Outcome

Moved to the HR round

Name of Candidate

Avneesh Singh

Company Name

PWC

Interviewer Name

Mr. Mark (HR)

Interview Number

Round – 2


Mostly CV based questions and general discussion to understand the organizational organizational fit.

Case Type

None

Case Question

NA


NA


Connecting with the interviewer was very important, especially when you realize that you are being checked for an organizational fit. It was more like “the airport test”.


Connect well, be expressive and clear when talking. Be clear on why you want to join the firm. Research well on what all it does.

Outcome

Was made an offer.

152


Harsha Nallur

Company Name

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Interviewer Name

-

Interview Number

1st Round – Case interview


I was asked to run them through my resume before I was given a case. Most of the questions were regarding my work experience. Since I worked with a startup and in a rather niche sector, the interviewer was keen on understanding the sort of work I had done and he pushed me a bit by saying that it seems to be a lot of responsibilities for 3 years of work-ex.

The HR interview was a general discussion where a senior HR person was evaluating the fit. He had gone through my resume and we had a general discussion about the type of clients I have worked with (govt or private) & the problems associated, my goals, strengths, who am I more comfortable handling – subordinates or seniors, etc. It was a relaxed discussion for 20 – 30 mins. Case Type Case Question

Mid-size IT firm is seeing a loss in profits


After summarizing the question, I asked for some details on the type of firm, its location, etc. Then I started analyzing the loss in profits through the usual approach of (profits = revenues – costs) and then analyzed each of them separately, listing out all the sources of revenue and costs involved. Also I compared these to other mid-size IT firms. The interviewer was pushing me to figure out all the costs involved for a midsize IT firm. Apart from the usual details, I also listed out other factors such as a lull in global economy, currency exchange exchange rates as possible factors. Then I was asked to summarize the case. Took around 30 mins overall.


What went right - I was able to think t hink beyond the usual reasons during the case. I think the HR interview swung it in my favour as I had a great conversation with the interviewer.


Don’t stress out before an interview. Look at it as a good conversation you want to have with someone – in my opinions interviewers would prefer that to a mundane Q&A routine.

Outcome

Successful

153


Deloitte

154


Name of Candidate

Akshay Raizada

Company Name

Deloitte S&O

Interviewer Name

Santosh Anoor

Interview Number

First interview, first round


The interview started on a good note as I had interacted with Santosh during the Deloitte dinner for the shortlisted candidates and he remembered me from that interaction. The PI question were the usual ones, why consulting, short term and long term goals. I was also grilled regarding my background and why do I want to continue working in the consulting industry.

Case Type

Market Sizing

Case Question

Estimate the number of soccer balls in Delhi


It was a regular estimate or guesstimate case. I was a bit nervous as this was my first interview of the day. I tried the usual approach of forming an equation and then estimating each part of the equation but I realized that my equation was not exhaustive. But I covered that up by saying things like we can broaden our sample set by adding other categories/segments. I segmented the target segment into three categories based on customers (Schools, football academies and personal use). Then I went about estimating the potential size of each of these segments. At the end, I reached a fair number and the interviewer agreed with my calculations.


Well overall the interview went well and I was told by the interviewer during the interview itself that I know my stuff well. The only negative was that I was nervous so I didn’t take enough time to think through my estimate case before beginning to solve it.


Both case prep and PI prep are equally important. But what I found to be the biggest positive from my experience was the rapport that I managed to build with the interviewer even before the interview. My suggestion to the next batch would be go for the PPTs and network with the employers. It will help you during your interview for sure.

Outcome

Made it to next round

155


Gaurav Mogra Company Name

Deloitte S&O

Interviewer Name

Don’t remember

Interview Number

1


Had light hearted talk on no. of interviews given in the day. Was relaxed.

Case Type

Revenue & Cost

Case Question

Case contained lot of exhibits and it was increasing the EPS by 3 $. Which then translated to increasing the profits by 300 mn.


1. Broke the problem into revenues and cost and focused on cost reduction. Identified major costs heads, trends and suggested certain strategies to reduce cost. They made me do number crunching and tried to stress me. But was able to connect well with the interviewer and was not really a problem. The case was primarily speaking for itself through exhibits, had to just identify the rights ones. 300 mn was 1% of the total cost and hence it was possible to achieve that reduction


The interview went well.. was selected for the next


Stay calm and exhibit confidence even when you aint getting anywhere.

Outcome

Was given FIF

Name of Candidate

Gaurav Mogra

Company Name

Deloitte S&O

Interviewer Name

Don’t remember

Interview Number

1


Nothing much… introduced myself and went on to case question

Case Type

Operations and Market Estimation

Case Question

Was asked two questions. 1. Develop and solve a DMOP problem (since I said I was comfortable with it).. There are 3 suppliers which can be used to procure a commodity but they offer different prices for different amounts of goods procured. There were capacity constraints and the prices were different. 2. Estimate the no. of commercial planes in the Indian sky right now.


2. Wrote some equations. Then he asked me if It was a linear problem. Since the prices were in buckets drew a matrix for it and explained that the problem is piece wise linear and we need to use a variable to convert it into linear problem. He asked me how can I do it.. and I explained we can use a dummy variable or big M method to write the constraint. Was not very satisfied with the answer 3. Second question was just market estimation of no. of flights in air. Used I = R * T and used the analogy of operations here to inventorize the planes in air. Avg 156

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 no. of flights departing and that landing would give the net R i.e. rate at which flights are taking off. And T would be average time per flight. What do you think went right/wrong?

The interview went well..


Do not say you are comfortable with DMOP if you are not really :

Outcome

Was sent to next round

157


Archana Saseetharan

Company Name

Deloitte Consulting - TS&A

Interviewer Name

Prashant (Partner)

Interview Number

Round1 was PI; Lasted only for <10 mins. Round 2 was case based; Lasted for close to an hour. Round 3 was a short PI - < 5 mins.


Round1 questions:

Case Type

Tech Strategy Case; Asked to play role of consultant and talk to interviewer who played the role of the client. Asked to use white board for analyzing the case.

Case Question

You are consulting for a US Clothing retailer who has major presence in US and Canada. Wants to expand to rest of world and needs a technology strategy for the entire firm in order to support global operations. As of now their Technology systems are very ad-hoc and are designed/scaled up as and when required.


Started by asking the regular questions that probe motivation behind expansion, etc, as we start any general strategy case. But realized this case was not about that. Interviewer asked to just explicitly write down the steps that I would take to help the client. Wrote points like:

“why consulting” “Why deloitte” ; Questions related to work ex; Questions related to technology related processes/systems mentioned in the JD.

* Understanding existing business model *Understanding existing tech systems *Know investment planned for this expansion project *Data collection on industry wide technology systems used *Check compatibility with client’s requirements * Analyze scalability and location specific systems and support *Analyze vendors and pick optimal ones that give required support etc * Do cost -benefit analysis of recommendations and list out risk factors*Set up meeting with client to discuss initial proposal * * Be part of implementation stage * Design training modules for employees to get used to new systems and plan the entire transition phase* Develop metrics to assess the performance/productivity changes etc. After this we discussed about a few specific questions that followed from discussions that came out of the above steps. Eg, how will the systems be implemented centralized or decentralized? ; How will you handle the transition phase - how will you plan the centralized deployment? etc What do you think went right/wrong?

Right: Thought process regarding how to solve the case. Wrong: I once said “Give me a minute to think about this” ; “I don’t understand the retail industry jargon, can u help me understand what is ‘POS machine’ ? Interviewer said “That’s not how consultants talk. You shoul d never buy time explicitly nor you should say I don’t understand your industry”


I guess in such tech strategy cases there is no ‘cracking the case’. Hence everything depends on how we think about structuring the steps involved in solving it, using all tech jargons where ever possible etc.

Outcome

Got FIF after a brief third round.

158


Palash Borah

Company Name

Deloitte

Interviewer Name

-

Interview Number

One


1. Elaborate on work experience 2. A few questions on my undergrad papers

Case Type

None (probability question)

Case Question

What is the probability that the next person who walks into room will have GPA greater than yours?


He kept questioning my logic giving counter examples. He was probably trying to check if the basics were clear or not..


-


-

Outcome

-

Name of Candidate

Palash Borah

Company Name

Deloitte

Interviewer Name

-

Interview Number

Two


1. Elaborate on work experience 2. Apart from studies CCAs etc what did you do in ISB

Case Type

Profitability

Case Question

They wanted me to triple the EPS of a food distributor in the next 3 years.


I was given the case and asked to proceed. Prodded a little on the industry and told them the numbers that would be interesting to look at. Gave me a couple of slides filled with charts and numbers. The rest was just looking at the numbers and charts and making inferences.


-


-

Outcome

-

159


Arjun Mehra Deloitte (S&O)


Round 1


Why consulting? Preference for any specific industries? Why? About my experience in theater and acting.

Case Type

Guesstimate

Case Question

Estimate the demand for rifles (used for shooting as a sport) in Hyderabad


I was asked this question because of my background as a national-level rifle shooter. I began with asking a few questions: -

So we are going to estimate the demand only for people using rifles for shooting as a sport? And we will not be dividing it into types of rifles for the sake of simplicity?

From here on I took the following approach (looked at supply to estimate demand) , assuming a lot of numbers while providing rationale behind the assumptions: -

No of shooting ranges in Indian states; around 2 in and around Hyderabad Average no of shooting lanes in a range No of hours a usual practice session takes No of hours a shooting range is open in a week, then assumed 60% occupancy during weekdays and 80% during weekends This helped me arrive at the no of shooters Divided it by 1.X to reach the no of unique shooters in these ranges Then from my experience started talking about the frequency at which a shooter would buy a new rifle

This is where he stopped me, and began asking other personal questions. What do you think went right/wrong?

I was comfortable talking about the sport because of my experience with it.


You know the possible faults in your assumptions while solving a guesstimate, so state them clearly- in my opinion this shows your awareness and that you will be able to find the faulty assumption if the final answer is strange.

Outcome

Shortlisted for the next round

Name of Candidate

Arjun Mehra

Company Name

Deloitte (S&O)

Interview Number

Round 2


None

Case Type

Operations & Strategy

Case Question

We are the CEO and CFO of a food transportation company. We have experienced significant decline in our profits in the last 2 years. I am the CEO and have promised the Board to increase EPS to $12 in 4 years. 160

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Narration of the case, as descriptively as possible

I tried rephrasing the problem statement to make it simpler for myself. Just asked them the current EPS ($6) and no of outstanding shares (1.5 million), multiplied and stated- so we need to increase the net profit of the firm from $ 9 million to $18 million in 4 years. Their answer was yes, and then I began understanding the business model betterdrew their value chain and understood that they simply buy food/vegetables and supply it restaurants, hotels, etc. Started diving into each of the components and stated probable inefficiencies: -

Procurement: Pricing could be a problem, Quality also Storage: Inventory levels could be too less or much higher than required (also pushed in ops knowledge about safety stock and lead time) Transportation: Logistics issues with fleet maintenance, shortest path, utilization of existing fleet, etc. Demand: Customers perception, demand fluctuations, etc

Once they were satisfied with the breadth I was ready to cover, I began talking about specific issues. Pricing, quality and a few others were discarded. By asking a few more questions, I zeroed in on inventory costs, pilferage, wastage and demand estimation. CEO: But how do these reflect on my P&L statement? Me: Well they increase your COGS and directly impact your gross margins. CEO (to CFO): You never told me that my inventory costs effect my P&L statement! I understood the sarcasm, paused for a moment, and said, I’m sorry, the inventory will be shown in the balance sheet only, not on the P&L statement. But being a perishable product, inventory and wastage are a result of poor demand estimation and wastage will appear as indirect loss on the P&L. This seemed to impress them, and they handed over a sheet of paper to me with 6 different charts. -

Short P&L statement for the last 3 years Competitors and market share Gross margin compared to that of competition Customer segments (platinum, gold, premium)- no of customers Profitability of each customer segment Plan to spend on ops improvement for increase in EPS

I took half a minute to go through all the charts and was pretty sure I didn’t have the time to consume all the information together. So I started speaking out my observations from each of the charts, and what implications it might have on the strategy.

In the end, I simply divided the page into two halves for short-term and long-term strategy. In the short term I suggested keeping a strict control on COGS that were significantly higher than previous years. Suggested this should be done by demand estimation+ standardized procurement+ reducing pilferage. In the long-term, it should take care of the customer segment with highest margins by loyalty programs, long-term contracts, and other fundas of B2B marketing. What do you think went right/wrong?

The fact that I was able to draw insights from all the 6 charts I was shown


You are not expected to be perfect, but it is important to demonstrate zeal to learn. So if you make a mistake while solving a case, respect the experience on the other side of the table and be open to feedback.

Outcome

Received an offer 161


Ernst & Young

162


Sneha Rajan

Company Name

Ernst and Young

Interviewer Name

Don’t remember

Interview Number

Round 1


What is your criteria for choosing consulting as a profession. What challenges have you taken up while in your role in the previous company

Case Type

Market Estimation

Case Question

Estimate the number of ipads sold in India within 18 months of the launch


The distribution strategy of ipads in India within 18 months of the launch and what went right for Apple and what went wrong for Apple.


I came up with an estimation using top down approach and the approach was appreciated by the interviewer. However when asked about another method of estimation I took 2 minutes to think and came up with their distribution stores and how many could be sold approx through each outlet. This was pretty much what was expected.


Keep cool and practice well in case groups for market sizing questions.

Outcome

Moved to round 2

Name of Candidate

Sneha Rajan

Company Name

Ernst and Young

Interviewer Name

Senior Manager- TCE

Interview Number

Round 2


What in consulting makes you want to make a switch from technology to consulting? You can talk to me anything that you are keenly following in the market. Let us take a product such as Kindle and now can you come up with a Bill of materials for the product on the whiteboard?

Case Type

n/a

Case Question

n/a


I was purely tested on my past experience and could come up with a detailed solution for the bill of materials for the product generically.


Preparing for PI is essential and I guess it helped me in this round. I was able to provide a solution on whiteboard in an articulate and readable manner which I think was acknowledged by the Partner


Revise on some core work areas critical to your role previously as it might help in answering

Outcome

Moved to round 3

163


Sneha Rajan

Company Name

Ernst and Young

Interviewer Name

Partner- name do not remember

Interview Number

Round 3


Tell me about Smartphone market globally. Who is leading in market share and why so? How do competitors bridge the gap? Which books do you read? Extensive travel will be required. Are you ready for it? Any markets that you follow? Your opinion on the video gaming market and the War between xbox and Sony?

Case Type

n/a

Case Question

n/a


I described the market share by Apple, RIM, Nokia, Android phones and gave the winner as Apple. Partner verified it in his laptop . I then went on to describe the main revenue drivers that make Apple successful. He nodded in reciprocation and added a point on why he thinks Android is still lagging. About the travel, I acknowledged that I would be fine with it. About books, I mentioned some3 books that were closest to my remembrance.


I was prepared for these questions with exact share numbers for Apple and RIM and Android and hence could comfortably sail through.


Read extensively about the markets in your sector of interest

Outcome

Made an offer

164


Anirudh Kataruka

Company Name

Ernst & Young

Interviewer Name

Don’t remember – he was a Senior Consultant in the Telecom Sector

Interview Number

Round 1


Why consulting and questions on my CV. This interview was unlike other round 1 interviews as they only asked questions about CV/career choice.

Case Type

NA

Case Question

NA


NA


To be honest, I felt I would not move to the next round because he kept on talking about how my CV gives the impression that I am keen on finance, rather than consulting. The interview lasted for 10 minutes.


If your CV reflects interest in a sector other than consulting, be well prepared for questions on your career choice.

Outcome

Moved to the Partner round directly

Name of Candidate

Anirudh Kataruka

Company Name

Ernst & Young

Interviewer Name

Don’t remember – he was a Partner in the Telecom Sector

Interview Number

Round 2


We discussed my work at Inductis and talked about projects at E&Y. Next, he started talking about my ELP and asked me several questions about it.

Case Type

NA

Case Question

NA


NA


The fact that I was well-versed with my ELP industry, and that I added high level points to the discussion which he might not have expected of me.


Be well prepared with any questions around your ELP/projects. Think of what questions a layman could ask, and what someone with superior knowledge about the sector could ask, and prepare answers to all of them.

Outcome

Sent to the HR to discuss offer details

165


KPMG

166


Sahas Gulati

Company Name

KPMG – Sourcing Advisory

Interviewer Name

Sumeet Salwan (ISB founding batch alum, Associate Director), Shubh Thakur (Manager, HR)

Interview Number

3 Rounds


Round 1 (15 mins) - Tell me about yourself. Why the one year gap before joining ISB? Talk about Starbucks’ India strategy. What recommendations did you make? (Based on a point mentioned in the resume. Followed by a number of counter questions)

Why KPMG? Any questions? Round 2 (Over 30 mins) – Describe your work in more detail Talk about an important assignment at work. What did you learn from it? If you want to convince a client to outsource, how would you do it? If a friend of mine wants to estimate the number of footfalls for his frozen yogurt shop in a mall, how should he do it? What sectors do you follow? (Ans: Consumer Tech) Why did Yahoo reject Microsoft’s acquisition offer? (I worked as an M&A re searcher at Capital IQ)

How is Yahoo performing now, and why? What recommendation would you make to Yahoo? Round 3 – Partner Round, telephonic (15-20 mins) Why KPMG? Tell me about yourself When you come on board, what is the biggest challenge you hope to face? Tell me three things about yourself, that will be additive to our practice Any questions? Case Type

Market Sizing

Case Question

If a friend of mine wants to estimate the number of footfalls for his frozen yogurt shop in a mall, how should he do it?


If a friend of mine wants to estimate the number of footfalls for his frozen yogurt shop in a mall, how should he do it?


The interviewers were pretty relaxed, and the pace was conversational. I feel I could have done the market-sizing question better. Probably, what worked were answers to the Yahoo-Microsoft and Starbucks’ questions.


Consulting interviews are not as big a deal as they are often made out to be! Just make sure of the following: Know your story well. Be well read about business etc. (which I was) Practice cases well (Something I did NOT do. And it showed) Be articulate, and structure your answers well.

Outcome

Job Offered 167


Name of Candidate

Siddharth Pai

Company Name

KPMG

Interviewer Name

Do not remember but was an engagement manager and an HR personnel

Interview Number

Round 1


Standard PI questions: 1. Run me through your resume 2. Why consulting 3. What are the other companies you are interviewing with and why KPMG? I was honest and told them about the other interviews I had lined up with EY and PwC. Also, I stressed upon why KPMG -

Primarily because of the work (it was outsourcing advisory: helping companies make outsourcing decisions) Tried to relate to the KPMG values

4. Tell me about a sector you follow? I had a group discussion on FDI in retail and hence decided to speak on that. Spoke for some time about the pros and the cons when the interviewer cut me short and asked me specific questions about what the margins are, what the closing stock prices of a few companies in this sector were. I did not know the answer and told the i nterviewer so. 5. Then I was asked about outsourcing what factors would you consider etc. The class on IT Strategy was very helpful as I was able to bring out some insights as to what the factors are and how the cycle has moved from a more BPO model to a KPO model 6. Any questions for us? KPMG did not have a presentation so asked them more about the role, the kind of clientele and growth in the company. Also, I asked them how KPMG differentiates itself from the other big 4 in the increasingly commoditized consulting space.

Case Type

None

Case Question

NA


NA


What went wrong? Know atleast one sector thoroughly; preferably one where you have worked or the one where you want to end up being.

What went right? -

Be confident of what you say If you don’t know something, say it; instead of stating incorrect facts It is very important to build a rapport with the interviewer, be energetic and 168

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 show enthusiasm Any tips for the future batch

Do a lot of company research to know what the company values and beliefs are. Also ask questions: turn the interview into a conversation rather than a monologue.

Outcome

Moved to round 2

Name of Candidate

Siddharth Pai

Company Name

KPMG

Interviewer Name

Associate Director, Sumeet, ISB Alum founding batch

Interview Number

Round 2


1. Basic PI questions similar to the ones in the first round. 2. Asked me why a most of the outsourcing business is moving from India to the Philippines I spoke about rising labor costs in India; unstable political scenario; unfavorable policies which may hinder entry into India and finally I spoke about how India is transitioning from a outsourcing locale to a place where companies want to setup core R&D operations etc.

Case Type

Guesstimate

Case Question

Estimate the sales of a frozen dessert counter in a mall


I decided to approach the case from the demand side. Asked questions about where the mall is located and what the footfall in the mall was. He asked me to assume something; so I assumed it to be the Ambience mall in gurgaon. Further asked him about competition (in terms of other dessert shops or stalls), was told that there was none. Then I started identifying the target audience. To do this I segmented the people coming to mall as follows: -

-

-

People coming to restaurants or food courts Assumed how many restaurants were there in the mall, took average occupancy and finally took a percentage of people who would want dessert after the meal Shopping Similar analysis: No. of shops; average footfall for the shops (I struggled to come up with a number and Sumeet helped me out) Window shopping Gaming (golfworx etc.) Cinemas Number of screens, number of shows in a day and average occupancy

I did some calculations and was about to come up with a figure and was asked to stop by Sumeet, he seemed satisfied with the assumptions and analysis. I also suggested a supply side analysis of what the capacity of the store could be and then working backwards. What do you think went right/wrong?

In a guesstimate it is ok to think out loud and get clarifications before making assumptions. It is important to cover as many aspects as possible.


Make sure you practice guesstimates; often under-practiced they can get complicated 169

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 batch

if the approach is not right.

Outcome

Moved to partner round

Name of Candidate

Siddharth Pai

Company Name

KPMG

Interviewer Name

Partner

Interview Number

Round 3


A very short interview where he focused primarily on my international work experience.

He had worked extensively in the US and asked me about my stint in New York and Switzerland. Case Type

None

Case Question

NA


NA


Was able to engage him in a conversation.


Make sure you can talk about each and every line of your resume for 5-10 mins.

Outcome

Made an offer.

170


Kanika Chawla PricewaterhouseCoopers

Interviewer Name Interview Number Personal Interview Question

1. Reasons I want to join consulting and how it fits into my career plan 2. Given my background, why I decided to join ISB 3. Why PWC? Etc

Case Type

Operations

Case Question

A two wheeler manufacturer is incurring losses. Need to identify the reason and suggest recommendations.


I initially started with the big picture by asking questions on the market conditions, demand for two wheeler and target market. Interviewer: Demand is stable and their main target market is the Tier 2 cities. Me: How many competitors and how are they doing vis-a-vis our client. Interviewer: Company has two main competitors. All three (including our client) share the market equally but in the last few years our client in incurring losses. Competitors profit is stable. Me: Demand and the overall market conditions are not the reasons for the fall in profit. Moreover, our client looks like a price taker. Therefore, I decided to look at the cost incurred by the company more closely. Interviewer – agreed with my conclusion and asked me to proceed. I made the income statement of the company with clearly stating each of the components and understanding the trend for the company. While discussing the financial statement, we discussed various factors that affect the profitability of the firm such as raw material cost, supply chain, distribution network etc. While discussing the financials, Interviewer pointed out that depreciation for the company has increased over the years. I listed down reasons because of which depreciation can be high like old machinery, tax benefits etc. We discussed the reasons in details and identified that there is excess capacity because of which company is running into losses.


Things that worked for me:


Work on your operations and finance basics meticulously. You will never get a chance to explore such wide range of topics post ISB. So make maximum use of this time.

Outcome

Offered the FIF

I had clarity on my career objective and how I would like to leverage my education at ISB. Secondly, I had worked on my operations and finance concepts. This really helped me in building my points during the case discussion.

171


Siemens Management Consulting

172


Nishant Gupta

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Ashwit Dias

Interview Number

First Round at ISB


SMC is very particular about identifying the right fit of the candidate. The interview was the first round at ISB and if shortlisted for second round, candidates are called to Mumbai. He started with telling me about himself (Ofcourse I knew everything about him from Linked In and the SMC website ) He then asked me a lot of PI Questions. Most of them were standard PI Questions. I don’t remember all of them, but listing some of them here: 

   

 



Tell me about yourself – a very important question. You need to add a bit of personal touch here. It shouldn’t be about telling your resume again What do you think you will fit into SMC? Why should I not hire you? What SMC? What do you know about culture at SMC? – this was probably because culture was one of my points in Why SMC  What do you know about culture at Siemens? Give me an instance where you have been at loggerheads with higher management in your previous company You have worked in New York with people from many cultures, how did you handle them?

Case Type

Market Entry and Guesstimate

Case Question



It was a very standard market entry case – the framework for which is given in casebook 2010. Once I put the structure in, he looked satisfied and wanted me to estimate the market size. You can attack a Guesstimate question by supply or demand. This was to be solved using the demand side. NG: There would be 3 types of customers: 1. Residentials 2. Commercials 3. Industrials Also, we need to look at new constructions only. I then laid out the formula (assuming infinite shelf life): #Fire detectors = Area of new construction*No. Of fire detectors/square feet I now didn’t know what to do, so I just asked him – do you know the constructions happening in each of these 3 sectors every year?

AD: At this he smiles and says that would be too simplistic right. What would you do to get this information? NG: I would go to the government of India and ask them for this information AD: GOI doesn’t have this information

NG: I would then go to the big construction companies like DLF, GVK etc and ask them for information 173

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 AD: Ok , there are realty agents who can provide you this information. Now what? NG: Do we know the fire detectors per square feet for each of them separately? He then gave me some numbers and I did the math AD: What if I tell you that you are off by 90% NG: Let me recheck the math AD: Your math is fine NG: I guess not all residentials, commercials and industrials would be putting the fire detector as the litigation in India is not that strong. So that would bring a factor of penetration in all of these AD: Thats right. If you have to guess which sector would have the highest and which one is the lowest, what would you guess NG: I think residentials would have the lowest penetration because of minimal risk and industrials would have the highest penetration AD: Thats right He then gave me the penetration numbers and I did the math again (it was correct again thankfully )


I think case was average, but the PI part went really well. I was thoroughly prepared with all the PI questions, so it really helped. I am probably repeating what you guys have heard from other seniors before, but PI is as important as Case practice. Another thing that went well was the questions I asked him in the end. SMC has detailed profile of all people on its website and you of course have Linked In. I know Ashwit was from GE, so I asked him couple of questions regarding Siemens and GE. I got him really engaged in the conversation.


Focus heavily on PI preparation atleast for SMC. The fit is very important.

Outcome

Shortlisted for second round in Mumbai

Name of Candidate

Nishant Gupta

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Rohit Kumar

Interview Number

All of us had to compulsorily appear for 4 interviews at their Mumbai office


There was no case in this interview. It was a role play interview and lasted 60 minutes. Rohit is a very chilled out guy and put me at ease in the beginning itself. He first told me about himself in brief and then started with the interview. Some of the questions he asked were: Tell me about yourself Tell me a situation when you faced a difficult client. How did you handle him? Tell me about your work at Inductis – this question went into a lot of detail He also asked me about my entrepreneurial ventures in detail and why I don’t do and join them 174

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 He then started with the Role Play. Siemens Head of Energy has hired you as a consultant and want you revaluate the guesstimate of transformers given to you by the Head of Siemens Energy India. This is your first meeting with him, how would you go about it? This went on for about 15-20 mins and he was being a really tough client. I think I did ok and managed to not piss him off. Case Type

Market Entry and Guesstimate

Case Question



It was a very standard market entry case – the framework for which is given in


I think I did well in the roleplay. Again my PI questions were prepared well, so that was also a plus. The thing that went well was the questions I asked him in the end. I asked him about his entrepreneurial experience. He was surprised at this question because he had not told me this in the beginning. I told him that I got it from Linked In. He was visibly impressed and went on to talk about it in detail. SMC believes a lot in feedback. After every interview they tell you how it went and how I could improve. Rohit told me that he liked interacting with me but I probably need to get to the point sooner.


You can’t really prepare for a role play – but you need to be firm as well as polite

Outcome

NA

Name of Candidate

Nishant Gupta

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Katharina Beumelberg

Interview Number

All of us had to compulsorily appear for 4 interviews at their Mumbai office


Katharina is a partner at SMC, so I knew this was the big one. She asked me one PI question (which I don’t recall ) and went straight to the case.

Case Type

New Product Entry

Case Question

Case was about the grid technology and whether Siemens should enter into it


She spent about 10 mins explaining what grid technology was. I then laid out the new product entry framework and she was visibly impressed with the structure. From then on it was more like brainstorming where she kept on asking questions and I kept on answering them. I think it was a pretty tough case and my answers to her adhoc questions impressed her. At one point she even said “I wonder why our team didn’t think of this solution before”, so I guess the case went well . I don’t remember our discussion, so not putting all the details here.


I think I did well in the initial framework. She kept on asking adhoc questions, which I think went well as well. In the end she gave the feedback that I probably need to be more structured. I think she wanted our discussion to be more structured as well but it wasn’t that big a deal. There was no time to ask questions as we had to leave for lunch immediately. 175


Even during normal discussions, people look at structures, so make sure that your entire conversation remains structured especially with the partners

Outcome

NA

Name of Candidate

Nishant Gupta

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Stefan Hegemann

Interview Number Personal Interview Question

Stefan had come to ISB campus for the PPT. From the PPT I could make out he is a fun loving guy and same thing happened during the interview as well. He said that all your PI questions have been covered earlier, however there is one question we need to ask you further: What is your salary expectation? Now this was a question I was not prepared for, so I said that I don’t have a number in mind and that you would have some set policies based on which you would decide the number. However, he kept on probing me and I finally gave him a number. We then went to the case

Case Type

Number based case

Case Question

A windmill blade can either be purchased from China or made in India. I had to evaluate the 2 options


Stefan had thrown in a bunch of numbers in the beginning and you had to really sieve through them to get useful data. But overall, it was a straightforward case. All I needed to do was to make sure that my math was correct which happened to be the case . Stefan didn’t provide any feedback and there was no time to ask him any questions as we had already exceeded 45 minutes.


The case went well. I did the math correctly


Salary expectation is also a common question that is very commonly asked in many interviews, so make sure that you are prepared with this question. Go slowly when the case is a number based case to make sure that your math is correct

Outcome

NA

Name of Candidate

Nishant Gupta

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Nagesh Goel

Interview Number Personal Interview Question

This was my last interview. I had done reasonable well in the 3 interviews till then, so I knew that if I don’t screw this one badly, I stood a very good c hance of getting through. There were no PI questions initially, but in the end Nagesh asked me some very tricky questions:  

Rank the interviews based on your performance What was the feedback provided to you at the end of each interview and how did you implement it in the next round? 176


What were the good points and bad points in each of your interviews?

What is your salary expectation? Now this was a question I was not prepared for, so I said that I don’t have a number in mind and that you would have some set policies based on which you would decide the number. However, he kept on probing me and I finally gave him a number. We then went to the case Case Type

Entrepreneurial Case (which is another of saying that there was no set framework for the case )

Case Question

The CEO of Siemens Maintenance wants to increase the revenues from current $50 MM to $250 MM in 5 years. How can he do it?


Following are the details of the case: Me: May I know the current sources of revenue for Siemens Maintenance Him: There are 4 sources of revenue – Maintenance of Steam Turbines, Wind Turbines, Gas Turbines and Operations Me: May I know how much revenue we make from each of these streams? Him: We make all our revenue from Maintenance of Steam turbines Me: What is our market share in Steam Turbine Business? Him: About 20% Then I asked a couple of useless questions which I don’t recollect.

Me: What kind of turbines do we service in case of Steam turbines? Him: We serve only the machines manufactured by Siemens (This is a very key point in this case which Nagesh told me later) Me: Can we serve the steam turbines made by our competitors? Him: No Me: What is the revenue that we would be making from Steam turbines business after 5 years? Him: $100 MM Me: Does Siemens manufacture Wind and Gas Turbines? Him: Yes Me: Why are we not able to service them? Him: Our main client is NTPC and currently BHEL services them. You can ignore the Operations part right now After a lot of back and forth questions, I came to know that Siemens had sold the design of their gas and wind mills to BHEL because they thought that they would not enter the service market in India. Siemens is not able to start servicing the turbines because their cost structure and hence their prices are higher compared to BHEL. The reason their cost structure was so high was that they got technicians from Germany and they should rather look at training Indians.

He then wanted me to figure out what should Siemens do to capture market share from BHEL apart from the cost aspect. I suggested that they can sell new turbines and replace the old ones. Nagesh then told me that turbines are huge structures which th can’t be replaced that easily. I had run out of steam by that point (being the 4 177

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 interview and a complicated case), so I could not come up with any solutions. At this point he ended the case and then asked the questions I have listed above. What do you think went right/wrong?

I started well in this interview. The intial questions were spot on, but I was lost in the end. Overall, I think this was my worst interview by far. But I guess the fact that I had done well in my first 3 interviews helped me.


In case you get random PI questions in your interview, then it is always advisable to ask for 30 seconds to think about your answer. Also, be prepared to come across a never heard off case. It all boils down to be able to think at the spot

Outcome

Made an offer 

178


Neha Khandelwal

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Stefan Hagemann, Project Manager

Interview Number

1


Apart from usual CV based questions, one very good question that Stefan asked was – Right from your metric you must have had choices at every stage of your education and professional life, briefly describe why you made those choices?

Case Type

Data Interpretation Type – non typical

Case Question

Process flow of recruitments in one of the Siemens group companies


Was given a bar graph showing the filtering of candidates from application to the joining stage. Stefan wanted me to understand the graph and pick out three stages which were least efficient and suggest process improvements.


I think, Stefan was looking for balanced candidates with both good people skills and case analysis. We had a great discussion about India, Indians and why I have great respect for my last employer.


SMC needs people who are honest and have good people skills. Please be honest to the interviewer and be confident about your answers. Speak your heart out, it worked for me in the first round.

Outcome

Moved to next stage for interviews in Bombay office

Name of Candidate

Neha Khandelwal

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Nagesh Goyal, Senior Consultant

Interview Number

2


Loads of them a) Explain you past experience, one of the major successes and one of the major failure b) What drives you to go to office every day? How would you describe your last employer (good points and bad points?) c) Why ISB? Why finance major? Your favorite subject and why? d) Now that you are an MBA, go back one year and pick up any one of your project and describe how would you do it differently?

Case Type

None

Case Question

None


N/A


Nagesh was looking for someone who was succinct and good communications skills. He did not seem to appreciate long, convoluted answers. I spoke to the ISB alum to find out more about interviewer’s personality types and that really helped.


Not anything specific. Make sure that you know your strengths, weaknesses very well. What are your qualities, what inspires you and a lot of such personality based questions. 179

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 You should know a bit about Siemens, but there is no need to mug up annual reports and details etc. Outcome

Next round

Name of Candidate

Neha Khandelwal

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Katharina Beumelberg , VP SMC

Interview Number

3


Six of us who were shortlisted for interviews in Bombay had lunch with Katharina. So my interview was just after lunch, PI questions were more of an extension of the discussion we had over lunch. a) Why women avoid consulting as a career. What are her plans to make the SMC culture more conducive for women employees? b) Why consulting? And what are my long term goals? c) How do you deal with conflict management? Key takeaways from your people management role. What was the most difficult part while I was managing people? d) What not there in your CV? – Guys this is a very important questions, I was asked this question in pretty much 80% of the companies I interviewed for.

Case Type

Market Entry

Case Question

Siemens has recently designed a smart grid. Which country they should first target and why?


a) What are the key factors which are important for smart grid? What are the top countries for each of those factors. Narrow down the list to 3-4 countries. What are the key indicators required for you to decide whether you would make an entry to country X and how would you go about doing it?


Katharina was very focused on how one structures the case, what questions you are asking? And whether you are listening to the question and the answers carefully. I was making notes after every case interview as to what went well and what not – she really appreciated that. She also appreciated the fact that I did not try to force fit any framework and was trying to first understand the problem statement.


SMC would never give you a plain vanilla case question. They look for someone who has better analytical skills and has a structure in solving any case. You might not be able to put any framework, so do practice some off track simple and analytical reasoning based cases.

Outcome

Next round

Name of Candidate

Neha Khandelwal

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Ashwin Dias – Project Manager

180


4


More of CV related questions, about projects etc

Case Type

Sorry .. don’t remember !

Case Question

-


-


-


PI is as important as case preparation. You should be able to talk well about yourself and your CV. Don’t over practice cases, as soon as you realize you are getting towards a structural way of thinking in your case. Its s good time to do some cases, but do them more effectively.

Outcome

Next Round

Name of Candidate

Neha Khandelwal

Company Name


Interviewer Name

Rohit Kumar, Senior Consultant

Interview Number

5


Not many, just wanted to know more about what I would like to do in my free time. What are my career expectations etc

Case Type

Profit – Loss

Case Question

Analysing whether Siemens should shut down a subsidiary firm or continue


Rohit had given me a graph after some initial questions, which basically showed the annual performance of the company over last few years and what are the future expectations. There were some quantitative analysis needed to be done on market, company and competitors. There were certain option for which cost –benefit analysis needed to done to understand if it makes sense to continue with the subsidiary.


I was dead by this time, as this was 4th case interview without any break. So yaa I did not do very well… but I guess Rohit was more looking for the set of questions I was asking. So guess he was happy with my basic analysis on case and the PI


-

Outcome

Got the offer 

181


Prashant Kr Gupta Company Name


Interview Number

Case + PI


So tell me why are you here today? I was thrown off on this question in 2 interviews ! I still do not have a nice answer to this question. The best I could muster for this is “I am here to interview with you for the position of xx and interact with you.” Introduced himself at length, this guy had worked with L&T and then INSEAD MBA. We will structure this interview into 2 parts: First you walk me through your resume and if I have anything to ask I will interrupt and then we move to the case. I started with my resume highlights, graduation, Schlumberger, Evalueserve and ISB. He asked me about the switch from Computer Sc -> Schlumberger and then Schlumberger -> Evalueserve. Explained Why do you want to join SMC? I explained how SMC culture is similar to SLB culture and how my personality is best suited for it. After evaluating couple of industries I want to join line management which is exactly what SMC provides. So why not other consulting firms and why not directly line management? Friends and family tell me Siemens is a great place to work. A switch from consulting firm to another firm is avoidable at Siemens, you remain in the same culture. Unsure of industry at the moment hence would like to try out different industries before committing. Which other firms are you interviewing with? I named only a select few, which I knew that the interviewer was expecting. Tell me about your biggest failure, since you have worked more in Schlumberger so we can talk about that only. I gave an unsuccessful bid which he did not accept as personal failure. Then I gave him a personal failure which was due to neglect. How did you explain that to your superior? I really did not have to because the situation was historically known for such neglects. But yes from that movement onwards I had a post-it on my desk reminding me of such small possible mistakes. Tell me of a situation where you faced an ethical dilemma and how did you overcome it? Explained What do you think are your transferrable skills that you can put to work at SMC? Hard working, initiatives, team work, leadership, cultural sensitivity Explain culture sensitivity, why do you think it is important and give me an example of things that you think you have learnt and you can put to work? I hadn’t prepared this answer very well, but I managed it well..

Tip -> Prepare this aspect well ahead if you are highlighting international exposure to 182

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 SMC. Culture is really important for Siemens. Case Type

Market Estimation – Steel Billet Casters

Case Question

Since you have done a study on copper market estimation while you were at Evalueserve, let us do something similar. Siemens has a heavy industries division in India and they need to understand how many steel billet casters do they need this year.


I asked for clarification on the product as I did not know what a billet caster is. We started with what is required to estimate the number of steel billet casters are required: 1) We need to know the demand of steel in the country 2) how much of the demand is in the form of steel billets (there are other forms of steel as well like sheets etc which we will dis-regard) 3) what is installed capacity in the country and if there is a requirement? 4) existing competition 5) any information on new competition Interviewer: Lets evaluate each of them. How will you evaluate the Demand of Steel Since I had done the copper market through Bottom up. I went on explaining the same. Interviewer: Luckily, the Steel Authority in India maintains pretty good record of steel usage in India. So may we can use that data directly. Later on asking he also told me that the installed capacity is running at 100% utilization. The usage recorded last year was 90,million tonnes. An increase of 10% per annum is a good approximation. All of this is in the form of billets. No competition. So we need casters to produce 9 million tonnes. On asking about the capacity of a caster: I was told that there are 2 kinds of casters, small which produces 100,000 tonnes / annum and big which produces 300,000 tonnes/annum. --- IMPORTANT --Me: Do we know the percentage distribution of these two casters? How many are big & how many small? Interviewer: the bigger casters produce 40% BY VOLUME of the billets and the rest is produced by the smaller casters. --- please note the difference in language. Question was asked for distribution in number of units, answer was in volume--1) Smaller casters: 0.6*9 / 0.1 = 54 small casters 2) Bigger caster: 0.4*9/0.3 = 12 big casters


Blunder: I missed the “BY VOLUME” distribution and calculated as if 40% of all casters were big and hence my answer differed.

Good things: PI went really well, I was able to define a fit Any tips for the future batch 183


Other Firms Name of Candidate

Shiva

Company Name

Global eProcure

Interviewer Name

Don’t Know

Interview Number

1st round


Little bit about work ex, and then directly into the case

Case Type

Profitability Analysis (Business Model)

Case Question

A company in capital goods industry (Say trucks) is experiencing lower profit numbers YoY.


The company is losing market share (in terms of revenue) in a market that’s shrinking. Meaning, competitors were gaining market share in a shrinking market.

Soln: Market shrinking due to recession, so customers were no longer buying capital goods but started leasing it. All competitors entered the leasing business model, but the company was still sticking to “sell only” model leading to a loss in market share What do you think went right/wrong?

Since this case was more about concept than numbers, the conventional approach to crack dint work. But the interviewer gave hints at appropriate instances to help you get there.


Most cases are Profitability types.

Outcome

Moved to Round 2

Name of Candidate

Shiva

Company Name

Global eProcure

Interviewer Name

Raja

Interview Number

2nd round


Why GeP. Are u comfortable working in niche consulting, smaller company etc. Questions for me.

Case Type

Profitability Analysis

Case Question

A company is losing profitability YoY


The company’s YoY COGS, SGA & interes t payments as % of sales remained same YoY. The dip in profitability was due to higher tax numbers YoY due to govt regulations. I was asked to suggest a solution to this problem. The solution was to move production to SEZ areas in the long term.

184

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 What do you think went right/wrong?

I almost got to the solution, though dint crack it. But the interviewer dint bother too much as he was only looking at the thought process and structure.


Do some research on the company and make sure you do not stick to a particular structure to solve cases. Some of the cases they give requires a broader understanding of the problem

Outcome

Selected

Name of Candidate

Shrini Ravindran

Company Name

Schneider Electric

Interviewer Name

NA

Interview Number

Round 1


Tell me about yourself. Prior experience. Why Schneider Electric? Why strategy? Have you ever had any crystal-ball gazing experience before? before?

Case Type

Business expansion

Case Question

We want to grow the number of our point of sale (POS) outlets to 80% from the present 50%. How would you go about doing this?


This case was unique in the manner that I was asked to go back to my room, solve it and show the solution sometime during the day when asked for. The solution involved splitting the POS into various buckets and deciding based on the situation and possible outcomes of pulling the various levers. There was no data at all and it was quite open ended.


I had some prior experience of the distribution system adopted by companies like Schneider Electric and so was able to understand the problem quicker.


If faced with an unfamiliar situation just think logically, state your assumptions and go on.

Outcome

Went through to the 2nd round.

Name of Candidate

Shrini Ravindran

Company Name

Schneider Electric

Interviewer Name

NA

Interview Number

Round 2 (Telephonic)


Why ISB? What have you learnt? Why don’t you go back to your previous organization?

Case Type

Costing; Business expansion

Case Question

1) Can you name all the cost components of a bottle of packaged mineral water? 2) If your previous organization wants to increase market share, what would you advise it to do?


1) This was a costing question where one needs to list the various fixed and variable costs. Not as simple as it sounds though! 185

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 2) This dealt more with the switchgear industry. Fairly open ended. Since it’s a market share increase case it would start with the present competitive scenario and then drill down further. I just went logically step-by-step. What do you think went right/wrong?

It can get quite tricky to communicate have an interview over the telephone. Thankfully things went smoothly.


Some companies that are not consulting companies also have case interviews. For such companies, read up as much as you can about the industry they are in. There is a good chance that the questions would pertain to that industry.

Outcome

Went through to the 3rd round (HR)


Sapna Jeslani Concept Management Consulting


1

Personal Interview Question Case Type

Finance

Case Question

A real estate company is looking for equity financing for its planned residential project in Noida. You are made responsible for equity and debt syndication for the project. How would you determine the capital requirements? What would be the considerations of the lenders vis a vis v is equity investors?


Capital Requirements: Requirements : 1. Find the t he total project costs and the expected timeline of investments. 2. Identify the potential fund raising sources. For e.g down payment and staggered payment by the buyers of the residential plots, potential real estate lenders like HDFC etc, potential equity investors like REITs. 3. Determine the optimum debt ratio (capital structure) and $ value of investment through each source of fund raising. 4. Make investor presentations for fund raising and sign agreements.

Debt lenders considerations considerations:: Interest coverage ratio, debt service coverage ratio and Debt to Equity ratio Equity investors considerations considerations:: IRR What do you think went right/wrong? Any tips for the future batch

Cases are very logical. They need to be answered in a conversational conversational format and not necessarily in the interview question answer format.

Outcome


Prashant Kr Gupta Amazon – BOLD (operations role) 186




1) Do you know about the role? 2) Tell me about yourself 3) Why amazon? 4) Tell me your 2 strengths 5) Tell me your weakness 6) Situational Question: Imagine you are managing a team of 20 people where 40% are women. A group of men from a small team come to you and complain about Richa that her perfume fragrance is disturbing. If nothing is done about it, they will not be able to meet the targets. After I answered the interviewer role played and enacted as if he was Richa. We went through a conversation. conversation. After the role play he asked if I was given more time would my response be different NO

Case Type

Weird question – no classification

Case Question

Imagine you are manager of a facility and one of your regular customers ordered a diamond ring worth $30,000 day before yesterday. The ring was not delivered as of today (2 days after the order) and Amazon has a 3-day delivery guarantee. The customer writes an email to Jeff Bezos and he in-turn forwards the email to you for action. You now have to deal with the situation and then write an email to Jeff explaining him the situation.


I wrote down the steps as follows: 1) follow up internally as to where the ring is and what is the earliest the ring can be delivered to the customer 2) call up the t he customer, listen to his complaint. Apologise Apologise for the inconvenience caused and assure him that the delivery be made in 24 hours 3) if the original ring cannot be delivered, source another ring and get it delivered on priority 4) write an email to Jeff explaining him that you have followed up with the customer and you are resolving the delivery issue. Also you will find out why the delivery was delayed and improve the process where needed 5) follow up with customer after the delivery is made 6) email jeff again to tell him that the ring has been delivered and issue is closed at the client end. He then asked me to write the actual email to jeff.

What do you think went right/wrong? Any tips for the future batch

187

ISB Casebook – Class of 2012 Prashant Kr Gupta Name of Candidate Company Name

Amazon – BOLD (operations role)

Interview Number



1) Walk me through your resume 2) Why did you join Evalueserve? 3) What did you do in your project at Evalueserve?

Case Type

Work force Estimation

Case Question

1) You are the facility manager and you have a meeting with the project manager in 2 hours. Your firm is launching a new top of the class mobile phone and the company is trying to ascertain how many work benches are needed in the customer support center that they will be setting up to support the new mobile phone? You need to ascertain capacity that will sail us through to next year 2) You are the in charge of the Fulfillment center at Amazon. Each fulfillment center has a certain number of ducts to load the trucks. Installing these ducts is expensive and hence we need to optimize the number of ducts. How many ducts do we need? 3) You are the customer service manager at Amazon and you have to choose between 3 centers A, B & C to outsource email & phone support. Each location has a cost of servicing customer via two medium and a satisfaction level. All 3 facilities are capable of handling 100% of the traffic on both mediums.


Case 1: 1) figure out the number of units to be sold – 150,000 units per annum 2) how many people will need assistance 15% for the first 30 days and then it will steadily decline to 2% at the end of 3 months from the date of purchase 3) average duration of each call is 8 minutes Calculate the number of calls at the end of 12 months: 150000/12 = 12500 per month sold Number of calls, c = 0.15*12500 + 0.085 * 12500 + 0.02*12500*10 Number of minutes, m = c * 8 Number of executives = m/(30*24*60) Now assume that 80% of the traffic comes during 4 am to 8 pm Case 2: 1) number of items to be shipped out each day = 2 million 2) each truck can take upto 5000 items 3) it takes about half an hour to load each truck number of trucks to be loaded in 24 hours = 2 million / 5000 = 400 in 24 hours with 1 duct u can load 48 trucks…

number of ducts required = 400/48 Now assume that 80% of the orders come in during 4 am to 8 pm and they need to ship out in 3 hours of order received. Case 3: 188

ISB Casebook 2012

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