Co2008 Consulting Case Book and Sample Resume

ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

ISB Consulting Club Class of 2008 Case & CV Book

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

Introduction

The Consulting Club at The Indian School of Business presents the Case and CV book Class of 2008 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 consulting firms. The aim of sharing these experiences is to inform the future batches about the student experiences and to help them prepare for consulting placements. Kindly note - not all of those who accepted the final offers have been able to contribute to the book - there are some contributors who had multiple offers and have noted their interview experiences with other firms which they may have declined - there are some contributors who have noted interview experiences in which they did not make it to the subsequent round - The list of students who took up the final offer is available in the consulting club orientation PPT and is not included here These interview accounts are not necessarily the optimal way in which one should handle consulting interviews. Their only purpose is to share actual experiences. Every individual will have his / her own unique way of tackling consulting interviews. The last section of this document contains the CVs of students who were willing to share their CVs with subsequent batches. These could serve as a reference and will hopefully help subsequent batches in making their CVs. All contributions to this document are by students who received offers from consulting firms on campus. The interviews experiences are sorted firm wise while the CVs are sorted in alphabetical order. Don’t be scared by the size of the book. It is well referenced and the easy to use contents page should make navigation easy. You can pick and choose which firms / alums interview experiences you want to read through. Thank you to the contributors from the Class of 2008 for helping in making this book. Please feel free to reach out to the alumni via the alumni portal. Our contact details are uploaded on the website All the best! Hardik Manek President, Consulting Club- Class of 2008

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

Table of Contents Case Interviews Accenture Jatin Gulati………………………………………………………………………...6 Kaustubh Verma…………………………………………………………………..7 Rahul Mishra……………………………………………………………………..12 Rohit Malhotra…………………………………………………………………...18 Alvarez & Marsal Manju Rajanikantha……………………………………………………………...23 Samir Desai………………………………………………………………………24 AT Kearney Supriya Singh…………………………………………………………………….28 Vignesh Shankar…………………………………………………………………34 Booz Allen Hamilton Manik Gupta……………………………………………………………………..42 Boston Consulting Group Ankit Garg……………………………………………………………………….45 Ankush Wadhera…………………………………………………………………47 Harsh Singhal…………………………………………………………………….52 Jitesh Shah……………………………………………………………………….57 Manik Gupta..........................................................................................................68 Neha Kalra……………………………………………………………………….69 Shiva Agarwal……………………………………………………………………75 Diamond Consultants Pradyot Anand…………………………………………………………………...81 Ernst & Young Charu Agarwal…………………………………………………………………...85 Gaurav Bagaria…………………………………………………………………..86 Madhur Malik.......……………………………………………………………….89 Pankaj Singh……………………………………………………………………..91 Roumi Gop……………………………………………………………………….92 Sanjay Sharma…………………………………………………………………...96 Sumit Kumar……………………………………………………………………..99 KPMG Divyanshu Gautam……………………………………………………………101

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

McKinsey & Co Achint Setia……………………………………………………………………..105 Amit Jain………………………………………………………………………..114 Chitra Raghunath……………………………………………………………….117 Manik Gupta……………………………………………………………………121 Neha Kalra……………………………………………………………………...123 Neha Mittal..........................................................................................................129 Nitin Kashyap......................................................................................................136 Pankaj Gupta........................................................................................................145 Pradyot Anand.....................................................................................................153 Varun Khullar......................................................................................................155 Oliver Wyman Abhishek Chandra................................................................................................165 Manik Gupta……………………………………………………………………172 Vikas Garg……………………………………………………………………...173 Parthenon Abhinav Mital…………………………………………………………………..177 Viren Pereira……………………………………………………………………181 PWC Shyam Subramaniam…………………………………………………………191 Value Partners (merged with Spectrum Consulting) Kabilan Sukumar……………………………………………………………….194 ZS Associates Abhay Mehrotra………………………………………………………………...198 Deepak Chembath………………………………………………………………202 Resumes (26 in total)…………………………………………………………………..206

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Jatin Gulati Accenture Don’t Remember… He was a manager from IIM-B’s class of 2000 or 2001.

Round Two There were a few themes that the discussion revolved around and two of these captured most of the interview. Firstly, he grilled me on why did I not get a shortlist from McKinsey despite working there for 3 years. I explained the parameters they say they would judge a CV on and where I think I might not have made the cut. He was very aggressive in this discussion and was trying to grill me on this. I stuck to my stand and tried to be analytical in my approach. One interesting thing that he was doing was to come up with different hypotheses for this, all of which were of course quite uncomfortable for me. All I did in response to this was to not get bogged down and hold my nerve. The second issue that he grilled me on was why do I want to do consulting and not i-banking. This question arose because of the fact that I have completed 2 levels of CFA charter and most of my work experience is related to finance topics. This was the issue where he went really aggressive and the discussion was indeed very long. I only stuck to my stand and explained in different ways why I made this choice. An important thing to note here is that I intentionally never told him of my I-banking shortlists and spoke only about the other consulting firms that I am interviewing with. He gave me a situation where I have to make a choice between three consulting offers that I have (hypothetical) and asked me to create an issue tree analyzing this situation. I was asked to create the chart and communicate the same in 2 minutes. Non-Business case Frankly, issue trees are ambiguous in the sense that you can cut the problem any which way and I made a 3 level issue tree. Don’t think I should give the one that I made here as benchmark because its easy to make any issue tree and then defend it. I presented the tree and the interviewer seemed to like how I did it. He raised a point that I missed incorporating information about the future direction of the firm and I agreed and adjusted my analyses promptly. The theme of the interview was to test how I react when put under pressure and I think the way I responded to it is what clinched the interview for me. I think the interviewer was very aggressive in his questions and tried to make the questions as uncomfortable as possible for me.

One learning that I would want to leave out of this experience is that it works better if you take a stand and are hard on that throughout. Just hang-in, by using different arguments possible or even repeat the same arguments in different ways but its important to just hang-in. For example, on the consulting vs. I-banking issue, there were moments when he dominated the discussion so much that I could have shifted my stance a bit but in hindsight that could have been fatal. Offer made

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Kaustubh Verma Accenture Ganesan Ramachandran

First A detailed description about Accenture and what do they do and the various consulting verticals. Then he asked me a bit about my background and told a bit about himself. Then he offered me Chewing Gum and asked me to relax and get cracking at the case. This was hence a very short introduction and the main emphasis had to be on the case. There is a factory. The transportation company charges the factory owners as long as their trucks stay in the factory area. Costs are rising due to this. How do you account for this problem? Operations This case was asking me to analyze I would have asked questions to understand the kind of products this factory makes and stuff but he told me to attack the core issues immediately a) What can be the internal issues due to which trucks stay in the premises overtime? This could be broken down into - No preparation by the warehouse - No space in the warehouse - Shortage of tools and materials to unload Point no. 1 can be broken down into why there is no preparation by the warehouse personnel. One can analyze that there may be no communication between procurement division and store manager and the store manager may not know what he is getting, how much is he getting and at what time. The other reason can be that the truck is entering the premises with the wrong items (contrary to what was ordered) Point no. 2 can be broken down into several inventory management issues. Demand estimation, service cycle levels and are they reasonable and things like that. Basically a whole lot of OPMG from term 3. Point no. 3 is what do they use to upload. In this case the labor was fine but then there was a problem with the pallet availability. Pallets can be unavailable because they are procured from a vendor with high lead time. b) What can be the external factors that influence increase in costs?

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this

Are these the only transporters? Can we get better rates from another transporter Are these transporters getting the right material in and what is the damage rate of the items brought in The interviewer was extremely chilled out. I regained composure after an initial hiccup. All in all the key thing was me being cool as the case was very simple. I was still not as cool as I would have liked. Right at the beginning of the case I said that “Can we change the transporter”. He told me a small

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 interview

anecdote and then asked me to focus on what can you do internally.

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Stay cool and confident. A case is just like doing a 30 min project under a guide. Engage with him and be interested in knowing more. Cleared round 1

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Kaustubh Verma Accenture Priya (Manager – Human Resources)

Second This was a personal interview only Questions were - Tell me something about yourself? - Why Accenture? - Why MBA? - Greatest achievement at ISB? - One person you admire in your batch and why? - What did you learn from your peers at ISB? - What do you think works for you in an interview? No case NA

NA She was much younger than my previous interviewer and when I walked into the room I was very confident. I tried giving honest answers and tried to portray the image that I am not all work. I talked about my love for music and sports and gave a lot of people related answers which were genuine. My phone rang in the middle as I had forgotten to switch it off. An absolute interview faux pas. And I think I spoke to fast but otherwise most of the things went right You can prepare for all the basic questions in a PI. Tell me about yourself is a standard question and should really be the clincher in any interview. Try not to talk only about studies and projects. Bring in a human and humor element to your anecdotes. And of course relevant anecdotes. Cleared round 2

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Kaustubh Verma Accenture Vinod Kumar (Manager – Supply Chain vertical)

Third Again a very short introduction session where he asked me about the nature of work I did prior to ISB. Then it was on to the case. This was a triple whammy. He asked me three cases in the space of 45 mins.

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview

What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

a) How would you restructure a project management team doing say a large oil and gas project as a contractor? b) There is a company which is taking on good projects and bad projects as well. This company is again executing large oil and gas projects as contractors. Define a set of metrics which you think will help this company evaluate a project better c) List down factors or scenarios under which a company will be ready to take on a negative NPV project. Operations/Strategy with a bit of MGTO thrown in Having worked in the energy industry before I had a fair idea of what the issues can be. The answers to the above three questions as I gave them are as follows a) Drew the current structure of a team executing such a project. Asked for his buy in. Identified problems in the existing set up and then recommended changes by centralizing non core functions in project execution. I was mainly blank as far as team/organization restructuring is concerned but I kept engaging with him b) Listed all factors under two buckets. Strategy issues and Cost Issues. Strategy had things like capabilities in terms of manpower and past projects. Cost had scope of project, quality standards and completion time of the project. c) This was a real tough one as he kept on asking me to explore more factors. I had initially come up with a company trying to enter a new geography might take on NPV projects. But the interviewer was not satisfied so I kept thinking and then finally told him that a company may also take on a new project in order to acquire new skills. After that he was happy. I was very confident and knew well about the industry the case was based on. I added a lot of flavors which he did not expect me to. I also smile in an interview when in a corner and maybe that helps !!! I was totally taken aback by the MGTO type case. But then its best to solve such cases from first principles and get buy in of the interviewer after every stage.

Knowing about an industry does help. !!! Cleared round 3

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Kaustubh Verma Accenture Himanshu Tambe (Partner)

Fourth Just a fit interview and some PI questions - How do you define success? - What do you want me to remember you by when you walk out of this room? - Any questions for me on Accenture? - A bit about my CV - What is the biggest problem about my ex-company? - How were my previous interviews? No case NA

No case The interviewer was extremely chilled out. I also knew that I was at the end stages of the process and only a real bad interview can spoil it from here on onwards. I was very calm during this one as in I was more intent on hearing than speaking unlike previous rounds. Guess what! My phone rang again. But apart from that it was a breeze

When being interviewed by a partner always be very precise in what you wanna say. And please switch off your phone before every interview Cleared Final round

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Rahul Mishra Accenture Ms. Lata (HR) First Round (HR Round) Interview 1 This round was primarily a personal round revolving around the CV. The question broadly covered the various things done at ISB and the extracurriculars. A lot of expected question were there on the Strengths, weaknesses, successes, Stay at ISB, Comparison with Undergrad education at IIT-B. Be sure to have a consistent story for all of the above and make sure that you keep corroborating your claims and assertion from time to time. For every aspect I was asked to site an example. Some questions that I typically remember are : “Tell about a trait of your personality that you think is a strength in personal life but does not serve you well in professional life? And one trait that you think is a professional strength but not a positive thing in personal life”. The interviewer was insistent that I answer both but I answered the first part and said that there was nothing I could think of for the second part because I just could not relate to such a separation in personal and professional personalities. Of course the answer was detailed and elaborate and ultimately convincing. Since this was an HR round there were no cases as such but I was questioned in detail about the banking sector and corporate strategy as I had written white papers on both these topics for B-school competitions.

The conversation was a very easy one. I think I was able to break ice very early in the discussion and was always conscious for the crispness of my answers. As a result we were able to have a long discussion about a lot of different issues during the 30 minute+ long discussion. I was also trying to build a coherent storyline throughout by citing examples and connecting back to things I had earlier said in the interview.

Be very thorough with you CV. Elaborate every point of your CV and prepare answers to the standard expected questions. Make sure you have rehearsed them well enough. Sent to next Panel

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Rahul Mishra Accenture Manish Miglani (Manager) First Round Interview 2 Contrary to expectations, this interview also turned out to be based more on the CV. Some questions were around career progression, Why ISB, Why Consulting, Why Accenture, What do you want to do at Accenture.. I was also asked detailed questions about the firm to check if I have done a through homework about understanding the lines of business and how they functions, the numbers, shares, growth rates, trends etc. I had those details ready so rattled them out right away. There were a lot of questions about my personal radio station on campus which was quite unexpected. Went into detailed analysis as to who would be the listener segments, whey they would tune in, what could be alternatives or competition, how is it managed, operated, what better could be done, etc. A substantial part of the interview was about my work experience in the Energy sector. From the sort of projects I was working on, to the people I was working with, my contacts, accomplishments, my outlook on certain trends, etc. This was primarily because Accenture does a lot of work in Oil & Gas with some leading names and so wanted to check for a functional fit.

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think

A question was like, “ If I were to be reborn, in who’s shoes would I want to be reborn”. I realised what the safest bet was and said, “ If I were reborn, I would still like to be in my own shoes, be the person I am, retain my individuality and then being so try to imbibe the attributes of the people I look up to and consider my role models. There was of course some grilling on this but I was sure of and firm on what I said and stood by it. This was more of a mini caselet: If an Oil company is planning 1000 cr project in the next 3 years what all factors should it consider? Open ended and unstructured (because it was more of a continuation of our past discussion on the sector) The discussion was brief and quick. I started by looking at internal and external factors. Internally, I asked about the type of firm (PSU or private), duration, funds availability, organizational capability to execute such a project, timelines, etc. Externally, I was looking at regulatory requirements, location (SEZ or for domestic market), external consultant hired. From my past experience and after the discussion, any such project has key concerns as timelines and budget. People do not want a cost over run and want the project completed in 3 years. In the absence of internal execution capabilities, people look for external consultants who can take Lump Sum Turn Key (LSTK)Contracts or else tender out different parts independently. All these modes of procurement and execution have cost and time implications. I was asked to make a recommendation as to which mode of execution would be most advisable and based on all the parameters I discussed I ended up with a recommendation I was prepared to talk about the most unexpected point on my CV, in this

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 went right for you in this interview

What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

case my Radio Station. Work experience was a Big strong point and I believe the interviewer was impressed with the detailed discussion we had on the sector. This helped in immediately establishing a functional fit in the firm. Could have been more brief in a couple of answers to some unexpected questions, but I think it was more that compensated for during the 45 minute discussion. Walk into the room with an open mind. You may be ready with your pen and pad to take down the case question and the interview may be complete a conversation. You may not be expected or needed to use paper and pen for cases or situations and in that case think aloud and involve the other person in a conversation. Moved to next Panel

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Rahul Mishra Accenture Harsha Razdan (Senior Manager) Round 1 Interview 3 Hardly any PI questions. This was purely a case round

An international Office stationary retailer has just entered India and set up a sample store in Bangalore in association with an India Retail Giant. The store has been open for 3 months now. What should the international retailer do in the coming times and what should be there strategy? Retail Operations and Strategy I started by looking at the international retailer (Company) and its Indian partner? Why the venture, what strengths, type of contract, etc. it seems the company had efficient back end operation and the front end expertise was with the Indian partner. They would need 6 months to get out of contractual obligations. The operation is merely breaking even right now. I also looked at the competition and customers buckets and there was not enough information available on this. After this initial analysis the case question was flipped to find out the drivers of setting up a retail store. Some of the drivers discussed were : - Geography (decided by regulation, logistics, operations, etc) - Store format (Departmental, Hypermart, location in city or outside city) - Product Mix ( What would be item stocked) - Partnerships (potential allies) - Competition - Target Customers (to decide Footfalls X Conversion Rate X Ticket Size)

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience

The next part of the case was that where will I gather information about all these, customers, geographies, etc. I said there could be two ways of collecting information: Primary Research and Secondary Research. Primary we can collected from other stores, scanner data, Pilot study, survey, etc Secondary could be done through industry and analyst reports like Crisil, Datamonitor, ISI Emerging markets, These reports normally give detailed outlook about cities, types of formats, conversion rates, catchment area and other parameters. Given that we had just one month to gather information, Secondary research would be more appropriate. I was talking in terms of the technical language used in Retailing, plus was patiently listening to all that he was saying was always trying to be flexible to adapt my analysis to the discussion The frequent twists in the problem statement were at time throwing the structure and analysis out of gear. The question on drivers was not that neatly given, so had to struggle a bit with the figuring out what I was supposed to give. This case or its variant was often repeated with other candidates and I was keeping a tap of that. Make sure you keep checking with candidates you walk out of the panel and keep thinking about the problem. With 40-50 candidates going through the process, it is likely that cases or their

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

Outcome

variants may get repeated. After this round I was put in a Conference Call with a senior executive in Mumbai to discuss more about my work experience and functional. Subsequent to these discussions I was moved to the Final Round to meet the partner.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Rahul Mishra Accenture Himanshu Tambe (Partner) Final Round

This was a personal round to check the organizational fit and my keenness to take up the offer. There were question on strengths, weaknesses, One good thing about my past organization, What seems to be ailing PSUs in India, How do you define SUCCESS, What has been an instant when you have failed and what did you do, when you walk out of this room, how do you think I will remember you? Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

As I said, a lot many of these answers should be prepared and you should be ready to adapt and mound content of one answer into another. Consistency in response is the Key Word. Dont contradict yourself within the 15-20 minutes. Nil Nil -

Preparation Confidence

Couldn’t have afforded to get anything wrong at this stage ☺

Prepare for Cases BUT more importantly prepare for PIs, Make elaborate notes if necessary. It is important to give a thought to what you are going to say and why are you going to say that. For examples, almost everyone says that my strengths are strong analytical skills, hardworking, honest, sincere, blah blah… and these are the question were you can make a difference and create a last impression if you have something different to say. Be confident and Not Overconfident else in all likelihood having come all this way you will blow this off. Prepare well and things will fall in the right place. ALL THE BEST !!! Offer Made

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Rohit Malhotra Accenture Mr Vinod (R1) and Mr Harsha – Sr Manager (R2) R1 and R2 (all combined)

1) Why Accenture 2) Why Consulting 3) Long Term Goals and how will Accenture help you in achieving them 4) Define success 5) Instance of failure and what did you learn from it 6) If I go to the Meeting Room what should I remember abt you and I should say Given Below Cost Reduction and Market Entry Case 1: Cost Reduction and Supply Chain Management Case Narration: (Huge amount of information was thrown to confuse and deviate from the purpose. He kept on changing scope of case to check how comfortable I am) The company is an Indian Construction Equipment Manufacturing company. They have a JV with German co. The German co provides some part and technology. Plus they have a strong brand name. But the mkt is commoditized to a large extent. Due to high construction activity they want to expand as a JV. A new CEO was hired, who focuses a lot on details (imp point to remember) How can they do it? Then he mentioned one more thing. There are two subunits SBU1 and SBU2. The German company gives parts to SBU1 and then we assemble our parts to make the equipment. Then 30% is used for internal consumption and 70% goes to SBU2. (Breakup was told on clarification, plus this was not used in the entire case. Given to confuse). Initial Clarification: • • • • • •

What % of components are provided by German co (50%) Is plant operating at full capacity as it was an expansion decision Duration of JV Possibility of manufacturing parts manufactured by German part (answer was no) Can JV look at growing inorganically (no again) Time for expansion

Structure and Analysis Even though the case was initially on expanding the operations, the interviewer asked me to focus on cost reduction, based upon the initial clarification. He said the case is too broad; Let’s focus on this aspect. Also wanted to have a free flowing discussion than going through standard structured approach

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 I told that since German company’s production can not be shifted, we should focus on 50% of the production process in India. He agreed. I said, since it is a cost reduction, we should • • • •

focus on value chain look at the cost drivers benchmark against industry possible areas of improvement

He said it looks very good and explained me complex value chain (lot of jargons again). But then he changed his mind. He asked me to list down possible areas of cost reduction. I mentioned the following •

•

•

Raw Materials o Design o Wastage o Supplier Rationalization o Forecasting Process o JIT o Make or Buy Labor o Unionized / contract o Overcapacity o Productivity Overheads o Design o Wastage

He said Labor can not be touched. Overheads are mainly related to German counterparts. Asked me to focus on Raw Materials and supplier rationalization. There are 400 suppliers of various parts. How would go abt rationalize them? I mentioned – • • • • • • •

Look at the major parts ($ terms) Who are the main supplies Size (can be measured by sales, employees etc) Their capacity Relationship with them Location (reqd for selecting suppliers) Mentioned a few other (could not remember)

He asked me how will create the matrix. I said it should be for each component -> rate the parameters (can be on a scale of 1-5 or H-M-L) -> Calculate weighted average and arrive at the major players. Also pointed out the flaw that a single company may be providing many parts and we will need to create a composite matrix at the end. Else we can have matrix by supplier and have parts rated based upon importance. To which he agreed. Then he asked me to draw 2/2 matrix to fit in all the factors. I was able to come up with matrix that highlights 3 factors, but not all. However, suggested him that we can create different chart, but would be replica of

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 above matrix in chart form. He said let’s stop the case and if I had any questions for him. Case 2: I was told that interviewer does not have time and it is a 5 mt case. I will have around 1.5 mts to get clarifications and 3.5 mts to define structure and discuss important factors. Case Narration: A pharma company came to know abt increasing diseases incidents in rural areas. It thinks that this is a very big opportunity and we have been hired to help them. Initial clarification: What is the co into and geography of operation; Do they cater to any specific kind of diseases/medicine; timeline (was 1 yr) etc. Structure: Since the focus was entire India and not specific region. I followed the following structure: •

•

• •

•

How large is the market o Understand industry value driver of industry (since rural is cost or quality more important) o Classify the states by types of major diseases to understand the focus area o Estimate no of people affected o Estimate $ amount of market as ability to pay is less Understand competition o Direct: Other pharma cos thinking of entering/have entered the market o Indirect: Local doctors/home disease o How we differentiate our self Calculate NPV/ Cost benefit analysis Modes of entry o Greenfield o M&A (competition) o JV o Alliance Capability o Execution Risk o Finance Risk

He said he was fine with the structure. He asked me how would we be able to doctors buy our product vs competition. Since local doctors were the most important factors we looked at the deciding factors/ incentive plans for the doctors. But overall realized it is difficult to incentivize them. Also product differentiation was not possible. Then we decided to look at strategies of companies o/s India who undertook similar strategies. Based on discussion, I suggested that it appears that first mover advantage is deciding factor. So look at areas underserved / not served and have a decent market size. Also, should map with cos capabilities. We also agreed to run a pilot which is like a real option and help us to decide. He said that he is fine with the approach and asked me to synthesize key findings. What do you think

The structure was right and was able to get buy in most of the points. Did

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience

not deviate from purpose and got Interviewers buy-in were reqd. Should have been more creative specifically with charts.

This time a focus was lot on sourcing information. Therefore, keep in mind that the suggestions need to be practicable and implementable. Also read profiles of interviewer as most of the cases I faced were from their field. You can have a look at few of the industry measures, but it is not expected you to know

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Manju R Alvarez and Marsal Partners from Delhi and London office

3 rounds They give a brief introduction about themselves and about A&M work. PI questions will revolve around Why Alvarez? In depth discussion about your previous work experience to try and see fit between what you can do and what they do? Having experience in Finance and planning an advantage, being CA a definite advantage No case N/A

N/A Confidence, passion for the job, match between what A&M wants and my prior work-ex and how I correlated my learning’s at ISB to what I could do in Performance Improvement and turnaround. A&M looks for three characteristics in people – confidence, ability and clarity of thought Waiting around till your turn comes.

Be confident while speaking and expressing thoughts. Prepare well for the interview by going through the CV and your core courses learning’s Made it through all the 3 rounds successfully

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with

Name of interviewer and designation

Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Samir Desai Alvarez & Marsal Brian – Senior Director, Rakesh Chopra – Director & National Head - India, Prashanth – Senior Associate, one more senior associate Amit Laud – Director (telephonic) There were 3 groups formed when the A&M team arrived on campus. A&M conducted 3 rounds of interviews for each candidate and after all the 3 groups had interviewed the candidate, they used to meet and decide on the candidate. Thus the procedure was elaborate but slow. All the interviews were mainly personal interview and did not have case interviews. After waiting outside for almost 7 hours, the interviews were conducted in a very professional manner and the interviewers focus in knowing your past was crystal clear. Each of the interviewer asked me to go through my resume in a detailed fashion. Each and every bullet point in my resume was questioned and cross questioned. But the interview was not stressful at any point in time. The key reason was that there were no lies in the resume and hence I was very sure about the background of every point (situation, what action I took, why I took that action, what I did, who helped me, how things eventually worked out and what was the result). There were some usual questions as well on strengths, etc. Such questions were few and were randomly thrown at you. Since A&M is mainly a client oriented company who as a part of turnaround would want to “get things done”, I kept all my answers focused towards this theme. Be aware that the interviewers may try to derail you in case you have very well rehearsed answers. So in between questions, there will be some side talk. That can put you off. So being relaxed would help you just laugh/smile that their comments and then continue where you left off. This interview was a walk-in interview for me on day 6, but I had planned on applying here before and hence had some overview of the firm and what it does. That helped me in asking several questions throughout the day. My questions were mainly on switching my focus from IT to operation and finance. At the end of the day, I was told to contact Amit Laud who would be conducting my interview from his base location. This interview was also a personal interview. I googled him and found some details on him. He was an MBA from Wharton, done a stint in Mckinsey, GE and now was the acting CIO for some client company so some questions on IT implementation would be due. I knew that if I get through then I might end up working for him.

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

During interview, he mentioned upfront – “From your resume, I know that you are technically competent and have no issues on that front. My focus is your ability to start initiatives on your own and get them done.” Thankfully I had indeed started more than a few projects on my own and was able to present them to Amit. Later that afternoon, I got the offer from A&M.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 During the offer, the two senior guys clearly mentioned that they viewed ISB grads as people who have cleared most benchmarks and therefore did not engage in complicated case interviews or hypothetical scenarios. The reason is that most of the stuff we do here is mainly common sense but we need people who can work with clients, take charge of things and get it done.

Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

(This in a way worked well for me because I had not got any shortlist for the day 0 consulting firms upfront and as such was low on case prep) None None

None 1. They wanted one person with IT experience for their projects in Middle East. Otherwise the firm is like other consulting firms – mainly focused on people with operation, finance, non-IT background. 2. They did value people with high grades. So that played a part in getting their opinion biased towards me. 3. I already had one good offer since day 2 and this made me very relaxed. This can also go against you, as you tend to give up and lose steam. Invariably some very good firms come towards the end of placement every year. 4. The interviewers did appreciate the frankness and some humour during the interview and may be that went well. It’s difficult for me to pin-point what I did wrong in this interview mainly because it was all personal. Throughout the interview and placement process, please believe in yourself, don’t give up, be patient and don’t lose your sense of humour. One incident during interview:

Any tips for future batches based on this experience

Rakesh Chopra, in the middle of the interview stopped me and digresses from the “agenda”. Rakesh: So you are a techie? Me: Not quite. I did an MBA so that I am not a techie. ☺ Rakesh: Well, you will have to work as a non-techie for few years before I call you a non-techie. For now, I have a techie problem for you. (I am hoping – don’t ask me SAIT questions on IT infrastructure and all that)

Outcome

Rakesh: You know when I click new message in Outlook there used to be a Send button. Now it is not there. Me: Took over his laptop, added the toolbar and now the send button showed. Rakesh: Good, another problem. My friend sent me these files which I cannot open. Me: Again took over his laptop, saw that the file ended in .vsd and told him he needed to install Microsoft Visio (which he duly noted down) Rakesh: You are very good. Good indeed. Me: Then do I get the job? Yayyy! Rakesh: NO Me: I would have preferred “not yet”, but that’s fine. ☺

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Rakesh: ☺ Err, I meant, not on that performance. Moral: Keep your cool. It is not important to know how to fix laptop or how to fix account statements (if you are CA). But it was more about how you handle such deliberate distracting situations (as if they were your clients) and make the atmosphere friendly.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Supriya Singh A T Kearney Bhavya

Round 1, Interview 1

Tell me about yourself and some other similar stuff, but it was very brief. Vodafone has a huge mobile presence. Now it wants to enter the broadband industry. Should it enter and if yes, how should it enter? It was a typical market estimation and entry case. I started with a few clarifying questions to know more about the company and why does Vodafone want to enter that sector. She asked me as to what I think might be the reason. I guessed a few reasons like attractive market, other synergies, competitive reaction, fear of being left behind in the market. Then I told her my approach that would include the Porter’s framework for the market attractiveness and then discuss the entry strategy. We started with the market estimation. She asked me how I would go about the market estimation. I told her that I would divide the country into different types of cities – A, B, C, small towns and rural areas and then take the existing PC penetration as the proxy for the potential broadband customers. I also classified the customers into households, corporate and SMEs. She said OK to it. Then she gave me some numbers for the PC penetration in the different cities and segments. We came up to some number which suggested that the market for broadband was attractive and it made sense for Vodafone to enter the market. Next was how should it enter and where should it target first. She asked me to go through the different cities and suggest pros and cons for each. I covered the different cities, based on the size, existing competition, attractiveness, future potential and we came up to cities A, B for the time being and go to rural areas later. Then she asked me the potential areas in the cities where Vodafone could enter. I suggested Industrial Parks, Corporate Parks, Posh colonies, Business districts, Densely populated areas, Retail areas like cyber café, B-schools and other colleges, Airports, Hotels and Resorts and High rise apartments. These areas were chosen based on the costs involved in setting up the broadband infrastructure and getting the revenues faster by covering a lot of customers. Then she asked me to do a cost-benefit analysis for a cyber café in a mall. I mentioned the cost items and revenue items. The revenue per year could be calculated by the considering the surfing cost per hour, the footfall in that mall on the weekdays and weekends and other rentals for any other service if any. The costs would consist of the fixed costs for setting up the infrastructure and the variable costs for maintaining the service. The variable costs would be the monthly rentals for the café, operating costs, maintenance, salaries and service rentals. Based on the above the profit margin and break-even time was calculated. The breakeven time was coming out to be around 2.3 – 3 years and she said did it seem fine. I thought it was fine. Then she asked me if I had any questions for her.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question

Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Supriya Singh A T Kearney Kaushik

Round 1, Interview 2

Tell me about yourself. Why consulting? Why ATK? The client is an automotive company based in India. Due to dollar collapse, its margins are going down and hence the stock price is going down. How do we increase the margins? On the surface it looked like the problem was due to dollar collapse, but there were other reasons for the falling margins. It was more of profitability analysis case. I started with a few clarifying questions to know more about the company and what is the contribution of exports vis-à-vis domestic sales. He told me exports accounted for only 20% of the sales and domestic sales accounted for the remaining 80%. I asked him about the revenues growth and he told me the revenues were increasing at the rate of 7-8%. Then I asked him about the industry trends and he told me the industry was growing. I took 2 minutes off to collect the data. I made the profitability framework with breakup for revenues and costs. For revenues, I would consider the price, contribution of dollar, quantity, and competition. For costs, I would consider fixed costs, plant costs, imports, raw materials, labor and depreciation. He asked me if I thought there was any problem with revenues. I told him it didn’t look like but I would still like to explore it. I made a statement saying that the market would be an oligopoly and hence I expect the contracts to be fairly longterm since automotive contracts are relationship-based. He asked me a lot of questions on oligopoly and what would happen in an oligopoly and who has the bargaining power in an oligopoly. He told me that the prices were fairly same across the competition and the quantity was also more or less the same. Then I moved to the costs side. He asked me how would I know if the problem was on the costs side? I told him that I would benchmark it with the industry and if the costs were very high as compared to the industry, I would know that the costs are high. I would benchmark the COGS/Sales with the industry average and compare the two. He asked me the components of the COGS. Then he asked me to look at the raw materials. I asked him if the raw materials were imported or domestically obtained. He told me both and did not give any breakup. He asked for ideas as to how could we get the raw materials cheaper. For imports, I suggested importing from different countries so as to diversify exchange risk, get into some forward contracts with the foreign suppliers and obtaining more from the domestic suppliers. Other ideas included Commonality of raw materials, Alternative substitutes for the raw materials, better negotiation with the suppliers and vertical backward integration. He picked up vertical integration and asked me a lot of questions on that. Did vertical integration make sense? I told him that the incentives would be better aligned and hence the manufacturer and supplier could increase the pie. He told me that the supplier market was

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 competitive and he could get a better deal in that market rather than being vertically integrated. The discussion went on for sometime. Then he asked me to look at the labor costs and depreciation. We discussed about how new machines would help the company by increasing efficiency and reduce labor costs as well. Then he asked me to wrap up the case. What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Use of a lot of jargons – Oligopoly, Vertical Integration

Do not generally throw ideas.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question

Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Supriya Singh A T Kearney Vikas

Round 2

CV based question. About the previous 2 interviews. Why Consulting? Some other personal questions which I do not remember. But he was putting a lot of stress and was randomly throwing questions. The client is a copper mining company and produces bars - a commodity. The client has been facing a bad patch for the past 5-6 years which has made its net worth 0. It has made a marginal profit now. Develop a turnaround plan for the company. The question seemed very ambiguous to me. But on further clarification he asked me to figure out the reasons for the losses and hence suggest some ideas for improvement. I started with a few clarifying questions to know more about the company and the value chain in the industry. The value chain was like copper is first mined, processed and then converted to bars. The client did both mining and processing. The client was a 40 years old government entity. The industry trends for the past 40 years had been positive and the projected growth for the industry was also positive. Then we looked at the competition. There was no competition in the mining part, but there were 2 large players and few smaller players in the processing part of the value chain. The competition entered the market 4-5 years back and it was since then that the client was facing losses. The competitors were fairly profitable. We looked at the bar clients. The market for copper bars was free market and the prices were governed by global demand and supply. So the prices were fairly constant across all the companies. The global demand was huge. I asked about the capacity of the client vis-à-vis the competition. It came out that the client had a much lower capacity vis-à-vis the competitor. So capacity was one of the issues. I asked him about the regulatory changes and foreign players. He told me the deregulation happened around 5 years back. This impacted the demand for the client’s bars. It was a major reason for the losses. Then he asked me to close the case.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Supriya Singh A T Kearney Kaustabh

Round 3 It was more of a personal round with personal questions and fit rather than case. Why consulting – He asked me not to mention diverse projects and different industries exposure? Tell me about yourself. About the previous 3 interviews. Where do I see myself 10 years down the line? Isn’t consulting very dissatisfying at the end of the day since you do not really do anything? Some other personal questions which I do not remember. It was a short case. He asked me to choose an industry. I told him I am equally good or equally bad at all the industries. But he insisted. I told him retail. Then he made the case. He asked me to imagine that he is Bharti head. Walmart and Bharti want to have a joint venture and enter India. But Bharti seems to have some hiccups. Why is it so? It was about analyzing the business model of Walmart and fitting it in Indian context. He explained me the Walmart model with its strengths in procurement, low-prices, cost-advantage, quality, tight supply chain, vendor management, inventory control, CRM and others. I then drew the business model with Procurement feeding to Walmart and Walmart selling to Customers. Then I took one issue at a time so to figure out the problem with the model. On the procurement side, I asked him about the supplier contacts in India, Scale, Vendor management, competition and others. He said Walmart is sure it will handle that. Then I moved to the customer side. I considered the different issues like Service, Quality, prices, Location and geographical proximity. He told me service, quality and prices are fine. Location would depend on the availability of the real-estate in the cities. There I made the mistake. Actually the Walmart model is that the store is located on the outskirts of the cities and in US consumer behavior is different in the sense that people shop on the weekends and they do not mind traveling for that. But in India people shop everyday and they would hesitate traveling for that and hence Walmart model had a problem fitting to Indian context. Hence consumer behavior and geographical proximity were the keys.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Vignesh Shankar A.T.Kearney

Case question

I had a market estimation and a full case. Market Estimation This question was driven by the PI portion, in which I stated that I played tennis. I was asked to estimate the number of tennis courts in Chennai. Full Case You are the Chief Minister of XX state in India. What will you do to increase state income (GDP)? Market Estimation Public Policy Market estimation I decided to proceed by estimating the population of Chennai, subsequently the high income population, and subsequently the population within eligible age (say 10 to 30). Thereafter, I stated that we would have to make some assumption regarding the proportion within the eligible age that would actually play tennis and subsequently some assumption regarding the number of courts that would be required in order to ensure that identified population could play tennis for, say 6 hours every week. The interviewer was satisfied with this. He later mentioned that I had missed out tennis courts in educational institutions and clubs. I said that these would be covered to a certain extent in my overall analysis, and he agreed. Note that I did not arrive at a final number. The interviewer was interested in my approach and logic.

Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Sarovar Aggarwal, Senior Associate Round 1, First

The interview started off with questions such as, ‘Why Consulting’, ‘You have some experience in finance, why do you wish to switch to consulting’, etc. The PI portion was resume-based. I was asked specific questions on points I had mentioned in my resume, for example: - You’ve mentioned that you were involved in recruitment during your previous job. What were you actually doing? - You’ve mentioned that you’re undertaking a study (independent study) in Real Estate. Why are you doing this and what are you doing? He followed up my answer to this question by asking some technical questions on how I would value a real estate project. I answered the question using my knowledge of the industry and finance valuation metrics.

Full Case I approached the case using the Cobb Douglas Production function (which states that income is a function of productivity, capital input and labour input). The interviewer was quite satisfied with the approach. I broke down each lever into possible sub-parts. I said that the productivity lever could be thought of as a function of infrastructure, technology, transportation, etc. Labour could be analysed as (1) creating a talent pool (more colleges, schools, etc.) and (2) retaining the talent pool (creating jobs). The capital lever is all about bringing in more money, through

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience

Outcome

greater support from the central government, increased state-levied taxes or increased private investment. The interviewer was quite happy and asked me to focus on productivity and capital. Before delving deeper, I mentioned that it would be tough to think of productivity and capital and two distinct levers, as most productivity improvements would require capital investment. The interviewer smiled and agreed. He asked me to mention 2 or 3 big items that I would look to work on under each lever. Under productivity, I mentioned power, transportation and irrigation. Under capital, I mentioned that the state government must create incentives for investment through laws and regulations (for example, certain real estate laws with respect to restriction on built-up area are governed by the state. These could be altered). The interviewer agreed that all this could be done, but how could a private investor decide to invest into a state? I said that the government would probably have to identify growth sectors, or sectors that desperately required funds, and then pitch to investors to invest in the identified sectors. The interviewer also mentioned to me that it was critical for the government to increase its speed of response and not let matters die under red tape. He mentioned that one of the biggest reasons why private investors shy away from large investments is because of government bureaucracy. We ended the case by discussing how Andhra Pradesh, and specifically ISB, is a good case in example. I established a good vibe with the interviewer. I think that this was important, given that it was my first interview. I think that I could have handled the market estimation a little better. I should not have missed out educational institutions and clubs. The interviewer was not entirely convinced that my analysis covered them. It is useful to make small talk in between different segments in an interview. It helps the interviewer get a sense of who you are. It might also put the interviewer at ease, by breaking the monotony of doing the same case over and over again with 10 different candidates. It is very important to be honest about all your resume points. In the real estate question above (in the PI portion), right at the start, I caveated by stating that the study was work-in-progress. I stated very clearly that I still had a fair way to go towards completion of the study, and so I could answer any questions on real estate based on my limited knowledge. The interviewer appreciated this. This was the first interview in Round 1. I proceeded on to the second interview.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions

Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Vignesh Shankar A.T.Kearney Manish Mathur, Principal Round 1, Second

The interviewer started off by being a little sarcastic about some of the points I had mentioned on my resume. I was asked slightly probing questions on some work experience points and my business plan competition. Estimate the first year sales for Tata Nano (TN) Market Estimation I stated that TN could capture sales from the two-wheeler segment (i.e., people who are buying two-wheelers merely because existing cars are too costly) and the cheap/small car segment (stealing market share). I started off with the population of India, segmented it into low-income, mid and higher income. Mid-income would clearly be the relevant segment for us. Within the mid-income segment, we need to understand the existing size of the bike market. We could do this by estimating the number of households within the mid-income segment and assuming a certain number of bikes per household. The interviewer broke me off and asked me to assume that the annual bike sales in India are 50 lakhs. Thereafter, I tried to arrive at an estimate of the annual sales that TN could capture. I fumbled quite a bit here. I started off with a certain percentage that, to me, seemed to make intuitive sense. The interviewer said that I was just pulling numbers out of a hat. How could I corroborate this through other means? He then told me that the existing small car market size was 7 lakhs. I said that we could use this to find out what our estimated market share would be, after eating into bike sales. The interviewer retaliated by stating that that would be as good as just assuming a certain market share directly, making my earlier analysis of population, income groups, etc. redundant. I said that that would not be the case, as we are using projected market share merely to see how aggressive/passive our bike to TN conversion ratio assumption is……. We went back and forth on the above for a while. We eventually agreed on a certain percentage (I really don’t know how or why). I intended to proceed with estimating sales captured from the existing cheap/small car segment, but the interviewer wished to stop. I did not get flustered or defensive at any point, although the PI was slightly unsettling and the market estimation did not go very well. Frankly, I did not know how to estimate the conversion ratio from bikes to TN. I’m not sure whether my approach to estimate the case was not the best, or whether the interviewer was just trying to challenge my assumptions. However, I stuck to my approach and, at all points in the interview, conveyed my logic very clearly. I think that my basic approach and the fact that I was ‘thinking-out-loud’ pulled me through. None apart from the above Went on to Round 2.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Vignesh Shankar A.T.Kearney

Case question

The client is an integrated copper mining and smelting company, whose end-product is metal bars. The company has been making losses for the last 5 years. Prepare a turnaround plan.

Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Vikas Kaushal, Vice President Round 2, First

Right at the start, the interviewer put me at ease by stating that I had done well in my previous interviews. I was asked what my interest in consulting was, why was I looking at consulting, what did I think about Kearney as a firm, how were my interactions with Kearney alumni, etc. I was asked a few questions on some of my extra-curriculars.

Additional information – The client has 2 mines and processing plants. One mine and PC together (same location) and the other mine and PC in different locations. The intention here is to make the company profitable on a sustainable basis. Profitability, through value chain analysis I laid out a structure whereby I would first understand the market (competition, regulation, our value proposition, market growth – historical and expected) and then understand the company’s income statement in more detail. The interviewer was satisfied with the structure. I was given the following additional information regarding the market, on specific questions: - Our client is the only copper mining company in India. Other copper companies in India are only into smelting. - Our final product is commoditized. Prices are determined by the London Metal Exchange. - Assume no regulatory constraints - Our client has no specific value proposition - Market growth for the last 10-15 years, as well as the expected future growth, is 10% CAGR I later said that I would like to analyse the company’s profitability by understanding revenue and cost in further detail. The interviewer prodded me to look into the industry value chain. Simply put, the value chain involves (a) basic input, i.e., copper ore (b) smelting (c) consumption. Through follow-up questions, we broke each segment into 2 parts each, along with numbers. Under ‘a’, our client (the sole copper mining company in India) supplied 30,000 tonnes. There were imports of 610,000 tonnes. Under ‘b’, our client smelted 40,000 tonnes. There were 2 other major competitors in the market who smelted 300,000 tonnes each. Under ‘c’, 400,000 tonnes was consumed domestically, while the rest was exported. Our client made only domestic sales. (Note: Here, all information was not given to me directly. I was asked to make certain deductions. For example, I was not told directly that there were copper imports. Based on figures for consumption, I had to deduce that there were imports of 610k tones. I was not told directly that there were exports of 240k tones…….)

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Based on the above information, the interviewer asked me to list out possible hypotheses that could be causing the client profitability problems. I listed out the following: - Our competitor has higher smelting capacity. Scale economies could be a very significant driver in this industry. - Imported iron ore might be cheaper than our client’s own domestic mining. - Export prices could be higher than domestic prices. What do you think went right for you in this interview

What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

I established a good rapport with the interviewer during the PI stage. During the case, I picked up on all the interviewer’s clues quickly. At the end of the interview, I was asked whether I had any questions of the interviewer. I had a very cordial chat with the interviewer on the questions I raised. Maybe I could have analysed the value chain without the interviewer prompting me to. As you move into subsequent rounds, PI becomes increasingly important. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Vignesh Shankar A.T.Kearney Kaustav Mukherjee, Vice President Final

This was the final interview. There were no cases. Completely PI. In fact, we conducted the interview out on the LRC lawns, next to a make-shift snack bar. We started talking as we were walking. The interview was quite long, over coffee and accessories. Kaustav asked me questions on what I felt about the firm, the recruitment process, the interviews, did I have any questions to which I had not received satisfactory answers in the past, etc. Kaustav asked me why I was interested in consulting. How did it tie in with my career plans? What were my career plans? Short-term and long-term goals? In my life, what decisions had I made that were tough and that involved significant trade-offs or choices? What do I feel about the decisions and choices I have made thus far? A little bit about my family, my personal background. Where had I studied? How would I feel about living away from home?

Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview

What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

None None None

This interview was all about maintaining composure and establishing a bond with a senior person in the firm. I was quite attentive during our chat. I did not force the interview to be a question-and-answer type interview, with pre-prepared questions. I worked off what Kaustav was saying and tried to be as engaging as possible. It is important to keep the final interview as conversational and natural as possible.

None apart from the above. This was the final round. I ultimately received an offer from the firm.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Manik Gupta Booz-Allen Neeta, Associate

Round 1 – Interview 1

1. Why consulting after so much experience? 2. Why Dubai? Prepare feasibility study for an American Cosmetics Manufacturer who wants to enter Middle East Strategy These are the steps that I took: • Understood the background of the company – the company is a global player and sells products everywhere except Middle East • Mainly in Hair Care and Personal Care categories • My structure was: o Figure out the market size as follows – total population x % using these products x market share x average unit revenue / year o Figure out cost to serve this market: Interviewer asked me to ignore this and focus on revenue o Perform competitive analysis o Understand customers o Understand company competency o Understand regulations • The interviewer liked my structure and we started by understanding the competition and customer before understanding the company and regulations. Finally, I did the market estimation. • Eventually my recommendation was to enter the market as there emerged a low-cost market (laborers) who could use our low-end products in a high-volume game.

My structure was good. My overall flow was good.

Nothing went wrong.

. Went to Round 1 – Interview 2

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Manik Gupta Booz-Allen Jayanth, Senior Associate

Round 1 – Interview 2

1. Why consulting? 2. Talk about an achievement at ISB st

Market Estimation for Tata Nano and projected revenue for 1 5 years Market estimation These are the steps that I took: • Estimate the market size (units) • Estimate the revenue per unit • Estimate the growth in market each year to draw a 5 year plan Market size o Start with India Population (households) o Divide into income segments (to check affordability of owning a car) o Figure out using poverty line and some other discussions, how many households can actually afford a car o Then divided into new users and switchers nd o Figured out how many new users and % of switchers / 2 car buyers o Worked out the total demand for such cars in market o Assumed some number for adoption in Year 1 o Evaluated the demand curve – expecting it to be convex with sales rising initially and then slowly flattening as competition comes in and market gets saturated. o Based on this, predicted some unit sales per year with year 1 > year 2 > year 3 etc. o Multiplied by constant price (for simplicity) to get revenues for 5 years. The interviewer liked my structure and my thoroughness. In particular he liked my demand curve insight. •

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

My structure was good. My overall flow was good. Was able to build rapport with interviewer.

Nothing went wrong.

. Went to Round 2

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Ankit Garg The Boston Consulting Group Mr. Neeraj Aggarval- Partner

First round First interview The interview started with a detailed discussion on various fascets of points on my CV. Neeraj wanted to know about my thought process as I went through the various phases of my life and how I took decisions that I actually took. For example, he was very interested in knowing as to why I chose IIT Bombay for my B.Tech when I could have gone to join IIT-Delhi which was nearer home. The idea was to develop a rapport with the interviewer by being clear, insightful and interesting in your answers. Be very nicely prepared with your CV and think through the various decisions you have taken in life, keep smiling throughout the interview, present a firm hand shake, think before you speak and engage the interviewer in a discussion. The year is 2001. There is a global fiber optic manufacturing company. During the past few years the company has built in a huge manufacturing capacity. Now in 2001, the global telephony and internet industry is in a tailspin. Telephony and internet are the 2 primary users of fiber optic cables and as such, future looks bleak for our client. What should the client do with his excess capacity? I started off by trying to understand the situation as clearly as possible. The one dictum I stuck to in this and other case interviews was to really get to the crux of the matter and scope down the problem relentlessly to what the top of the line issues were for the client. So trying to be MECE, I told Neeraj that I would look at the following three alternatives: -

Not do any thing about the excess capacity and wait for the good times to come backDowngrade the capacity by eliminating excess Find better uses of capacity or sell more to existing customers

A free flowing discussion followed on each of the points above and Neeraj very quickly refuted the first two suggestions. We then dived headlong into the third suggestion and it quickly appeared clear that fiber optic cables were commoditized products to a large extent. I asked Neeraj about the specific ways in which we were better than the competition and got to know that our client had better product quality at the same price. I drew a perceptual map of our Vs. the competitors’ positions on these maps and argued that we may want to play upon our better product quality to induce the customers to buy more from us. When prodded further by Neeraj, I used the tried and tested Raju formula: Market Share = (Share of Voice)X(%of acceptability)X(%of availability) Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Since availablility was not an issue and since advertising was not a main concern, he asked me to dive into ways of improving our Client’s share of acceptability.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 I proposed pricing as a way of doing so. I postulated that we needed to study our client’s fixed costs and those of our competitors’. Based on the fact that our fixed costs were lower than those of our competitors, I argued that we could play the pricing game by bringing our prices down and cornering a bigger share of the market. I further argued that if our competitors tried to imitate us in this price war, they may end up chasing us to the bottom of the barrel and get killed in the process. This would only be good for the industry which badly needs consolidation given the excess capacity. I think Neeraj was visibly impressed by this time by the depth of analysis I had presented and the diverse ideas from marketing, managerial accounting etc that I was able to bring to the table. What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience

Outcome

Being myself and presenting a very confident and amiable front was the key. I would say nothing. It was my first interview of the day and I was in great spirits. Weather was nice and Neeraj was very amiable. He put me at ease and the discussion was free flowing. What is a case interview but an amalgamation of your experiences and knowledge gained over the course of the year. Since you have already got the shortlist, intelligence and knowledge is assumed. What differentiates you from other applicants is how comfortable you are under your own skin. This comfort can be achieved by knowing yourself well and by practicing very hard. This was first round first interview but very surprisingly, I was given a clear indication after just this interview that I had a very good chance of making it to BCG. I was subjected to just 1 more interview after this and an offer was made.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Ankush Wadhera BCG

Round1, First Interview The usual PI questions, I’d say be prepared with a list of them. The PI would give you on opportunity to strike the right vibes with the interviewer. So when you get down to doing a case, you’ll feel a lot more comfortable and confident. A Widgets manufacturer, who’s been in the business for a few years now, had been seeing phenomenal growth over the last couple of years, and has recently added capacity to cater to expected future demand. However, the market has stayed flat, and your client doesn’t know what to do. I asked a few clarifying questions. The information that I got was as follows – 1. The trend was temporary, and the market was expected to start growing again after a few years. 2. Need not worry about what widgets are; just consider them to be a part of machine equipment. 3. The manufacturer is a global company headquartered in US 4. The market had been growing over the last 2-3 years at 30 – 40 % and has now flattened.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

I then defined the problem statement. From here on I took a pretty unconventional first principles approach in structuring my though process. I decided to look at 2 aspects – a. Means to enhance Capacity Utilization through an understanding of the business based on b. Market Analysis Under capacity utilization I had intended to focus on Altering the product mix, increase sales geographically, rationalize my asset base, and providing value added services. The first one wasn’t possible and on the geographical front we were already selling globally. Then I switched to market analysis where I looked at # of players, respective market shares, competitive landscape, drivers of purchase and price points. On questioning, it turned out that we were the largest player with a 35% market share, two other major players had a 20% share each, and the rest of the market was fragmented amongst small players. Everyone sold at the same price. In past, the purchase decision had not been based on price, but on being highest in quality, and we were perceived to be amongst the highest in quality. We were also the cost leaders in this business, and this was the catch point. It also turned out that in being more cautious about their purchase of widgets, our potential customers had now become more price conscious, and the market was price elastic. From here on I started shaping recommendations – I put them as short term and long term. In the short term I suggested that we play on price points. Since we are the cost leaders and the market was price elastic, we can bring down our prices till a point where our profits increase with decrease in prices. Also, our competitors won’t be able to cut prices to the extent that we can, and in this way we can squeeze their margins beyond tolerable limits, force them to exit, and thus increase our share of the pie. In the long run, we needed to work around rationalizing our asset base,

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

and building a value added service layer to our business. That’s where the case concluded. The fact that I stuck to the problem at hand, and didn’t wander off in any not required direction – something that one is prone to in solving cases. Also, I got to the heart the matter pretty soon. Soon to the extent that I didn’t know what more to give as part of my solution.

I’d suggest that incase you too reach your solution pretty soon in the interview, spend some time to look at other strategic aspects, at points in your structure that might’ve been left untouched, but don’t panic if there’s nothing more to add from your end. You can close the case as and when you feel you’ve done what you wanted to, and need not wait to have spent a pre-decided amount of time on it. Yes I made it to the next round.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Ankush Wadhera BCG

nd

Round 1, 2 Interview

A Telecom Infrastructure Company - Provider of Telecom Equipment and Related Services, is facing profitability issues inspite of good growth in their business. I was to identify the key levers that could help overcome the problem. I asked a few clarifying questions. The information I got was a follows – 1. The client was a $10 billion + company with 50000 + employees. 2. It was a Europe based company with operations all over the world, and their business was expected to grow at 10 – 15 % 3. The lines of business were divided into 2: A. Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space. B. Providing Services, which was further subdivided into 4 categories.(i) Turnkey i.e. developing new networks (ii) Managed Services i.e. run the network on behalf of the service provider (iii) Maintenance (H/W and S/W) (iv) Consulting Solutions I then defined the problem statement. From here on I structured by approach to do a Revenues & Cost analysis after having done a thorough Market Analysis. Under Market Analysis, I looked at 1. No. of Players – there were 6 -7 players, we were no. 2 with a mkt. share of 20%. The mkt. leader had a 30% share. 2. I looked at Growth in each of the businesses, Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space each growing at 15 % and 25% respectively and overall this line of business was growing at 20% In Providing Services, the above 4 were expected to grow at 0%, less than 10%, 15% and less than 10% respectively (in the order mentioned above). 3. The drivers of purchase were driven by Cap Ex and Op Ex incurred by the customers, i.e. Price was the key driver of purchase once you were a part of the consideration set. However, to be considered for a contract by a potential customer, high standards of quality were a must. Before starting to look at the revenues and costs in trying to address profitability, I asked for the revenue break up of for our client. It was as follows – 55% from 2G(30%) & 3G(25%). 24% from turnkey. 9% from maintenance. 6% from managed services and the rest from consulting. I then asked for how this picture would look 3-4 years from now. Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space would together constitute 40%, with 70% of this 40 from 3G and rest from 2G. Services would constitute 60% of the revenues, and in comparing to their current contributions, Turnkey would stagnate, Maintenance business would grow at 10 – 15%, and Consulting and Managed Services would grow disproportionately.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

This unfortunately is all that I remember of the case in terms of data, but from here on it was pretty standard. I prioritized my probing of the cost structures for each of the businesses based on their current and future

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 contributions to the revenue pie. I then explored the cost structures for each line of business, identified the cost levers, and further prioritized my recommendations for each cost lever on the basis of where we could achieve most impact. On the revenue side, my recommendations were around building capabilities around consulting and managed services based on how the business was expected to shape up in the future. There was a lot to talk about under each of the above – offshoring, consolidation of suppliers and subcontractors etc., managing over runs, acquisition to build capabilities, and I did touch upon all of these. I’m sure based on your own judgment, you can add more to it. All the best! What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

I moved on to the next round.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share)

Case question Case Type

Ankush Wadhera BCG

st

Round 2, 1 Interview

rd

An Indian Garments Company, a 3 party manufacturer for clients in US & Europe wants to enter the Indian Market with their own label. Recommend a go/ no go decision and a suitable branding strategy for your client. I asked a few clarifying questions. The information I got was a follows – 1. The client manufactured broadly two kinds of products A. Textiles (of different counts, pure yarns, viscose mix etc.) B. Garments (semi formals / informals in cotton, for both men and women) I structured my approach as follows: As part of Market Entry evaluation, I wanted to look at the following: 1. Market Attractiveness – size of the mkt., growth expected, penetration levels and margins. 2. Competition – in each of the segments. Further look at unbranded retailing, branded retailing and pvt. label retailing. 3. Strategic Fit and Capabilities as far as this proposed line of business was concerned. 4. How to enter – Organic v/s Inorganic

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

At this point, I was asked to move onto the branding strategy that I would recommend. One key factor that I considered was a single brand v/s a multi brand strategy. And through discussions with the interviewer, I decided to pursue a multi-brand approach for different segments, different qualities etc. (just as Arvind Mills, Madura Garments etc. do). I then proposed that in developing a brand strategy for each of the brands I chose to pursue, I would look at the following: 1. Positiong the brand 2. Pricing 3. Distribution 4. Promotion. In positioning the brand (each of the brands that we will roll out), I would look at drivers of purchase and then position myself accordingly through parity and distinction. At this point, we got into a more general conversation around how to position, what other factors to consider, and then wrapped up the case. In hindsight I feel that the interviewer was looking more at my approach than for a solution. All the more so cuz as and when he understood what I was trying to achieve through my structure, he would ask me to move on. I was too exhausted when I stepped in for this interview. I had so many other things running in my head, and I felt that it hampered my performance during the discussion. After I came out, I felt that there was so much more that I could’ve done. As you step in for the interview, make sure that you leave all the excess baggage outside. It’s a big deterrent in one’s performance. I had one more interview that I’m unable to document, after which I was made an offer.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Harsh Singhal Boston Consulting Group Ravi, Principal

R1 – First

General discussion. Interesting thing was Ravi picked me on why CA – now I told him about my interest in stock markets and my investments th since I was in class 8 ! This pulled him in to a case! First case as mentioned above was w.r.t stock market – specifically question was how should go about picking a stock? Second case was a brief discussion about finding out issues in profitability of a cement company. In first case Ravi asked me how should one go about selecting a stock. I proposed two approaches one in terms of finding out a DCF based valuation. He was trying to test deepness of my thought and he made me explain the entire process. Then second approach was by comparing EPS. Then he picked me asking all information is available in public domain so what makes you feel that you know this information which nobody else knows – here I was a bit puzzled by I explained him about management profile, investor profile etc. There was some more discussion which I do not remember. Post this long discussion on first case we moved on second case, which was totally unexpected for me. Anyway, after getting the problem statement. I tried to dig deeper by gathering more facts like: o Industry was in a reasonably stable state o Products were fairly comparable o Company was in existence for last 30-40 years Interestingly I did not made the structure upfront rather went on picking each step and going in depth. So I picked on pricing part first – Ravi asked me what will be the factors affecting it, I could think of: o Type of product o Customer segments o Distribution o Value Added For product as expected answer was nothing, distribution and value added services he said no scope. Now we went on to customer segment – here I figured out the type of segments which one can supply to and problem became a problem of targeting different market areas.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Thereafter we went on to discuss how can this firm go on to establish its presence in new market areas – critical issue which came out was establishing dealerships.

It was first interview of the day for both me and Ravi and hence tried to maintain full energy. Nothing as such – If I were not having knowledge about stock markets I could have been caught in trap of case regarding stock market and discussion on markets in India.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Just treat interview as a professional discussion – so neither you are nervous nor you are so aggressive that you make the interviewer uncomfortable.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Harsh Singhal Boston Consulting Group Seema Bansal, Principal

R1 – Second Interestingly Ravi had told her about everything related to me, my family. So our discussion started from my native area – what is good about that place, what is bad. We had discussion on ISB as well how it is better than other B-Schools. Not much of PI otherwise This case was in a situation of if a company wanted to launch broad band services across India – how should go about it. (Situation was 5 years back in India) I started of with first assessing whether the market is attractive enough for India. Next logical step was to assess market size. I did it by breaking the market in to households, cyber cafes, and small shops / offices (corporates were already out as they were assumed to be running on their VPNs). This was pretty simple. Next step was to estimate yearly sales – here I used Bass model from Marketing Term 2. Seema was visibly impressed with this. But just to test depth of my thought she asked me to tell what factors should be considered for applying this model (v/s the proxy country which we are going to take). I immediately listed down four factors viz. Needs, Income, Globalisation, and Prices of computers. Seema was very happy with this. But to my surprise, she asked me to move on to second phase as to how client should go about launching it. Client had a limited budget and they wanted to launch services across all metros. This was a seemingly difficult question but I listed out three or four ways, e.g. outsourcing infrastructure, launching services in limited area. Later on Seema told me that they took the limited area option. Post this we had a good discussion on how did costs in this industry move. I must admit this discussion seemed like with a colleague and I could sense the positive vibe from the interview. Again being friendly with the interviewer and taking case as if it was work related problem, so making an effort to solve the problem in depth rather than as a case.

Nothing I can recollect Being open to any kind of discussion. Have fundas of core term eco, marketing, operations, dmop ready – they come very handy. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Harsh Singhal Boston Consulting Group Sachin Nandgaonkar, Partner

R2 th This was my 12 interview for the day. Sachin and me started discussion (as usual for all of my BCG interviews!) on a very light note. Interestingly, Sachin asked me which all firms I was interviewed with. I told him about the entire day, which rounds were over and the interviews still left. Somehow (don’t remember how) discussion moved on to how interviewing styles of different firms varied and how it linked up to the kind of work they do. This discussion went on for about 10 minutes. I told him about a puzzle which was asked in Oliver interview and we solved it again! Visibly Sachin was quite happy with the healthy discussion. NO other PI question This case was w.r.t. a builder company which was planning to open up a concept of green buildings in India. He wanted me to assess NPV of the project. I deciphered the problem in to revenue and cost and the factors affecting them. Primarily the structure was: (it was built around on incremental basis vis-à-vis a normal building) Revenue: o Built up area (how it was different from a normal building) o Lease rentals o Carbon credits Cost: o Upfront costs o Operational costs o Any grants/ subsidy from government / other agencies Any difference in cost of capital being a more stable project. Then the discussion moved on to putting in numbers and finding out NPV of the project. It came out that NPV was not positive. Now Sachin asked me as to how this can be turned in to NPV positive. I tried to dvelve on each and every factor, but he said that more of less everything is fixed. From here on somehow Sachin took charge of the case and he started discussion about what kind of clients will they target - I told him corporates. He asked what kind of I told him three kinds, viz. Image conscious, Large corporates (for whom differential rent is miniscule), and firms which otherwise are known to be polluters / damager to environment). Next he suddenly came back to some number crunching again as to how can we incentives corporates to take it up which was done with some number crunching. At this point it seemed Sachin was done with the case, but suddenly an idea came up in my mind (which was never discussed in the case) and I told him how DLF built various residential areas coupled with a big corporate building and how this can be used by this builder to make one big project. Though Sachin appeared to be convinced about the case, with this idea he was very impressed. This is why probably he immediately asked me the question how serious are you about BCG!

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Again being friendly with the interviewer and being honest. I knew that Ravi has experience in consulting industry and he would be familiar with interviewing styles of all firms, so honestly told him my opinion and did not hide any fact. This helped me in case solving as well wherein I did not do any mistake in number crunching (because of low pressure).

Nothing I can recollect th

Be friendly and professional. Don’t be nervous. Even if this your 12 or th 15 interview in the day, show energy and enthusiasm. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question

Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Jitesh Shah BCG Seema

st

Round 1 – 1 interview This discussion was early in the morning. She asked me the following set of questions 1. Tell me something about yourself 2. How was your ISB experience? 3. Why consulting? These were typical ice breaking questions. She didn’t dwell into too many details of any of my responses. We immediately started discussing my ELP on increasing internet penetration in India. I had follow up questions on Is this a real case? What were your recommendations? What are you currently working on? How has the nature of your work evolved over time? “We did some consulting project for our telecom client some time ago. The client was serving broadband internet to corporate clients with high speed connections, VPN services and P2P network arrangements. Now they have asked us to evaluate whether they should enter the retail market. Can you walk me through how would we go about suggesting them?” This was a market opportunity evaluation case. Should the client enter – go /no go? However, because of my ELP, she didn’t expect to help me a lot. During the case I referred to a lot of findings from my ELP and stated few facts and numbers. I: As I am aware the value chain of providing the broadband service includes a. IXP b. Backbone rings and bandwidth c. Backbone routers/equipments d. Last mile connections Is this understanding correct? Seema: Yes I: And is our client present in all the bits of these value chain? Seema: Currently they are present in all the parts of the value chain. I: However you mentioned that they are serving corporate clients alone, so I assume their backbone might not be spread a lot? Can you give me some more details on what is their current spread at two levels? a. In what cities are they currently present? b. In each of the cities how is their backbone scaled up? Seema: They are present in 12 cities. (tier-1 cities). They have several backbone rings present in each of these cities to serve the corporate clients. (She scribbles and explains a bit more about the clients backbone) I: Ok. Are we looking for any time frame in mind or any financial constraints? Also, is client a conglomerate – I am trying to figure out the capabilities of the client. Also does the client have any minimum required rate of return from the project? Seema: No for all the questions. Lets not get into details of the numbers of required rate etc. Let us just discuss on what are things you are going to

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 consider in helping the client. I: Because we are talking about broadband connections, we must focus on the number of internet connection market in India. There are 150 internet users in India. However there are only 50million PCs in India. Now because each PC will have only one connection 50 million is true market size. 30-70 rural-urban (tier-1) spit and 60-40 corporate-retail split leaves about 14mn as a potential retail market. The will like to consider the following: Customer Reach Company - PC Users -> Laying backbone -> Financing, structuring,etc Awareness -> Last mile -> Operations -- Content Language -> Pockets with in city -> capabilities -- Availability of content -- Ease of use Willingness --Price --Use/Need --Perception External factors included: Regulations: Getting licenses Competition: Internet penetration in the 14mn is presently low. I used some pointers from my ELP findings like Chinese perceive that using computer is very easy vs Indian perception that only skilled ones can use the computers. Some major points of discussion were: a innovative revenue model which we recommended as part of our ELP, and option of bundling services, nd expanding market by creating a resale market of 2 hand PCs. After a discussion on the customer part, we talked about how to reach customers. There are two broad ways of doing the network bit. Organic and inorganic. Issues like network sharing, BVNO, cable TV like models for last mile connections were discussed but it was arrived at that scope of doing these was either limited or not possible. Organic was the only possibility of doing this. The retail market is sparse, requires lot of investment, especially in last mile connections. Also some profitable pockets are already occupied by the competition like BSNL, Bharti etc. Given the sparse market, high setup costs and unpredictable returns it doesn’t make sense in entering the market. What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience

I had only recently done the presentation on my ELP ☺ So I was atleast not disconnected with something that I had written on my CV I had made a few assumptions, which I should have stated and verified upfront. I would rate this as a pretty average case. A few wow moments (thanks to ELP). Know your interviewer well. If you think you haven’t done great, have a lot of follow up questions, don’t droop. Leave after a long

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 conversation and after you have connected well with the interviewer. Outcome

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Jitesh Shah BCG Ravi

nd

Round 1 – 2 interview I had to do well given my first interview was about average. The batch had high levels of preparation and I don’t think I could have differentiated st myself from others based on what I did in 1 interview. He asked me the following set of questions 1. Tell me something about yourself 2. IIT vs ISB experience (both are newbie) 3. My national level competition experience

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

I had follow up questions on Is this a real case? What were your recommendations? What are you currently working on? How has the nature of your work evolved over time? (I know you will find this repetitive, but then these are the standard set of questions I had for every interviews. I also followed up the case with some discussion on some interesting bit of his work on “Our client is a cement manufacturer and wants to increase profitability per ton. Lets solve the clients problem ☺” Game theory/Strategy case! I: Why profitability per ton? Why would CEO bother about profitability per ton. Shouldn’t he be focusing on total profits or share price? R: We are talking about making changes in a year and therefore only profitability per ton can be changed. We cannt do much with quantity itself. I: Right. Could you please tell me where does client manufacture and where does it sell? R: It is a pan India producer with 14-15 plants and sells through out India. I: So how are the customers classified. I would divide them into Retail and Industrial customers. Is that how company does it? R: Yes. Let us focus only on retail clients. Bulk of the business happens through them. I: ok. How do we reach our customers? R: There are distributors who sell it to the customers. I: In terms of geography, are the profits homogenous? R: No. South there is excess supply and up north there is excess deman. I: Ok. Competition? R: 3-4 regional players around every plant and 3-4 other large national players I: How are we doing visavis industry in terms of profits? Any targets in mind? R: We are on par with the industry. Lets aim for 5-10% increase in 1 year.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

I: Profitability per ton = Unit price – Variable cost – unitized Fixed cost Increasing profitability will mean increasing prices or reducing costs

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Distribution capabilities -> Financing, structuring,etc Needs -> Last mile -> R&D Perception -> Suppliers Preferences  Capabilities Price Product External factors included: Regulations: Getting licenses, Pollution aspects Competition: A: Jitesh, why don’t you discuss as you come up with your structure. I: A: That’s alright. But this is gonna happen one the R&D of the car is over. Let us say this is long term. Now what can Renault do? I: Ok we can look at ways of speeding up R&D or pairing with others in the market to co-R&D? A: R&D will take 5 years…cannt play with that. I: Tata has created a new market. Let us treat this thing an opportunity first. Now because we can come into the market only after 5 years, we must look at ways of slowing down the growth of the market so that we can tap into this opportunity at the right time. (I drew 2 S curves with different kurtosis.) We can slow the growth by providing them alternate modes of conveyance @ same or less price! A: That’s good. Alright lets see how can we do that! I: .o0(Finally the first step in right direction ☺ ) Ppl generally use the cars to commute. 1L car users are likely to use it for local commuting. If we can provide substitutes to them, it will be good to slow down the market. The modes of public transportation are Buses, Cars, Trains, 2W (in the same price range) A: Good. So? A: Reva is also into 4W (high end buses). I: Right so, if Reva can help local tier 1/2 municipalities/govt. by establishing the public bus transport system, it will do the trick. I am not sure if we can play any role in Rail transports. We can rope in other players too (who are looking to play role in this market, but have capabilities in this area – Rail and 2W). A: What else can be done here?

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 I: 2

nd

hand market?

A: Right! I: Some thing along the lines of true value of maruti. We must ease creation of resale markets for cars. A: Why do you think if may work? I: This business is largely unorganized. Price and credibility will come with Renault brand. But Renault is a small player in the Indian market. (Presence wise) so it must rope in other global players along with it. Also, nd it must look at getting 2 hand cars from international markets, if the cost works out, coz I am aware that most of the used cars are dumped in the likes of USA. A: The import duties are likely to be very high. I: But as a lobby of the MNCs, both in India and outside, we can influence Govt Decisions. A: Thik hai. What else? I: We have looked at how do we impact their timing. However these kind of steps might be irreversible and therefore CEO must carefully weigh options. The market may permanently shrink by providing them a substitute where in getting out is not possible. (Like public transport service) One needs to be at the right time at right place with right product. We need to look at how can we block their distribution. They already have a right product (given that their production is underway) A: Right. I: I assume that in India they have their own outlets (single brand). Yes. So I am not sure if much can be done on the distribution front. However in the global markets, we need to erect barriers for Tata’s entry. This can be done at two levels. a. Get higher tarrifs/taxes by lobbying in the government. b. We are already large players globally. We need to prevent Tata from entering the market by blocking the distribution networks (They don’t have their own shops, and we can get others to block their alliances) A: Ok. Good so far, what else? I: We checked the time, distribution?...We need to see if we can control their volumes! (Right product to right customers @ right place in right quantity) A: Good…how will you do it? I: They are sourcing their raw materials from some global vendor. Renault is a large player and will have larger partners eyeing similar opportunity. We can get together and erect barriers for souring of components/raw materials to Tata. A: Ok. This was the opportunity part, how do we analyze this as threat?

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 I: So Tata has created a new market. The threat are as follows: a. Tata dominates new market 5 years down the line b. Customer from our segment moves into tata’s segment A: What else? I: c. Tata can protect the technology with patents, which hampers our R&D d. Uses its technology to launch high end low cost products in our segments and erode our profits!!

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

(d. was the biggest threat and the answer that he was looking for) I kept evolving my structure (My structure is not explicitly mentioned here). Kept thinking aloud (@ his insistence). He obviously helped me at some places all along the case.

I was very nervous and not confident.

Selected ☺

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Manik Gupta BCG

Round 1 – Interview 1

No personal questions asked. Interviewer was also taking some time to get up like I was (luckily coffee arrived – it was 8am!) Prepare the technology strategy for a PSU National Oil Company Strategy • I started by asking what is the time frame: Answer – over next 10/20 years • Proposed to evaluate the following to get the right context: o Company o Customers o Employees o Industry o Regulation o Competition • Moved on to talk about industry: Industry is characterized by environmental challenges and technology is critical in exploration • Understood the value chain in the industry • Consumers want energy at cheapest cost – increasingly want clean energy • Talked about company and business goals: Wants to be a global player and develop a leadership in energy space • Finally identified that the company is dependent mainly on Oil and not much other reserves. • Divided the tech strategy into two areas: Optimize what we have and Explore new • Under optimize: Improve current yield and invest in tech to do that • Under new sources: Invest in solar, wind etc. • I started listing some possible technologies when the case ended.

There were several dead ends but I kept persisting Structure wasn’t very good. Didn’t hit the problem head on. Got mired in details whereby question was a big picture question. Questions can be of strategic nature where the interviewer is trying to test your big thinking skills and not necessarily your analytical skills. Went to Round 1 – Interview 2

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Neha Kalra BCG Neeraj

Round 1 – first interview Neeraj is an amazing listener; It started off again with – “the only lady on the shopfloor” (guess it was my lucky day) Then we talked about a)‘girls on the manufacturing floor” b) manufacturing as a career c) why MBA? d) Why ISB? Then we did a case and – total 1 hr 5 mins ( yes I record the time ☺ )

“there is a company in the telecom sector and has a product “X” – this X is a necessity in telecom and the company has been making good profits for the last 4 years – like 40% gross margin.. and now suddenly the revenue and profits are stagnant – the market has has slowed down and that’s why this has happened – what do you think that the CEO should do in the medium and long term” Typical – Profit loss case (BUT THERE IS A GREAT LEARNING – see the tips section) I asked him about the product X? and how important it is for the telecom service providers? is it a big part of their costs ? – he said some arbit stuff – this was a hint that it was a bigger overall strategy case and not into details – so I defined the case as – the CEO wants to know, what to do to increase the profits both in short and long term – he said yes - I immediately moved to the standard profit loss framework and started looking at revenue first - he said OK – I said profit = Price* Quantity and went to pricing… he had said that the telecom service providers were not very sensitive to pricing in the business.. so I dint come to reducing the pricing… I asked about the competitive landscape – our client is 35% business… it went on and on an on ….. could not reach anywhere.. so we went to costs… discussed everything.. excess capacity.. joint ventures.. MnA,..still nothing..so he said.(the discussion was a very intelligent substance discussion.. not general profit loss cases.). – neha we had a great discussion on both prices and quantity,, why don’t u see decreasing the price – I said.. “ooooooo I thot of it, but then u said that the players are insensitive to price “ - he said “ they WERE, the whole industry as I told u is seeing some problems” – PICK UP THE HINTS… -- once he said this I went to the cost structure of the firm again – I said that our client can play price war only if a) his variable costs are lower than competitors variable costs and he is playing on high investment low variable cost model (reliance model) – he said YES it is exactly this way – I said OK , then let him price X above his variable cost but below the others variable costs and drive the competition away. – I also said, to speeden this up he should in fact price it lower than his variable costs also (extremely low and he can afford it because he has cash with him as he has been on 40% profits for the last 4 – 5 years.. so there should not be an issue on the working capital side – he sair “great” .. he wanted to stop and asked me to

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 summarize the case.. – I summarized the case, and also gave some more ideas like .. seeing the cost and benefit of doing away with excess capacity rite now and adding again when the market is doing good, buying high fixed cost players in the sector.. etcc etc.. a lot more.. – he patiently listened to everything Then he asked me if I had anything to ask him? I asked similar question as I asked in Mck – “ has India become a net contributor to the knowledge base..- he told me about low cost Indian manufacturing.. I said cool… and he said super cool!

What do you think went right for you in this interview

What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

He looked happy and that gave me confidence he PI started off well, - I had spent a lot of time on my resume and that did the trick case - once he hinted on price drop I was full of suggestions and the discussion on cost structure was great OK .. a lot of things - a)I spoke a lot, cut him in his talk.. but I guess it was interesting so he was ok..but wont work all the time.. b) I missed the hint that the sector is going down so all players will be price conscious and price decrease would be a good thing c) I spent too much time on Quantity side of the a) work on your resume b) Make the resume in such a way that irrespective of whatever – the you are able to guide the interviewer to THE thing you want to talk about – link all answers to that DO NOT OVERPREPARE – DON’T LOOSE YOUR NATURAL SELF c) Call me/ mail me for help anytime !! good luck! Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Neha Kalra BCG Navneet

Round 1 – secondinterview Navneet was very patient and very good listener It started off again with – “the only lady on the shopfloor” (guess it was my lucky day) a) run me through your resume b) you have done unconventional things in life – how do u manage to do so many things – (he shared his own views in it) c) Team work Then we did a case and – total 1 hr Then we did a case and then we again chatted for like 5 more mins – eXpect BCG to pick up something from your resume and ask you a case on it – my day was operations “”so Neha our client is in telecom, profitability is at 10% and they want 25%.. what should they do? ” Typical – Profit loss case (BUT THERE IS A GREAT LEARNING – see the tips section) Upfront questions – where in the value chain? – ans.. they make towers and maintain them .. and into providing services too.—so I asked details on the portfolio of services and portfolio of work of tower etc. – he gave me everything including margins.. so margins in tower making etc were low – I asked him if he is sure that its not just an accounting issue.—he appreciated the point and said .. no, they do ABC and might be small accounting issues but not really one—I said ok.. and moved on to profitability framework .. revenue – costs --- so I said we will look at the tower making etc.. (pareto) – he said perfect.. – went to revenue… he hinted therez nothing there , I said great! Jumped to costs (didn’t waste time at all) - asked him costs heads .. he gave the following .. – a) Tower making, b) people c) administration (I don’t remember the terminology correctly but the remember the discussion) Discussion on tower making – I said “ so Navneet, what does it include” – he said making and servicing and maintaining and some back office work – so I said following can be wrong (BE CREATIVE, I started throwing solutions/ideas) (i) are the people skilled? Know how much material are they using (extra material = extra cost) (ii) is the quality of material too high (more than required quality increases the costs) (iii) is there rework happening? – are people good? (iv) What kind of designs are there – he said there are various different types of designs – I asked why? – he said no one knows – I said .. are they required? – he said , no – I said then standardize the design! He looked happy – so I started throwing more ! – he said no, lets move on to other ones

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Discussion on people – people cost = wage * number a) are outsourced people expensive – yes they are – are they doing some specialized job? – not really, they can be replaced – then replace them b) can we multiskill people – yeah we can – then do that! c) Can we move our service centers to low cost destinations – yes we can d) Can we reallocate people to reduce number of people – yes we can – but can we fire them? – are they unionized? – yes they are and he appreciated the point that I touched upon the fact that the unions are tough to handle ( learning : know your industry, small things can make you win the case Discussion on administration a) planning happening ok? – no – so scheduling, audits have to be done again and again (I did not come up with this point alone. It was a result of a thorough discussion that’s it!

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

The PI went really well. I think I picked up his hints very well , whenever he gave me a hint of moving on , or something else, I instantly picked them up – I guess I was very attentive in this interview (extremely important at BCG)

Nothing really a) know your work - details can make you win b) work on your resume c) Take the hints – it saves time, and really impresses they guyd) Maximize your cases with alums DO NOT OVERPREPARE – DON’T LOOSE YOUR NATURAL SELF e) Call me/ mail me for help anytime !! good luck! Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Neha Kalra BCG Arvind

Round 2 – second interview ( and the last) Arvind can assess your personality, your “ JHOOT SACH” in a “CHUTKI”so be genuine. He took me for a walk ( total 1 hr 15 mins interview) He asked me, how do I feel I have done in the last 3 interviews - I said, these have been by far my best performances, and I have enjoyed interacting with each other of BCG people.. and I am impressed that all BCG people are so patient and amazing listeners He said, yes its in the culture of the firm (which is a great thing in BCG, and makes this firm a great place to work ( my personal feeling) )

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Then we had a case - TATA NANO ! Then again 15 – 20 mins of PI on how I can evolve at BCG – got the offer

“So neha Tata is coming with nano, what do you think it’s a threat or an opportunity for other players in the market..” Oops! No form.. general discussion! i said – its an opportunity (no structure , we were taking a walk after all) because it opens up a full market – he said ‘ what shud the competitors do” – I kept on saying a lot of things… - they should lobby with government to stop this .. bla bla bla bla – the discussion was round and round and round.. I was tired with my high heels—then suddenly I said – Arvind can you tell me if I am on the right track ? , am little tired – he smiled and said, ok neha I again ask you “ what can they do to stop the nano or get ready for the market” – this statement gave me clarity and I said “ ok we can stop nano from coming, or do some other stuff” – he said great , so lets discuss both one by one – (remember that once you asked for clarity then you have to crack the rest of the case, else you are dead) –so I picked up stopping nano to hit the market discussion on stopping Nano to hit the market – (i) demand side hit – lobby with the activists and say that the infrastructure isn’t ready and hence nano should not be allowed ( he liked it) (ii) demand side hit -Increase the advertisements on how “Indians have to be sensitive about infrastructure” ( he liked it) (iii) supply side hit – can we buy out the suppliers? – can we promise them some other meat? – like get them under long term agreements etc (iv) Supply side hit – can we buy out the low cost suppliers to tatas ( I told them, that my thinking was to stop providing necessary materil that gets into nana (v) Supply side – can we buy their engineers (vi) And some more discussion, I don’t quite remember

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 but ya on similar lines What else they can do till they develop their own low cost (i) (ii)

can they give fire to second hand car market ( as this is the immediate competition to nano) he kept on probing me on public transport till I said – why cant they collaborate with the government and make the public transport so easy and good and safe that people don’t need nano! BINGO.. ( he loved it- tho he only got that in my head – amazing guide he is)

he still looked dissatisfied and asked me there is something else that is missing.. – something that is a real threat to the competitors of tatas. – we kept on discussing, till I suddenly remembered the team that made the engine is of 30 years average age (READ THE CURRENT ISSUES, IT HELPS BUILD PERSPECTIVE) – so I said “ they have the engineering skills, which can be used to enter other segments (like they can make cheaper engines for indigo .. or come up with new car in ford Ikon category etc).. and this resource is just too good! – BINGO end of case

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Everything - I had a great rapport with Arvind

nothing a) Be genuine b) Be grounded c) Be yourself d) Be confident e) Be transparent f) Be blunt (but carry it ) g) Connect with the interviewer – genuinely h) Be aware of the current issues DO NOT OVERPREPARE – DON’T LOOSE YOUR NATURAL SELF i) Call me/ mail me for help anytime !! good luck! Offer made

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Shiva Agarwal BCG Sachin Nadongkar

First Round, First Interview

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

The structure that I laid down initially impressed Sachin.

Made one calculation mistake and my paper was not very neat.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Shiva Agarwal BCG Felix Stellmaszek

First Round, Second Interview I have met Felix in the BCG dinner, so knew about his passion for travel and his knowledge about India. He started with tell me about one of the biggest failure in life. Gave the prepared answer. Then he asked why MBA. After that we started talking about his travel and his experience in India and some diversity in India. I shared my experience with America and how I found diversity in America. Overall it was a good conversation and helped in establishing good repo Our client is an auto manufacture and is looking for entering into car financing option. We need to help our client with first whether he should enter into this business or not and how he should enter Market estimation and Long term strategy case This interview had some graphs, I might not be able to reproduce them. But will try my best to give inferences of those graphs. Felix started with showing me the value chain of entire automobile industry. And told in which part of the value chain our client operates: R&D, Manufacturing, After sales.. Client was not in Dealers, insurance and car financing. He asked me to calculate the potential car financing market. I told him we will first calculate the total cars that are needed by US markets and then find out average price of cars sold in US and then see what percentage of people take car financing and also up to what percentage of total car price. He was happy that I mentioned percentage part as most of the times customers make certain payments from their savings. We followed standard method of calculating number of cars, started with number of households and then dissected it across income group which can afford cars. He told me that approximately 90% household in US can afford cars and on average there are 2 cars per households. We came up with some number, but I told him that this number is the stock of car in US. Annual sale of new cars would be dependent on average life of the car and percentage of old car market in US. He asked me to ignore old car market, and told average age of a car is 12 years. He gave me some numbers of the price of the car and % upfront payment. I mentioned that this is the total size of the car financing market, but actual profit that our client will make from this business is dependent on clients market share and the spread of the loans (mainly his cost of borrowing and his rate of borrowing). This was the point where he mentioned I am doing extremely well with numbers, now lets move on to the strategy part. He showed me few graphs which compared the spread of our clients car financing and spread of other loans available in market ( house loans and others.. I am currently forgetting rest). But the spread of car financing was about 0.2% and total profit that the client will make per by using car financing was somewhere around 38$ per car. I mentioned to Felix that this on the face of this looks very small profit, but car financing business can help us in acquiring new customers and the client can make money through that. Then based on the graphs and the discussion till now, he asked me to make 3 recommendations. I told him a) Client can get into joint venture with some banks and decrease its cost of borrowing as banks balance sheet might be stronger than

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

our client. b) Cross sell various other loans like house loans c) I am forgetting third one. Then Felix clicked next on his power point presentation and showed these were the exact recommendations he made to his client. Then we again chatted for sometime about his experience with India and then he mentioned to me that I have cracked the case, he just need to check with my previous interviewer. The fact that I knew Felix, made me very comfortable in the interview. Everything went right in this interview as I made recommendations with Felix made to his clients.

Nothing Make sure interview flow like a logical discussion, and try to interact with the partners when they come to campus. Familiarity with the interviewer helps a lot.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question

Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Shiva Agarwal BCG Neeraj Agarwal

Second round, first interview This was not a case interview; it was more of fit interview so I have very less to write. As I and Neeraj had a general discussion. Neeraj started with saying that I and he share many common things. He picked many points from my resume and told it is similar to mine.. For sometime I was not understanding what is happening.. Is this an interview.. Then he asked me why not I joined IIT and why I want to join BCG. Gave the answers.. Then we started discussing about IT industry in India and he shared his view points and I told him what I think. At this point he said lets do a very small business case and we will discuss stuff after this case. After the case we also discussed about next billion stuff that BCG is involved in. Long term strategy and game theory case He mentioned that he will not tell industry for the sake of confidentiality. But industry is currently facing decline and our client has huge capacity build up. After 5 years industry is going to grow, so we need to suggest client what he should do. Asked few questions initially: about client market position, number of players, their capacity, and will capacity is sufficient to fulfill the future growth. After these questions, I figured out that client is leader and there are 2 large compt. 3-4 small players. All of the players have increased capacity. We need to see how client can make sure his profits grow in future when market will grow. Laid down standard profit structure, but added more details to it. Asked about the price sensitivity of the customer he said customers are highly price sensitive. Then we were discussing the option of either increasing or decreasing price. He said how we will decide what to do. I mentioned that two things will decide that a) The impact of price change on our total profits b) Reaction of competition for that I mentioned we can make a 2-2 matrix of our moves vs competitions move and see what can be done (standard game theory matrix) At this point, Neeraj asked to stop the case and made the offer. This was more of a fit interview and I was able to connect very well with Niraj. I had done similar type of case earlier, as was biased in my way of approaching the case. So I stumbled initially in the case, but then I figure out that I am going wrong. I asked him to restart the case again and then I lay down a logical structure (which Niraj liked a lot) Do not get bias by the similar case that you might have done during your case prep. And if you think you are hitting a wall, step back, take your time and restart the discussion.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Pradyot Anand Diamond Management & Technology Consultants Rajesh Balaraman, Senior Principal

First Round, First Interview

1. Why consulting? 2. Why ISB? 3. Learnings at ISB Retail mall whose # of customers is on decline Marketing Client is a retail mall that owns the hypermarket based across floors 1,2 of rd a 3 floor mall. ground floor has branded outlets (Levis, Nike etc) and 3 floor is a food court. Observation is that the number of footfalls into the mall has been decreasing but the footfalls into the hypermarket has been declining. Why? Hypermarket had grocery section and non-grocery section (incl. apparel, kitchen appliances etc). Basically, it was that the hypermarket was stocking non-brand or pvt label brands of non-groceries and that the profile of the customer who came to the mall was that s/he was brand conscious and doing most of the purchases in the ground floor and then coming up to buy groceries if required. Also, people go to malls for the experience and grocery shopping didn’t exactly qualify as an “experience” and many people would prefer to use the local store. Approached the case from a 3Cs perspective. Laid out a broad pattern of approach and evaluated each issue systematically. Went into quite a bit of detail on each branch, could’ve asked if I needed to dig further before actually doing so.

Keep a cool head, and overall approach to problem is key to solving. Not applicable. First round had 2 interviews anyway.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Pradyot Anand Diamond Management & Technology Consultants Govind Balan, Senior Manager

First Round, Second Interview

1. Most memorable moment in life Pharma company whose sales have stagnated. Operations Client is a pharma bulk drug manufacturer whose drug is used in manuf of many OTC drugs. Sales have stagnated. What is the next course of action? Through questioning, figured that the domestic sales had stagnated. There was an export market which was profitable, but the company hadn’t ventured into this since it was running at full capacity. Then explored capacity expansion options. Understood that the bulk drug had 2 basic raw materials – X and Y. X was procured externally whereas Y was produced internally using same equipment as for bulk drug. Suggested that Y could also be procured. Quickly identified it as an operations issue rather than a marketing issue as it appeared at first sight. Overall framework for solving was appreciated by the interviewer. Interviewer also gave me a lot of cost related data that was irrelevant to the case but I did not get muddled up and use it by trying to force fit it into my case analysis. Was unable to generate more than 2 alternatives at one point even though interviewer specifically asked for 3.

Keep a calm composure, even if things don’t go perfectly. Yes. (Out of 20 interviewed, 7 were shortlisted for final round)

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Pradyot Anand Diamond Management & Technology Consultants Vinod Nair, MD (India)

Second & Final Round

1. Why Diamond? 2. Aspirations in life Newspapers required in Mumbai airport Estimation

How many free newspaper copies are required at Mumbai airport per day? The newspapers are distributed free for publicity purposes

Was comfortable with numbers. Initially, split the problem too finely. Eg: I wanted to bucket the number of hours the airport is open into heavy – medium – light rush hours to estimate people, whereas he was just looking for me to use an average number. Latched onto his hints quickly enough though. Once again - Keep a calm composure, even if things don’t go perfectly. PI prep really helps Offer made and accepted.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Charu Ernst and Young, Business Advisory Service Bharat (Alum), Manager

First and only round Most of the questions were around school education as E&Y asked candidates to fill up forms on schooling. I was also asked to state my understanding of role. This led to further questioning on verticals I would like to work on? I guess candidate was expected to clearly state his/her choice and later on show the sound understanding of that vertical. To gauge some general awareness I was asked to give my views on latest boom in retailing and give the name of one company which would win in long run (with reason). I answered this question using some macroeconomic model and quoted Reliance as the clear winner. I was not asked to solve any case

I believe that my answers were clear and concise. There was less of meandering and more of direct answering.

Stay calm and be yourself.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Gaurav Bagaria Ernst & Young Srinivas (Head HR) & Payal Shah (Manager)

R1 First Why Consulting? Why E&Y? Why not a pure-play strategy consulting firm? (E&Y does 70% implementation-30% strategy). Why don’t you want to start a company of your own (I had experience of working for a startup) Grilled on my competition wins and work experience. I think they were looking for clarity of thought more than anything Had 2 cases: 1) Not a typical case but I was asked to classify the type of consulting work that is done in the consulting industry 2) P&G has acquired Gillette and is looking for cost reduction across logistics & supply chain. How would you advise them 1) General 2) LSCM 1) I said there are 3 main types of consulting: Strategy, Operations and th Implementation. Payal reminded that the 4 type is People. I drew these on the Y-axis and on the X-axis I drew various verticals-sectors (IT, Media, Oil and Gas). She asked me the rationale and I said most consulting firms specialize in certain sectors. I was then asked to plot various firms on the graph. I plotted McK, BCG, Parthenon as doing strategy and some operations. EnY, Deloitte do less strategy work but do a lot of operations and implementation. IT consulting firms focus largely on implementation. Hewitt on the other hand specializes in People consulting. 2) I asked a couple of clarifying questions: Does P&G manufacture/market shaving products? Answer: No. Is the integration complete (I got a vague response for this)? Are we defining a strategy for short term or long term? Answer: Both I then classified 3 areas of cost reduction: Sourcing, Manufacturing & Distribution. I also mentioned that we need to take 2 perspectives on each cost reduction measure: Operations View: Operationally how feasible is achieving cost reduction and a Strategic View: What are the strategic implications of the cost cutting measure

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Once I got affirmation of my structure I proceeded to identify the various broad level levers we could adopt. Sourcing: Rationalize the supplier portfolio, renegotiate contracts and allocate more to those who provide better rates Manufacturing; Consolidate manufacturing if P&G plants can produce Gillette goods. It turned out that only packaging could be consolidated as Gillette goods need specialized machinery that P&G does not have. Also P&G due to its larger size can have economies of scale in maintenance Distribution: I was asked to get deep into details regarding a couple of items and this is

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 where I stumbled a bit. I believe the normal case preparation only lets you get a 30,000 foot overview of the situation. Since EnY also does implementation one must depart from a strategic view and address how these measures can be actually implemented.

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

After all this, I ended the case by suggesting the use of a matrix to plot all measures. The X-axis would be amount of cost reduction that can be achieved and Y-axis would be ease of implementation. This helps us identify the low hanging fruits (easy to do and high impact) 1) I was able to demonstrate knowledge of the consulting industry and specifically about EnY. 2) I had a solid approach and recommendation, thanks to the case prep done for 1) I missed People as one of the consulting types although EnY does that work and had to be reminded. 2) My overall analysis was at a high level but I mended that early and got into details Firms like EnY, Deloitte hire you as consultants for a specific vertical so you need to demonstrate fit in the resume, EoI and interview. It may be good to inquire about specific projects/expertise they have in the vertical of your choice and coming up with examples to demonstrate how your experience will be helpful. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Gaurav Bagaria Ernst & Young Milan Sheth, Partner

R2 First Why Consulting? Why E&Y? Why don’t you want to start a company of your own? (I had experience of working for a startup). He wanted specifics on what areas of consulting I am interested in. Also wanted to know how I would chart my career at E&Y. No case as such but was given 2 live situations 1) How would you leverage E&Y strengths to help telecom companies grow their enterprise business? 2) What are the 2 key areas that would help Indian IT companies remain competitive 1) I said we can leverage our domain expertise to recommend innovative business models to telecom companies that involve triple-play, quadruple-play of services. We can see which model provides greatest benefits and suggest that our client use that. Our implementation focus can also help us 2) For this question, I took the conservative approach and was not very creative. I said that the 2 key areas are: driving innovation and controlling attrition 1) Out of box solution 2) Solid arguments provided when I was grilled on my approach 1) Nothing. 2) Solution was not very innovative but reasoning was solid When the interview is with people at the partner level, they become more like conversations. In my experience, in such cases the interviewer is looking for cut and dry responses and not the traditional rehearsed answers. Also, they look for a practical approach to problem solving and a passion for consulting. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Madhur Malik Ernst and Young

First

Questions related to my work experience A retailer needs to set up warehouses. Should he hire a logistics provider or should he do it himself. How would you analyse the same? If he cannot find a good enough logistics provider, what should he do? I said I would analyse the costs, but as per my personal experience, until and unless the retailer intends to get into the logistics business, he should hire an external logistics provider, since it makes sense to concentrate in the core, and outsource the non-core activities. I was very confident with details of my work experience. And on my reasons of outsourcing.

Nothing

Made it to next round.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Madhur Malik Ernst and Young

Second

Questions related to my preference of work place. This in itself hinted to me that they were looking to hire me. How would you measure the number of windows in Delhi Estimation I said I would take the population of Delhi and find out the working population and the non-working population. For the non-working, I would estimate the number of households taking an average of 4 people per household. And then an estimate on the number of windows per house. Taking the number of working people, I would further divide them into people working in different sizes of workplaces, and then estimate the no of establishments and the no of windows in each establishment.

I was very confident.

Nothing

Be confident. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

What do you think went right for you in this interview

Pankaj Singh E&Y Bharat Gulia (Manager), Srinivas Mada (Senior Manager – HR) I had 3 rounds of interviews: 1. First round was a technical round (lasted 20 – 25 minutes) 2. Second was a personal round (lasted 10 minutes) 3. Third round was for negotiation of offer (lasted 20 minutes) 1. Resume walk-through. a. Questions about my past assignments 2. Have you lead teams? (then follow-up questions on that such as what are the difficulties in international teams etc) 3. How do you manage any change in organizational context? 4. Why are your grades low? 5. Which area do you think you can add value in? How? 6. What are your expectations from consulting career? 7. You are from automotive industry. Why don’t you join a company in automotive industry? 8. Lot of questions about automotive industry (because I had auto background) a. Future of India vs China competition b. Industry transition in various geographies c. Role of various players (OEMs, tier1 suppliers, tier2 suppliers) Devise entry strategy for a conveyer belts manufacturer. Entry strategy / growth strategy. My case discussion lasted for 5 minutes. He asked me the question. I asked them two questions to get a hang of the industry/objective. Then I told them my approach for solving the problem and summarized by describing my structure. I think they liked freshness of my approach. Typically people ask a lot of questions and often the process gets slowed down or becomes uninteresting. I touched upon the entire set of important points and summarized it quickly. Perhaps, it was easier for me because I was aware of the likely applications of conveyer belts.

What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience

Outcome

1. Don’t over-prepare for case interviews. I had read first chapter of ‘Case in point’ to understand different types of cases. I had done only 3 – 5 cases myself but observed around 10 cases. 2. Interviewers appreciate crisp and comprehensive communication. 3. Be thorough with your resume and be comfortable talking about its relevance to the vertical you are targeting. 4. Try to understand the background of the interviewer and gauge his expectation from your interview. 5. Utilize the opportunities to demonstrate the value you bring to the table. 6. Stay calm, focused and confident. Got an offer.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions

Roumi Gop Ernst and Young Payal Shah, Manager

First Walk me through your resume. Why consulting? How will your previous work exp be useful in consulting? Questions related to my ELP. She delved a lot in to my ELP. Case 1 A North American telecom operator wants to enter the Indian market. They hire you as a consultant. How would you go about helping them in making a decision? And also how can they enter the market? In this market entry case, I started with the industry analysis in terms of size, profitability, growth potential etc. Then I went on to do the competitor, customer and company analysis (if it can leverage its existing strengths in the Indian market). I spoke about the regulatory issues too. The interviewer cut me short in the analysis and wanted me to focus on the ways the operators can go about the entry in any market and the ways it has been done in India. Here I spoke about options like MVNO (not allowed in India)/ partnership/ JV/acquisition etc. Next she asked me to determine the segment this telco should target. I spoke about the Indian Telecom scenario. The penetration in Urban and rural areas. Also given that this telco has more competencies in dealing with the youth segment in North America, this might be a good segment to target initially. I identified other reasons for this. In the end we had a discussion on the recent entry of Virgin mobile in the Indian market and how they are targeting the Youth segment. In this case along with the use of framework, I was also tested on my understanding of the Indian telecom market. I have prior experience in Telecom. The interviewer was also interested in the implementation issues. Case 2 Mini case - You are consulting for a top investment bank. You need to help them in deciding what all processes to outsource. Mention a criteria that can be used to outsource? I started by mentioning how the core and non-core activities can be used as a criteria for outsourcing.

Narration of the case

Then she wanted me to identify the non core processes for an

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 investment bank. Some of the processes I identified were Non core - procurement, financial accounting, human resources, reporting, some part of IT etc. What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

My knowledge of the Telecom sector helped me to talk about the implementation issues that she was keen on. In the first case I spent quite some time on the initial analysis. The interviewer was focused more on the implementation. I should have identified that earlier. I was being interviewed for the Telecom, Technology and the Outsourcing vertical. This was reflected in the cases. So knowledge of the sectors you are applying to helps a lot. Made to the Second round

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions Case question

Roumi Gop Ernst and Young Manager of another vertical + HR head

Second Why Consulting? Strengths and weaknesses? Lot of questions related to my previous projects. Other resume specific questions. Estimate the petrol utilization in Mumbai in a year. It was a market size estimation case. I approached it by estimating the number of families in Mumbai from its population. Then I segmented the market based on income level and for each segment assumed a “vehicle per family” ratio (both for 2 wheelers and 4 wheelers). Then I assumed the average distance covered for each category and the mileage.

Narration of the case What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

This round was more focused on PI than the case. In fact while handling the case he did not expect me to do the entire calculation done. My PI prep helped here.

Be systematic in estimation cases and state each assumption clearly. Practice prevents us from making arbitrary assumptions. Made to the Third round

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Roumi Gop Ernst and Young Milland seth, Partner

Third Why Consulting? Why E&Y? Short term and long term goals? What should be the qualities of a good consultant? Rate yourself on each of those? What are your weaknesses? How are you working on those? It was merely a 15 minutes interview. It was more conversational. He was keen on knowing my understanding of the role and other expectations. I could also clarify my doubts about the work. None

Here my research on the E&Y verticals, the role and hoe these are different from other consulting firms was useful.

Do your homework on the firm you are interviewing with. Was made an offer

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Sanjay Sharma E&Y Rakesh Kumar - Manager , Shrini – Senior Manager HR

Second Round The interviewer started with a brief description about him and then asked me to introduce me in 2 minutes. Then he asked me following questions in random order: Why Consulting? Why E&Y? Strength weakness question. Then he went to ask me about my study group mates at ISB. Their strengths and weakness. Describe leadership. Any leadership example from work.

I was given an eight pages case write up about a hospital chain in India which was experiencing low assets utilization and stagnant revenues. Typical stagnant sales and market expansion case. The case write up was well written and quite comprehensive so he asked me start with my gut feeling of what was going wrong with the hospital chain. As all of the information was already given to me in the case, I did following things before moving into the interview room: Broke the case analysis in four standard parts: Defined the Problem: A hospital chain which provides treatment to the lower end diseases (non lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, heart related diseases etc.) is experiencing a decline in sales/revenues over the period of last four years. (All the information was given in the write up). Structure: The structure I applied was: Sales are defined: ∑ PI * Qi where Q = number of patients*average patient days and price was price charged per patient. And I stand for different diseases which the hospital serves. I told him that we would we analysing these three components for the client, the completion and the customer preferences. Before proceeding to using the structure, I asked him whether the proposed structure covered everything or there was any critical piece which he thought might be important for the discussion but I missed out,

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

He appreciated my structure and complimented me for coming with such a nice structure☺. Then, he told me that, before I move on to apply the structure, what are the different ways we can break up the revenue so I told him the following ways: 1. By diseases the client serves.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 2. By types of customers: demographic, psychological, economic parameters based segmentation. 3. By referral and non-referral patients. (this point came out after he directed me towards this but once I mentioned this he seemed quite happy ☺). Then we moved on to third part, issue analysis and based on whatever notes I had made from the case write-up, We came to the conclusion that 1. The healthcare market was booming in the life style related diseases which generates higher revenues. The other two competitors had already moved to treating theses diseases. 2. The client was focusing only on the local customers which were quite price sensitive while there was a huge opportunity in the global and medical tourism market where the competitors had already moved in. 3. Insurance companies were playing a significant role in the decision making process of the patients and the client lacked strong partnership with the top firms in this market. All this information was given in the case and I did a good thing of making notes of all these points which came very handy during our discussion. Finally I recommended the client to: 1. Enter into the life style disease treatment market. 2. Focus on global brand building and attracting pan India and foreign customers. 3. Get into strategic partnership with insurance companies to attract more new and high potential customers.

In the very beginning of the interview, I came to know that the interviewer wrote the case on his own as this was a real project he did with on of the leading hospital chains in India. As the case was well written, I complimented him for the same and started the discussion by saying that the quality of the case write up was as good as many of the cases I did during my MBA. I also, asked him whether he writes professionally or as a hobby. This triggered the conversation about his passion about writing made both of us at ease with each other.

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

As I had worked with major healthcare and pharmaceutical clients with ZS as my previous employer so I had a good understanding of the working of this industry which helped me to be quick in understanding the case and making notes. As this is very different from what we get or practice during our consulting prep, the experience was completely different as I did not need to ask any questions about the case (all the information as given beforehand and I was expected to find out the gist of the problem!) Making notes definitely helped me a lot!!!

Nothing Do prepare for such case write up based interviews. As a group, we made cases from our work experiences which actually helped a lot in knowing industries well. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Sanjay Sharma

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Why Consulting? Why E&Y? A lot of work experience related questions as I had consulting experience.

E&Y Vaibhavi Chohan and Jaydeep - Direcors

First Round

No Case No Case

I was told that they had heard from Rakesh I did the case pretty well and hence no case for me in that round. I listened to the E&Y PPT several times and hence I was able to connect all the answers with the key theme of their PPT. This showed that I did enough research and was keen on the firm and the work profile.

Nothing Be prepared with your resume and all the usual PI questions well. Do customize them according to the firm needs and requirements. I was told that they liked me and would like to make me an offer. ☺

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First,Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question

Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience

Sumit Kumar Ernst & Young st

1 Round Bharat (ISB 2004 Alum ). Second Round HR Manager. 1 case interview, 1 PI and the short talk before Final offer • • • •

Why Consulting? So you are from Oil & Gas Background. Tell me about what’s happening in this space. What do you think is going to happen? Why consolidation is imminent? What was this project (on my resume), what was my role in it?

• What do you think is supply chain consulting all about?  Should HUL enter the Rural Markets?  Do these rural consumers have even the purchasing power?  What format HUL should adopt Different Track in same interview. • If ONGC wants to go for an acquisition, what should be its strategy? Which markets/countries, why and how to enter? Supply Chain Issues & Market Entry (Exploratory) This was an unstructured multiple case/scenario based interview and needed on spot thinking and some knowledge about the retail scenario in Indian Urban/Rural spaces. Interviewer was looking always doubtful about my ideas and was challenging the thoughts in between with some facts from his experience. What helped that I maintained my calm and followed a firm and informed stand on issues and gave relevant examples (like HUL’s Re 1 Shampoo sachet success in low income group people) I presented my thoughts clearly and convincingly with examples of rural people buying luxury items as well and gave a few statistics about the size of urban vs rural markets in India. I further went on with examples of ITC retail, which was going successfully in integrating its rural retail business with agri-procurement channel (e-chaupal). Gave a few creative ideas about 2-3 possible new formats. I did not have very good questions to ask (in the end of interview) and few good questions could have fetched me some extra points or a better impression. Yes. Second Round was PI with HR. Final offer was made for Consultant role. Some negotiation went on for upgrading role to Sr. Consultant but in vain ☺ (coz I didn’t have past consulting exp so told me to get exposed to environment for an year before taking up Sr. Con Role)

Outcome

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student

Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Divyanshu Gautam KPMG, Strategic and Commercial Intelligence (SCI) SCI is currently focused on providing M&A advisory and hence they were looking for people who could show some in-depth knowledge of a domain. They were not very interested in technology domain which was my background. Mr. Manish Saigal, Director, SCI

First round, First interview KPMG did not come up with a shortlist and hence did a GD for a shortlist. Posts GD about 10 people were shortlisted. PI round started with – Tell me something about yourself? Then he explained me as to what do they do in SCI etc. I had not been to their PPT and was not sure about what do they do in SCI. Luckily he did not ask me about that, otherwise I would have landed myself in big trouble. He asked me which sectors do I have understanding of besides technology sector which was my background. I said telecom because I had done work with telecom clients and participated in 2 business school competitions in area related to telecom. He started with a case on telecom infrastructure after that. How would you evaluate a company in telecom infrastructure domain for possible attractiveness for buy-out by a PE fund? M&A case I asked him to explain the business model for telecom infrastructure company. He asked me back as to what I think of the sector. I explained my understanding of the sector. He was not very happy with my sector understanding. Then he interrupted me and asked me as to what are the value drivers of this sector which you would like to advise to the PE firm who is looking for a buy-out. I started with more theoretical approach of explaining the revenue drivers, the cost drivers etc. He did not like the approach a whole lot and asked me in desperation “ Given two companies A and B in this sector, how would you value them and decide to chose which one to buy” . I said I would like to do an NPV analysis and tried to structure it by saying that I would calculate the FCF and the discount rate. He gave the revenue number and the capex for the first year. I started to jot them down so as to start with my valuation. I asked for the numbers of second year onwards and he said that he has given enough information for me to make the decision. I was not very sure how to approach ahead. Then with slight frustration, he asked me as to why should they hire me. This was the first time I had the opportunity to present some strengths of mine and I rattled the prepared answer which was a mix of my personal strengths and the fact that I had worked in technology sector and hence could bring in the domain knowledge from the sector into the deals. He asked me why not IT consulting? I explained him the fact that I wanted to get a broader domain experience of how businesses are run while IT consulting would not give me that broad an experience without bad mouthing IT consulting. At this point the interview ended. Not much went right for me as you can see from the write-up above. I had pretty much given up all my hopes after this interview.

My lack of perspective on telecom infrastructure industry hurt me.

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Any tips for future batches based on this experience

Outcome

Understanding of some of the key domains help. Though I did build perspective on some of the domains, but clearly missed on this one. I should have done more research on KPMG’s way of interviewing. The SCI arm had recently started in India and this was the first time SCI interviewed. So a good understanding of the interview process would have helped. Please go prepared with some understanding of what kind of case questions would the company ask for. Not every company would be interested in giving cases like the ones given by Mckinsey, BCG etc. Yes, surprisingly possibly because of IIT brand name on the resume. Seems like the interviewer might have had some bias for that or the fact that the interviewer was frustrated by not being able to spot too many interviewees with good domain understanding.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student

Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Divyanshu Gautam KPMG, Strategic and Commercial Intelligence (SCI) SCI is currently focused on providing M&A advisory and hence they were looking for people who could show some in-depth knowledge of a domain. They were not very interested in technology domain which was my background. Mr. Parijat Thakur, Manager-HR, KPMG

First round, Second interview This was a more relaxed only PI round. - Tell me about yourself. - Where are you from? The interviewer also turned out to be from the same place and we had some chit chat around that. This helped me relax. - Why KPMG? - Why ISB? - Do you have any offers from day 1? (I told them about one offer which I had). He noted it down. He explained me a bit about SCI and asked me if I had attended the PPT. I had not, though he did not press me a whole lot on this. (It is very important to go through the CAS video of PPTs if you have not attended the PPT). No case.

I was able to build a personal connect with the interviewer and it helped me become very relaxed especially after the first interview. My not having gone through ppt video did not allow me to ask very prudent questions about KPMG and its new practice. It was a cardinal sin by me. Please, please ensure to attend the PPT or at least go through the video.

Yes, got an offer from them.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Achint Setia McKinsey Priyanka Aggarwal, Associate Principal

First Round, Interview 1 - Priyanka was from Delhi College of Engineering that is a sister college to NSIT, from where I passed out. This helped break the initial ice between us. - My movie was a very visible point on my CV and most of our discussion revolved around that. I was pretty comfortable here and talked passionately about it which helped set the stage for the interview. - Apart from this there were a few standards questions such as why consulting and why McKinsey. The client is a hospital chain with 12 hospitals across India and plans to grow to 40-50 hospitals. The first hospital was set up in Chandigarh, 8 years back. The client has taken both organic and inorganic routes to growth with the last acquisition some 2 years back. Their profit has been declining over the last one year and we need to diagnose the issue along with suitable recommendations. Varied The first thing I did was to clarify the expectations of the client and any associated constraints. Priyanka clarified that we need to focus on EBIT and ROI improvement. The current EBIT and ROI were negative and our goal was to take them to 25% and 30-35% respectively. There were no financial constraints for the particular case. Structure: ROI = After Tax EBIT / Invested Capital Invested Capital = Working Capital + Net Investments I clarified that I would be looking to increase EBIT by increasing revenues or reducing costs or both. Then I would look at decreasing Invested Capital through analyzing components like Receivables, Cash, Inventory, Payables, Fixed Investments and Depreciation. She agreed and asked me to start by picking up one of the drivers. I picked revenues because there were considerable improvements required in both EBIT and ROI and cost cutting might not suffice. She nodded and we proceeded.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

I listed the various revenue drivers in a hospital: Diagnosis, OPD and Procedures (she helped me a bit here with correct terminology). After some discussion it was clear that the revenues from procedures, which was a major contributor to hospital’s income, were declining. The price of procedures had been constant so it was an issue with the number of procedures. Also, the other hospitals had lower prices for the same services  hospital seemed to be charging a premium for their services and I had to find out why. I elaborated the various factors that would drive premium such as patient care, diagnosis authenticity, convenience and future tests required. She asked be to elaborate patient care. I listed 5 factors: doctors & nursing staff, length and time, accommodation, flexibility of meeting close ones, and miscellaneous things such as food etc. I also prioritized these putting doctors and nurses on the top. It was here that she revealed that some

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 key doctors had left an year back and the hospital’s premium was to be attributed to the presence of these doctors when they were in service, This nailed down the key reason of decline of procedural revenues. Next, she asked me to look at reducing costs. I elaborated the entire value chain of the hospital: 1. Supply Side consisting of utilities, drugs and equipments 2. Operations consisting of procedures, labor and R&D. 3. Marketing and promotions After a brief discussion on the factors driving supply side costs, I identified that the procurement of drugs can be optimized through consolidating purchase. On the operations side, we figured out the wage structure was pretty much fixed and I detailed out a few recommendations here to improve labor efficiency. One was to use a performance based incentive structure with the use of balance scorecards and leading indicators to assess performance. She was quite happy on hearing this as this was part of the recommendations they had given to the client. The case ended here.

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

The case was not atypical and what helped me here was to nail down the objectives and factors for ROI and EBIT improvement. Listing and prioritization of key issues at every step helped me in driving the case rather than depending on the interviewer. I was stuck a little with the terminologies of hospital operations and spent some time there. My advice to you would be that whenever in doubt about a new business, ask rather than guessing and spending time that could be utilized in more fruitful discussions. Second interview pending

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Achint Setia McKinsey Rajiv C. Lochan, Partner

First Round, Interview 2 - Rajiv started by asking me to define Achint the person. I had prepared an answer for this and that helped simplify matters. - He also asked about the biggest challenge and the biggest wow moment during the movie making and got quite involved in the discussion on that. A very open ended case. Pan-IIT (a group of IIT alums) is looking to build an organization called “Reach for India”. The purpose is to hire top business school graduates and have them work with district collectors across India and help them solve some key national issues and also build a governing secretariat of top talent. The problem was to recommend the Pan-IIT board on how to go about building this organization Long term strategy I tried to scope the problem down but Rajiv wanted me to structure my thoughts first and come up with an approach on a broader level. I came up with the following structure Structure: 1. Strategic Goals: a. Short term: Solve some existing problems and build a talent pool b. Long term: Impact on society and economy 2. Organizational: a. Supply of Labor Pool b. Attracting and sustaining employees i. Salary and Incentives j. Personal Development through trainings k. Challenging assignments l. Exit Options c. Execution to meet the expectations of the 4 stakeholders: District collectors, Pan-IIT, Government and Employees i. Management j. Teachers / Training k. Program Structure: Curriculum, Length, intensity l. HR m. Administration 3. Financial: Source of Finances, debt and equity distribution.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Rajiv was fairly satisfied with the comprehensive structure and after a brief discussion, clarified that the focus of the present case was to just think about the building blocks of the organization. Since I had listed down quite a few things, he just wanted me to have a discussion on the various aspects of the problem and we chatted for 15 minutes on what should be the issues in each of the elements of the Organizational part and recommendations to tackle them.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Detailing out an exhaustive structure and explaining my approach in detail gave the confidence to the interviewer. After that I just had to engage him in discussion on various aspects till he decided to close the case.

Nothing particular Try to scope down an open ended problem such as this. If interviewer wants to explicitly look at your broad level thinking, such as in my case, it is important to take your time and come up with as exhaustive a structure as possible. Shortlisted for Round 2

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Achint Setia McKinsey Dr. Adheet Gogate, Engagement Manager

Second Round, Interview 1 th - This was my 11 case interview of the day (I was interviewing with 4 other firms) and so was for Adheet. We sympathized with each other ☺ and shared our views on the exhausting process. -

He gave me a quick introduction about himself and asked whether we could directly start with the case interview and have some PI chatting later. It was clear that he wanted to focus on some specific case solving skill than anything else.

The client wants to construct a hospital in an upcoming suburb and the objective is to come up with a sustainable business model for the same. Varied Since the problem given to me was very open ended, I started asking a lot of questions on the objective of the client and any constraints we need to consider in our analysis. Adheet revealed the following information: The suburb is still under development and there is no infrastructure as of now. The client is actually a large hospital chain in the country and is not looking for immediate profits but eventually within 3-4 years. Financial constraints not an issue. Hospital again! But the good part was that I had got some confidence on the business after having interviewed with Priyanka earlier. Structure: a. NPV > 0 b. Determine cash flows: Revenues, Costs, Working Capital and Capital Expenditure c. Determine appropriate discount rate for cash flows: an appropriate way would be to use industry comparables of similar hospitals. He agreed and asked me to discuss the revenue aspect. I laid down the following approach: 1. Identify customer disease patterns and demographics. 2. Pick up the attractive opportunities that could ensure long term sustainability. Identify the customer segments to target. 3. Check if the opportunity aligns with business vision and company’s capabilities. 4. Determine the appropriate price for these services based on consumer willingness to pay

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

To simplify things he gave me an additional data point here. The real estate developer of the area had predicted the following growth of population in that area: 100,000 in 3 years 500,000 by 6 years 1 million by 10 years. He then asked me to determine the healthcare requirements of these

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 potential customers. I listed down 3 factors here: Socio Economic Status, Age and Idiosyncratic factors such as family history. He was impressed and asked me how I could determine the Socio Economic Status. I gave a lot of options here but he kept pushing that we had no access to any formal databases and some proxy was needed. After a bit of thinking I told him that the kind of apartments being bought by the families could proxy for their socio-eco status. This was what he was looking for and immediately gave me the following information. Super luxury flat (1 crores): 10% of families, luxury (50 lacs): 40%, 1 bedroom apartment (20 lacs): 50%. I asked about the average number of people per household and he gave me the numbers of 5, 4 and 3 respectively. I told him that even the relatively poorest of families were actually quite well to do as they could afford a 20 lacs flat. He agreed and asked me what kind of service on a broad level would suit our target customer segment. I told that 2 kinds of services should suffice here: Deluxe and Regular. Deluxe would include some premium procedures that could be utilized by either of the segments. Regular Procedures would be more day to day services provided to a wide spectrum of the population. He mentioned that regular procedures would need a breakeven volume to turn profitable and asked me to develop a timeline for introduction of the two kinds of services. Based on the population immigration information he had provided me earlier, I recommended that the client should start with deluxe services when the customer base would be small and eventually move to other regular services and customer base grows big enough to achieve breakeven. He asked me if there were any risks involved here and I mentioned that competitive threat could always be a concern here. I recommended that such a threat could be conquered to an extent by making appropriate arrangements for customers to receive these services at a nearby hospital of the same chain. He liked the idea since the hospital could bear initial losses. We had some more discussion on other issues of such as real estate, supplier contracts, equipments etc. before he closed the case. And as always, he discussed about movie making experience and also my work at Microsoft. What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

I was actually able to crack the case by figuring out what the interviewer was looking for. Also, I think my energy even after 10 interviews seemed to impress him I think he wanted me to do some more number crunching while I was focusing more on the qualitative aspects to the analysis. Be careful when the interviewer is giving a lot of numbers. He might be looking to test your quantitative abilities. Clarify upfront if in doubt. Shortlisted for Round 3

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Achint Setia McKinsey Jamie Cattell, Associate Principal

Third Round, Interview 1 - I met Jamie in Café Coffee Day and built a good rapport with him over coffee. It was only later that I realized that he was supposed to interview me next ☺ - Jamie was particularly interested in my work experience as he was himself from the BTO office. We had a brief discussion on Windows Vista and Microsoft. - He also was very keen on discussing how I managed directing and shooting the villagers in our movie and asked some standard leadership questions around my experiences. He started by saying that his case is very unique and most of the MBA students, who are trained in regular case solving methodology, fail to do well. He laid out the problem. There’s an airport somewhere in London, which has 4 terminals and 2 runways. The airport authorities are planning to th build a 5 terminal and my job is to find out whether it would make sense. The one thing he wanted me to do was to take it as a general problem solving case and use a hypothesis driven approach rather than the standard bottom up approach that we practice. Not an ideal start to the interview honestly!

Case question Case Type

☺…read on to figure out yourself. th I started by laying down my hypotheses on why a 5 terminal should be built: 1. Reduce congestion on existing terminals by increasing capacity 2. Facilitate Growth of air traffic and passenger traffic 3. Achieve optimization between traffic on runways and terminals He wanted me to test the first hypothesis. I confirmed whether airport capacity can be defined in terms of passenger flow rate. He agreed but wanted me to look at another measure of capacity which is the air traffic flow rate. In simple terms, this was the maximum number of airplanes that can land or take off from the airport in a day. I asked for specific information and got the following data: 1. Air traffic operates for 17 hours in a day. 2. Each terminal has 50 gates

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

I said to figure out whether there is any real capacity increase we need to find out whether New Capacity = MIN{ Total number of airplanes determined by total gates, Total number of airplanes that can use the runway in a day} > Current Capacity He asked me to make the required assumptions and proceed. I made 2 specific assumptions:

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 1. Both runways are identical and capable of serving same traffic. 2. All airplanes on an average take the same amount of time while standing on gates and similarly while using the runway (take off or landing) He then gave me the following data: A plane takes 90 sec on average on the runway while landing or takeoff. This meant that the runways can support a total of 17 * 2 * 3600 / 90 = 1360 planes per day. Next, he told me that every gate can support 5 planes on an average. This meant that with 5 terminals a total of 5*50*5 = 1250 planes can be held on the gates. This gives the new capacity = Min{1250,1360} = 1250  an additional capacity of 250 planes. So one part of the hypothesis was verified that there would be additional th capacity added by building 5 terminal. Now we had to establish whether it would reduce congestion. We started discussing the various sub hypotheses that would need to be true for this to happen. Things such as feasibility of movement of passengers and staff from one terminal to another, movement of infrastructure(shops etc) to the new terminal and so on. We chatted for almost 10 minutes on this and he asked me to synthesize the case. The hypothesis had been proven right. What do you think went right for you in this interview

What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Not sure, some basic maths and asking the right questions to test my hypothesis All during the case the interviewer never showed much expression or agreement with my approach. I always thought I was going on the wrong track because he wanted me to ask everything rather than give data himself. After our discussion ended, I couldn’t really make out what great I had done in this case! Practice hypothesis driven case solving as well in case you come across such an interviewer. Moved to final interview with Partner

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Achint Setia McKinsey Samba Natarajan, Partner Final Interview He asked me just one question. Tell me a situation at your workplace when you did something that was extremely important for the team and worth a newspaper headline. I actually had an instance in mind when I had called upon and driven a team meeting to resolve some internal conflicts among team members, which had really helped my team. After some discussion on my specific role and the impact on the team he proceeded with the case. The case was about a web services company which had encountered saturation in its web search and advertisement business and wanted to revive itself within the next 5 years. Data interpretation and growth strategy I clarified what all businesses the client was running, the relative share of revenues in each and the competitive landscape in each. Then I laid down my approach: 1. Identify the attractive businesses for the future. This can be done using a 2X2 matrix of competition vs. growth opportunity. 2. Choose the ones that are feasible to focus on in the next 5 years based on company’s capabilities. 3. Chart out an execution strategy for these businesses accounting for challenges and the effect on bottom line. 4. Consider divesting the unattractive businesses considering the risk of impact on the existing ones since there is lot of interdependency in the web space.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

He was satisfied with the overall structure and drew out a chart with lots of customer and growth data on the existing businesses. It’s difficult for me to explain our discussion over here because first, the chart was fairly comprehensive and second, he asked me to hand over to him everything I had written while solving the case. On a broad level, we discussed the attractive business opportunities and what challenges we would have to consider. He asked me to give 10 specific challenges in one particular business and it was here that my Web 2.0 course learning and software experience helped me. The number of different alternatives and challenges I was able to come up with at the end which really impressed the interviewer. I think I was being tested on my data interpretation skills and creativity. Nothing specific because I heard the good news immediately after this interview. Push yourself when the interviewer says..”What else…” - this is an indication that the interviewer wants to check how creative you can get with your thought process. Made the offer

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Amit Jain Mckinsey&Company Noshir Kaka

First round- First Interview 1. Simple standard PI questions: Why consulting, Why Mckinsey ? 3 reasons justifying your career choice. 2. One thing you would do differently if you come back to ISB ? 3. What did you like the most while working with HLL (last employer)

He said that if you look across the window, you see the big IT houses. Then he made a hypothesis that the productivity can by increased by 50% in most of these places. Can you help do that? Case question Case Type

Operations without numbers The questions looked little opened ended to me to start with. Hence, I tried scoping it out a little bit by asking can you define productivity for me here. Could you please put some matric like line of code/ per manhour etc. He reversed the question and asked me: How would you like to define productivity and what are the elements of productivity in such a customer facing setting? I used what was thought by Prof Raju in Marketing-II where sales force productivity was defined with 2 elements: Efficiency and Effectiveness. He liked these elements and asked me to define both of the above for me which was straight forward. I guess at this point I and the interviewer could sense a bit of structure in the solution and hence he recommended to build over these 2 points and asked me to suggest levers to improve on the 2 elements. At this point, I thought the change management frame which was about – people, process, and Technology. Hence there was a 2 x 3 matrix which efficiency and effectiveness on y axis and people, process and technology on x- axis. Finally with discussions in each of the blocks, the points which came out were: Skill, Balance of load across different people, Specialisation and customization, Incentives for employees.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this

Finally he said there were 2 points which I missed and I should think it over in free time.

Really don’t know. I think it was a simple conversation. Didn’t make a proper full structure and hence could never take a Comprehensive view of problem.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience

None Yes

Outcome

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Amit Jain Mckinsey&Company Mr Shirish Sankhe

First round- Second Interview 1. Are you an academically oriented person? Interested in PHD? What is your motivation behind good CGPA in undergrad and MBA? 2. What’s my view on restructuring in HLL at that time? 3. Why Mckinsey ? From the restructuring topic, he gave me case on orgranisation structure. The client was a large steel company dong business in Japan, Europe, US and Middle East. The product range includes flats and bars. Could you design an organization structure for global operations? Organization Structure This was simple case if you have read the readings on various kinds of organization structure in Management of Organizations course in term-IV. I started by asking the objective behind restructuring to which he cross questioned that given the kind of industry what should be the objective. I thought of steel being next to commodity and hence recommended that the organization structure should be cost effective while being responsive if possible. The structure to this case was simply the five kinds of structures which were thought in MGTO course and evaluating each in context of steel industry and the set out objective.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

The five options were: Functional, Product based, Matrix organization, and geographical, customer based. We had discussions over why one is better than other. I am writing those discussion points as they are much better explained in MGTO course pack. Finally, a matrix structure with function and geographical cut was found to be best. Remembering the various kinds of organization structure helped kick start the discussion. I could have used some kind of quantitative metric while evaluating various options rather than just a subjective discussion. This could have helped me rank them better at the end of the discussion.

None Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation

Chitra Raghunath McKinsey & Co Mandar Vaidya, Engagement Manager

Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

First Round, First Interview

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

He knew my resume well, and asked me specific questions regarding some work I had done during undergrad. He also asked me what I would rate as a more important achievement (acads vs cocurricular). I said both are equally important because what matters is winning and coming out on top in whatever I do. Also asked some general questions about my family background.

Case question

The CEO of a chain of private hospitals wants to reduce attrition among senior doctors. This is a serious issue because when senior doctors leave they take along patients as well as junior staff.

Case Type

HR case Initial Questions and case background: 1. Is the attrition problem restricted to doctors alone? YES 2. Number of doctors, backgrounds – was asked not to try and segment and look for generic solution 3. Compensation structure – MAINLY FIXED 4. Industry Practices – ALL FACE SAME PROBLEM

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Case Structure Looked at aspects of • Motivation • Compensation • Opportunities for Growth Solutions structured as short term vs. long term and economic vs. soft factors. I gave many solutions, some which he said they had also thought of, some which he critiqued and some others which he found interesting. He was looking more for ideas than approach – what was being tested was creativity and perspective in tailoring practical solutions. Some of the key points were that you needed to tie the patients/junior staff to hospital and not to doctor – e.g. through brand building, patient management systems, soft loans to junior staff, facilities for families etc. For doctors we could look at involving them in administrative activities, making the hospital an avenue for conferences, publishing papers, involving family etc.

What do you think went right for you in this interview

Broke the ice very early with a few jokes. After that it was less of a question answer session and more of a two-way discussion. Actually got him to talk more than I did.

What do you think went wrong in this interview

Nothing really.

Any tips for future batches based on this experience

It pays to be nice to your interviewer and appear interested in the case even if it is from an industry/function that is completely different from your background. Sometimes there is no need to structure cases because the interviewer is more

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 interested in how creative and innovative you can be in deriving solutions. Outcome

Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Chitra Raghunath McKinsey & Co Noshir Kaka, Director First Round, Second Interview He asked me about my work-ex mainly – since he heads the outsourcing practice and I had worked in a KPO. We also discussed what other firms I was interviewing with, banks vs. consulting etc. No actual case. Flowed from the discussion about work ex. We discussed about what levers can be used to improve efficiency and effectiveness in an outsourcing firm. Used factors such as productivity, utilization, compliance to SLAs, turnaround time, cost of adding a seat/employee, etc. I answered using specific examples from my own experience.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

I was also asked to compare my two CEOs and note the difference between the two firms I worked at. I showed that I had learnt a lot about my CEOs and their methods of doing work. Since Noshir knew both my ex-CEOs (they used to be colleagues at McKinsey) it became a very comfortable conversation. Half-way through the interview it became a discussion of what all I like and expect from a firm I would join, and him explaining how I could find that at McKinsey. Nothing really. Know more about your firm than just what work you did. They want to know if you understand how a CEO’s psyche works and what it means to lead organizations. Also be sure what is important to you in life – honesty pays. Be sincere and talk from the heart. McKinsey definitely appreciates that. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Chitra Raghunath McKinsey & Co Rajeev Lochan, Partner Second Round, First Interview Why Consulting? Why McKinsey? How would I classify my style of leadership? How will No real case. General discussion of Indian Economy. Started with discussing effects of a global slowdown on India. Discussion was free flowing. We talked about capital markets vs. physical goods markets, exports vs. domestic market, importance of agricultural growth and new methods of agri financing. I drove the discussion towards subjects I was more comfortable talking about. Nothing much. At this stage it’s a two-way thing you need to present yourself with sufficient confidence and wait for the interviewer to pitch themselves Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Manik Gupta McKinsey Partner

Round 1 – Interview 1 • • •

What have you learnt by interacting with so many people globally? What makes a great team? Why do you want to join consulting?

Our client is a hospital based in Delhi and wants to figure out whether they should expand beyond Delhi. Strategy • I started by asking what kind of hospital it is? It is a hospital focused on tertiary care: cardiac & neurology • Then I proposed a structure: o Customers & Market o Company o Competitors o Regulation • Was asked to focus on customers & market • Started segmenting the market – city dwellers, towns, villages • Wanted to match the offering of the hospital with which customer would need it most and is able and willing to pay • So tried to setup a matrix of ailments on one side and customer profiles on the other axis. • Realized that cardiac ailments are more common in cities hence people there are better targets. • For neurology, understood that it is very expensive hence setting up a hospital in smaller towns may not work well as hard to recover the money. Alternatives exist for towns where they either go locally or come to cities for treatment – its not an emergency treatment so people can plan it. • At this time the partner stopped the case Approached it from a big picture standpoint. Struck a very good rapport with partner and shared my global experiences

Nothing Don’t be daunted if your first interview itself is with a Partner – usually these guys are more relaxed (but that’s just my take) Went to Round 2

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Manik Gupta McKinsey Noshir Kaka, Partner

Round 2 – Interview 1 • •

Asked me questions about my term as GSB President Noshir was involved heavily in setting up ISB so asked me what I would like to improve upon

Evaluate the Indian IT majors like TCS, Wipro, Infosys: Strategically what changes should they make in next 5 years to stay competitive? Strategy • This case started out very strangely. It felt just like a question and I suddenly realized I was in a case! • So I evaluated this from two factors: o Services turnover (attrition, falling $) o Scale • I also talked about who these guys want to compete with – answer HP, IBM, Accenture • Then I did a comparison between the Indian IT majors and the likes of HP and one thing that came about was lack of products in IT majors. Also, with Accenture the ability to sign consulting deals and not just services. • Hence, we started talking about what these companies can do from the perspective of: o Hiring o Acquisitions of products / technologies o Target customer profile o Focus on local players in India that have global ambition like ICICI and take their successes to the world • At this time the case stopped. Approached it from a big picture standpoint. Struck a very good rapport with partner and we hit a common topic of ISB

Nothing Be relaxed. Sometimes the interviewer won’t even tell you this is a case. So it’s fine to go with the style of the interviewer and make it conversational. Made an offer

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Neha Kalra Mckinsey Tilman

Round 1 First interview The interview started with general hi/hello – it was my first interview so he commented that I was looking fresh etc etc. Tilman is extremely cool makes you feel as if , the interview is just another thing!! He had read my resume, and had encircled 2 things. He started by telling me the process – ‘ we will have a chat, then a case and then if time permits will have a chat again’. I have worked in operations and was the only girl manager on the shopfloor (was mentioned in my resume) and he asked me about my experience in Munger. Post this he immediately went to the case (which went for hardly 10 mins (please see the case details in the case question), post the case he asked me just one question – what do I feel about working in teams – my answer was – I feel there are 3 things – a) collectively the team can share more risk, b) the peer pressure improves the performance, c) you generate more resources as a team than as an individual (these are my personal views, you might disagree!) “Neha, do you think, that financing at the retail shop for consumer durables in a good idea? “ No type The case went as discussion – I don’t feel I structured the case and I don’t think he was interested in any structured – according to me, he just wanted to see what I think, how I think and my views. My Solution/Discussion – I started my confirming what does he mean by durables – refrigerators, TV etc. ? and what are the retail shops – the showroom? And how do people finance it right now – personal loans? And/or savings? He said yes to all and said lets say washing machine. And he also said (I guess so that I don’t digress ) that ‘neha I just want to know if it’s a good idea of have these loan” I started by saying that I will look at it from 3 stakeholders perspective a) consumer, b) retailer c) manufacturer (I did not take a min off or anythingso its not really necessary that u do that.. if things are coming to your mind shoot.. no need to think that everything has to go by the conventional way – according to me there is no way) Discussion on consumer- so, I feel if the consumer gets this financing in the retail shop at lesser interest rate than the personal loan (which he told me is 18%) then it makes sense for him. He asked me – so u think that it can be less than 18%? – I said – yes, because for personal loans you cannot say what he is doing with it (u don’t go to bank and tell I want personal loan to by washing machine, u just take personal loan), and hence there is a risk attached to the return so 18% = Rf(risk free rate) + risk factor ; When someone comes to the retail shop , he comes with his family and generally comes in car and parks it , all of which can be observed and his credit risk ( and hence, the assurance of return of interest + principal) is lower. ( I gave example of my dad and moms shopping for washing machine – believe me guys, giving a personal example creates an

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 impression – and u also speak with full knowledge so it’s a great one!) He was just waiting for the word ‘credit risk’ and looked impressed with the example (or observation). – so we concluded that we can have the financing at a lower rate than 18% (hence cheaper for the consumer) Then we came to retailer Discussion on retailer: first I tried to understand the cash flows for the retailer (does retailer share any risk in the new model) – he said nothing changes fro retailer in the cash flow front – he used to get full money upfront and EMI was to bank , now the only thing that changes is EMI to the financer financing at the retail shop. After this discussion, I said the following “ the process according to me is – the guy comes to retailer, then chooses the washing machine, then decides to buy, then goes to bank for personal loan and then comes back and buys.” So the actual purchase is postponed , which will not be in this case – so buying on the spot. To this Tilman was happy and said fine. I tried to go to manufacturer to which he said – no its ok, no need, actually the increased sales are so beneficial for manufacturer that nowadays the financing is at 0% and this is subsidized by the manufacturer himself.

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

He asked me to ask something – I asked him – if the Indian knowledge bank is benefiting Mckinsey in other countries – he said yes and gave some nice gyan on the low cost manufacturing and “fast growth + maintain quality “ the PI started off well, it was my strong point and I could speak hours on it ☺ The case went well – 10 mins we wrapped up the case Total interview duration – 25 mins! (I thot I am done ! ;-) ) Only one thing – 2 times in the interview when Tilman was speaking I cut him Make sure that even if you are passionate about something , u cant speak forever, and don’t CUT the talk by a partner! (which I immediately improved in the next interview) Don’t try to get into too much structure – prepare well for cases, but remember that its your natural self and natural structure and common sense that will make you win. Love structures – but please – don’t marry them. DO NOT OVERPREPARE – DON’T LOOSE YOUR NATURAL SELF Call me/ mail me for help anytime !! good luck! Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Neha Kalra Mckinsey Adheet

Round 1 Second interview The interview started with general hi/hello Adheet is a “no nonsense” guy He had read my resume, and had encircled 2 things (YES AGAIN!) He asked me the SAME THING – about being the only lady on the shopfloor – I spoke for like 10 mins and he told me about a similar experience and I asked him more about the same. Post this he said ‘ so u have worked a lot in operations and done some kaizen, I have also done similar work and let me give u a case on this “ nd He then added – “don’t give me structure and all.. (wooossshhh, 2 interview where structure is outta the window!)” “So Neha, our client is a big hospital like Apollo and they want us to work on reducing costs in two places – inventory and staff working “ Cost reduction – but not typical! – just – “shoot the solutions”- case! I started with some clarifying questions – what do u mean by inventory – is it reduction of amount or safety stock etc etc. he said – good questions and then told me that these people have some ‘n’ number of warehouses. Then I asked what does he mean by staff working? – number of people? He said no.. accounting.. behavior etc. So I first asked him to tell me how does the operations work – as in, right from the patient entering to his treatment, where all storage happens etc etc. he told me and asked me to start shooting solutions. He gave the following details – warehouse has inventory – crew takes it to wards + personal rooms – how much shud be delivered is decided by the nurses in the wards – and they have mean + safety stock for 99% service level! I said the following (I started looking from one end – ward – to the other end – warehouse and suppliers) a) 99% looks too big , and hence a cost benefit shud be done – he immediately cut me off saying ‘it’s a company policy’ b) Multiple storage points at wards why?, there shud not be since all the storage points will have their own mean and sigma and hence their own safety stock, which can be combined – he said good and said “NEXT” c) I said, so how does the inventory pattern look like – more or less than the “mean + 99% service level SS”- he said 4 times this!!! I was shocked!. I said why? – is it that they have some kind of relationship – tie up (u find these a lot in companies) between the nurse and the crew, that one day it will be delivered etc? so that both have to do less work ( nurses do less calculations, and the crew doesn’t have to come everyday) – he said Bingo.. Something like this is happening – the crew is supposed to come thrice a week, they come once a week, pile up and go. And he said that we asked the crew and nurse – the crew says there are no enough workers – I said ok – so this point 2, and why is this happening, we will discuss as we go forward- he said- fair enough d) same argument about so many warehouses – he said rite e) had a discussion how often suppliers supply – their location and can they decrease this – had a discussion on some ERP solution, other

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 information transparency etc etc.. and decided than yes, it can become from 14 days to 5 days !! – wow! f) now coming back to the crew issue, so I asked – what all inventory/material are there – he said – two types – (I don’t remember now what he said…) so say a and b. the crew was divided by crew to deliver a and crew to deliver b.. and all the location needed both the material – so the solution was simple.. bundle and let it be by location BINGO..! that’s about it – he said I have found broadly 4 out of 5 problems.. and th kept on telling me that my sheet (on which I was working) has the 5 problem written – I could never see it .. – he cut me short and said – there was a lot of inventory in the wards , near the patients’ tables etc etc.. (basically Work in progress) he looked happy and asked if I had anything to ask I said “ do the seniors who have spent so much time with us at ISB over weekends, and helped us in preparing etc …. Have these activities part of their KPIs..? “

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

He laughed – just said - NO, its voluntary…. (as I said he is NO NONSENSE GUY) PI again!! My good luck, started with my strong point, for which I was well prepared The case went well – 20 mins we wrapped up the case Nothing really – total time – 30 -35 mins Ya, have good questions ready,, and not usual ones,, they need not be consulting related.. they can be anything that u have felt/experienced in the year and want their opinion… -- my funda – lets be grounded! DO NOT OVERPREPARE – DON’T LOOSE YOUR NATURAL SELF Call me/ mail me for help anytime !! good luck! Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Neha Kalra Mckinsey Noshir Kaka

Round 2 First interview ( and last) Noshir is amazing, this was by far my best interview ever – I could speak my heart out on issues I am passionate about – right from the execution of consulting club activities at ISB to my passion for social/public sector work, education in india, swimming and what not! It started off with – ‘why mckinsey’ – he appreciated my answer and I guess there was the personal connect ( call me to ask what did I say), We then went to case – then to swimming- then to his work – then to public sector work that mck does, Total I guess – little more than an hour. “Neha, how will you increase or judge the efficiency of the back office of a bank” Typical operations case It went of more of me giving him ideas and not like a real discussion – I spoke most of the times, he spoke only when he wanted to appreciate a point. So I started by asking him – what do you mean by the back office and what all work do they do? – he explained me one particular function and said that all functions are similar, he said – a customer goes to a bank, requests an address change, the request is scanned at the bank , sent to back office for all the necessary documenting and changes in the system etc, the back office then sends it back to the bank and the bank then handovers the things (address changed) to the customer. I said ok , and said that I will judge the operations in the bank on the following parameters – Quality, cost and delivery - he said – speed too – to which I said OK, he was OK with these 4 things and we moved on

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

I said, a) the first thing is that the scanned copy comes to the back office – so is the infrastructure ok? – is the back office at a place where electricity etc is ok for the backoffice people to get the scanned copy on time (affects speed) – he said good, go on b) now we come to the person who is sitting on the table – two things – (i) does it wanna work? (ii) he wants to work but there are other constraints that are not letting him work (effects, everything, - quality cost and delivery and speed) he was ok with this and asked me to elaborate – so I said the following- (i) is the man motivated enough to do this job? Is the job too boring? Repetition? Does he feel that he is not a part of a global bank and he is just one of the millions to whom stuff is outsourced – he was very happy with the last point and probed me on how to solve it – I said – we can have picnics of branch managers and these people. We can have regular visits etc. – he asked me to move on. (ii) other thing is that he is not able to work – for example, if he wants coffee and the coffee machine is at the end of the office, oops! He has to

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 go. Is there some other job like file sorting which is lower skill but he has to do. Does he have to attend phone calls? Does he have to spend a lot of time in waiting for the lunch to arrive? Or stand in a like in the canteen- he was satisfied and we moved on. c) the next thing is that are the costs – training costs? – are we hiring over skilled people? So that we aren’t able to satisfy their expectations and there is high attrition , and new people are coming, and we have to spend a lot of money on their training. I had a couple of more things – but – he stopped me and we went to PI. We asked me if I wanted to ask him anything I said some thing about outsourcing etc, (he is the one who started) – he explained me the same. We talked about his brothers swimming event in Sydney. He asked me what am I passionate about - I said education field – and also tried to tell him, what I feel is JUST NOT RIGHT ABOUT ISB (he is one of the people involved in starting the school) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Everything – the PI started off well, - case went very well (he said that there were no levers left) –then the discussion on what ISB has to improve, what government should do etc went extremely well

Nothing at all Its really not important to have point of views on stock market , US election etc etc…. u can very easily say that you have not been following it.. its fine (personal view) – but its very important to see and feel things that are happening around you and what you feel about them. – grounded – keep it simple- if you enjoy the process you wont get tired. DO NOT OVERPREPARE – DON’T LOOSE YOUR NATURAL SELF Call me/ mail me for help anytime !! good luck! Offer made

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Neha Mittal McKinsey & Co. Jatin Pant,

First, First Started with the typical “Tell me about yourself”. He also asked about my work ex specifically. Since, I had come from consulting, I took this opportunity to express my interest in the field. Nothing unusual here, as most questions were more or less expected. An incumbent retail bank’s profits had been hit by competition as the competition had started building ATMs. They wanted to develop an ATM strategy. Creative and numerical both First thing to ask is why are they being hit if others are building ATMS? He answered that the client does not have ATMs while now competition does. This is making people shift their bank accounts form us to the competition. Then I asked him what ATM strategy mean in this context? He quizzed me back as to what I think it meant. To which, I replied that there could be the following sub questions we could be asking: ( I used the 4W and one H way of dealing with vague questions!) 1. Where we want to establish the ATMs? 2. What technology /interface we want to use? 3. What is the time frame of the ATM roll out? 4. How do we plan to fund this roll out? 5. To whom do we cater to through this ? I told him that we needed to prioritize these questions according to their importance in order to begin building the strategy. He told me that where to establish was the main question to answer. I began by asking him whether we were looking at specific locations or just geographies. He told me that we were looking at both. Hence, I said that I would start with narrowing down to specific geographies and then talk about specific locations in those geographies. He also told me that we wanted to roll out as soon as possible. I asked him where all we are located geographically to which he responded that we had a pan India presence. With this, I said that I would first look at the factors that affect the choice of a geography. Since the best strategy would be to attract the maximum customers per new ATM– I listed the following: 1. Income level of customers ( Assumption: Since ATMs would be used by people who had more money) 2. Density of customers (Assumption: Only customers would use our ATM service) I asked him if these factors covered or was there something that I was missing? He said this was fine but what I meant by geographies. I specified that what would be looking at is City/town wise data. He also asked me what would be the cut off level of income that I would be looking at? He said that lets assume that with this info we located the Mumbai region to be the highest on the priority list. Now he wanted to know how I would decide on a location. I said I would again look at data inside Mumbai to again prioritise areas with the above two factors.He asked me if there

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 was anything else I would like to look at? He asked me to come out of frameworks and think about the original question. I told him that as per my understanding the locations should be one with high footfalls specifically offices, markets and hospitals etc. He asked me how I would find out where all to put ? All hospitals? Remember we need to roll out as soon as possible.. Finally he told me we could look at ATM locations of competitors and atleast put an ATM wherever they are located. What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

I think I was very structured. Also, I gauged the facial expressions of the interviewer and tried to see whether I was on the right path! I think I was not looking at obvious things because of stressing on the structure Make sure that the personal interview goes well as it sets the btone for the case as well. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Neha Mittal

First, Second He asked me what qualities I thought were important in a good team leader. He then also asked me who was a good team member. I tried to answer by giving examples from my work and student life. Its important to bring out things that you really want the interviewer to know about you through examples from your past, specially things on your resume.

Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Be relaxed and confident about yourself. It shows through and has a very positive affect on the interviewers. yes

McKinsey & Co. Tilman Ehrbeck, Partner

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Neha Mittal McKinsey & Co. Rajiv Lochan, Partner

Second, First

Nothing atypical. Usual questions based on my resume The client is a insurance company that offers life insurance to its customers through a sales force. It wants to know whether it can also offer product insurance in order to improve profitability. Analytical, numbers were there but not much number crunching Firstly, I clarified what product insurance meant. It was more to satisfy my curiosity and to better understand the context. He told me that it was the insurance on consumer products like electrical goods etc. I said I would first like to understand the whole value chain to better understand the role of the sales force before laying down my approach. He said there was nothing much to it as basically the company was an intermediary between an bank and the customer. It just sent out the sales force and got customers. I asked him what exactly was the structure of the products. He said although it was not relevant to the discussion, I could assume that the premiums were paid each year and the policy lasted for a fixed time (say 30 years). I now asked him who the customer was and how did the salesperson approach the customer. He said that the customer was anyone on the street (think of LIC). Then I asked him that I would like to analyse the question in two ways, qualitative and quantitative. On the quantitative side, I would like to see whether the sales force had the time to devote for the new product. On the qualitative side I would like to see whether they had the skills and knowledge of these products. To answer the first question, we analysed the total idle time per sales person. Then, we would have to see how selling an additional product would affect the time the sales person spends with the customer. This would then determine if the sales person could cover the same number of customers or would that number drop. In the latter scenario, I told him that we would have to see what the tradeoffs were and then decide whether we would want to target lesser number of customers who would have higher value in terms of buying the two products. On the qualitative side, we looked at what capabilities were required for selling the new products. We classified these as already present and new. We found that most of the capabilities like customer lists, getting time from customers to make a call, general selling expertise was already there. What was needed was product information and knowledge. This we concluded could be built through training. He asked me if I was missing something. After a quick summary, I realized that I had not touched the new “capability” of additional budget for higher salaries. (sinece the sales persons were going to be spending their idle time as well, and earning more for the company, they would have to be compensated additionally.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 We tried to toy with some pay out (pay versus policies sold per quarter) to see what could work best I concluded (we did some number crunching on idle hours etc) that we could use the same sales force but mentioned the additional capabilities like training and revised pay outs. What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

I think I got down to the number crunching of idle time and how it cold be used very quickly I think my energy levels had dropped a bit by this interview as this was my th 7 interview of the day. On the final day, try and keep your energy levels up as much as possible. One good idea is to carry some energy food (granola bars, chocolate bars or even fruit juice or glucose) Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second, Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience

Neha Mittal McKinsey & Co. Shireesh Sankhe, Director

Second, Second Apart from the usual questions, he asked me something very pointed about what I think is wrong with the public health system in India. This is because I did some work in public health in my previous consulting experience. Luckily for me, I had already thought through this question and was able to express myself easily. There was a steel making company on the west coast (say Surat) that wanted to determine of it should start a new plant in West Bengal First, I clarified some background information like if there were any more steel plants that the company owned? He said no there were none. Then I asked him at what capacity was the steel plant running. He said it was nowhere close to 100%. I asked him how was our profs in the last few years? He said that they had declined. Then, I began the revenue and cost route. It turned out that revenues had not declined as quantity and price (steel is a commodity so they cant do anything with price anyway) had stayed the same. In costs however, after going through all the components, I found that the raw material costs had increased. The main raw material is iron ore, and that is where the problem was. Then I asked him if we knew why the costs for iron ore had increased. He told me that the iron ore mines were located in West Bengal and there had been some regulation that made it more expensive to transport steel out of the state. Then it started making sense to put up a plant in WB.! But I though not to jump to conclusions and we deliberated more. I told him that there were four options available to us.—run only one of the two lpants, run both or shut both. (helps to be MECE!) I sad that in order to figure out what we should do , we should look at the NPV of all four options. Then we went on to do some calculations into which I will not get into here. Finally, as per our discussions it turned out that we should keep both the plants running. We could purchase iron ore cheaper due to presence of a plant in WB but at the same time it would become cheaper to produce steal at Surat. Since there was a demand shortage in this industry we could increase production in total. I think I was very confident and energetic during this interview even though th this was my 12 in the day!

Nothing really Do read the profiles of the interviewers before the D day. It helps in making conversation once you are in front of them. And you could also prepare for questions on your previous work experience that is similar to theirs. Also it is important to ask why a certain situation is in the way it is. This sometimes gives important leads into the case. Synthesis should be short ant to the point. Even in the middle of the discussion, if you are asked to give your opinion on something in the case,

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Outcome

it should be firm and backed by sound logic. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Nitin Kashyap McKinsey & Company Jamie Cattel, Associate Principal, Mckinsey BTO London

Round 1, Interview 1

None, as the flight was delayed and the interviews started late, so after a very brief introduction of his own he clarified that we will proceed directly into the case. th Heathrow airport wishes to add a 5 terminal to its existing 4 terminals. Should it go ahead? Operations I started off saying that the problem statement looks like it’s a Go/NoGo decision we have to help make, so first we should establish the exact objective against which we would measure our decision. Once the objective is clear, we would need to establish our current performance against the objective, what is the target level we wish to achieve on that particular objective and then evaluate if the new terminal would help us achieve that or not. But before that I would like to clarify about exactly what is meant by a terminal here. JC: Heathrow is one of the busiest airports and already has 4 different th passenger terminals, now they want to add a 5 . A terminal provides the usual services like Bays for Boarding & disembarking, Check-In, Security, Lounges & shopping areas etc. Me: Great, do we also have to look at the financial and operational viability of the terminal or that is not a concern. JC: for the purpose of discussion let’s ignore that, those would not be the constraints. Me: Ok, so maybe we should the start looking at what the administrations core objective is for the new terminal. Why does it want to come up with a th 5 terminal? JC: Why don’t you tell me what those objectives could be? Me: Well there could be many (started jotting down options in parallel as I spoke): 1) increase the #Passengers served per year, 2) Reduce Flight Congestion if any, 3) Reduce the Time spent by flights on the airport, 4) Increase the airports revenue sources. Am I missing any other? JC: No I think you have mentioned the major ones, let’s briefly talk about each of these. What do you mean by the revenue sources? Me: Then we had a brief discussion about revenues from shopping areas etc. Then we came to Flight congestion – primary metric there was time spent in air waiting for permission to land etc. Then we came to #Passengers served per year which is more of a demand metric and effectively dependent on the number of flights we can serve per day. We also discussed Time spent by flights on the airport and split that into further two types – flight landing and takeoff time and turnaround at the gates. At the end of this brief digression it emerged that if Time spent by Flights on airport can go down, #Flights can go up and so can #passengers, at the same time congestion can go down as well. th Me: (summarizing) So is it fair to say that the objective of building the 5 terminal is to achieve a higher capacity at the airport and our problem definition is to evaluate that claim?

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 JC: Yes, if you wish to frame it so - effectively our problem definition is if th the 5 terminal adds to the capacity of the System? Me: Good just give me a minute to put my thoughts in place as to how we can go about evaluating this? JC: Sure.. Me: Ok as I mentioned, what we need to decide what is the exact metric used for measuring Capacity? Then what is the current value of airport for that metric? Then what impact would the new terminal on the level of the metric? That should lead us to an answer. JC: Ok, so what do you want to know Me: How do airports measure their capacity? JC: Two commonly used metrics are ATM – Air Traffic Movements, and MPPA – Million Passengers Per Annum. For our discussion lets focus on ATM. Me: So just to clarify ATM refers to a single air traffic movement, therefore the turnaround of one flight i.e. landing and take off would count as one or two ATMs? JC: Two Me: Ok, so do we know what is the current ATM? JC: How would you find that out? Me: well the annual ATM would be average Flights per day * 365 * 2 JC: Right lets keep the analysis to per day Me: Ok so what’s the current #daily flights? JC: Am not sure why that is relevant here for answering our question but lets say 100. Me: No, this would help us by how much will the Terminal increase the capacity. Ok so how many Bays would there be in the new terminal? JC: 50 Me: And do we know on average one flight spends how much time at a Bay? JC: 60 minutes Me: Is that number in line with international standards or is there scope to impact that by way of terminal design or operations? JC: No that’s about the best you can get ☺ Me: Fair is the distribution of traffic the same through out the day, or in other words is the demand pattern similar through out the day or is it varying with time? JC: Let’s assume that a bay is utilized effectively only for 12 hours in a day. Me: Ok so that means a given bay has the capacity of 2 ATMs per hour or 50 bays together would add 50 * 2 *12 or 1200 ATMs JC: So should we add Terminal 5? Me: Well yes from our analysis so far it does appear that adding the 5 Terminal could add upto 1200 ATMs per day and therefore one should go ahead. JC: But what was our problem definition? Me: (a little flustered) will the new terminal add to the capacity of the airport? JC: yes of the entire system. So will it? Me: (suddenly a light bulb strikes ☺, smiling) Ok I possibly get the drift of what you are trying to hint at, while the terminal has the potential to add so many ATMs, it is not necessary that the capacity of the entire system will be incremented by that number. JC: Correct, and why that may be so? Me: Because the bottleneck in the system may be some where else. JC: Right and so what defined a bottleneck Me: In any system the resource which has the lowest capacity and for

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What do you think went right for you in this interview

What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience

which the implied demand is higher than its capacity constitutes a bottleneck, and also limits the throughput of the entire system. JC: So what else could be a bottleneck in the system? Me: Runway JC: Ok and how can we find that out? Me: We need to evaluate the utilization of the runway. How long does it typically take for a successive takeoff or landing on a given runway? JC: How can we find that out? Me: A mathematical way to do that would be to find the typical distance an aircraft travels while landing/takeoff and at what speed to find the time for which it uses the runway, another could be that there would be some minimum time set by the ATC/guidelines as the minimum inter flight time that would limit the number of planes that can use a runway. JC: Right, let’s leave the mathematical way, what do you think the other number is? Me: I don’t know for sure, but from my observation the time in India is something like 5-6 minutes between flight landings/takeoffs JC: Ok those might be t he numbers in India, but Heathrow is a very busy airport and there the minimum time is 90 seconds. Me: (quickly doing the numbers) 90 seconds implies 1 ATM every 1.5 minutes or a max of 40 ATMs per hour or a max of 40*24 = 960 ATMs per day per runway. JC: Correct, so assuming there are 2 runways already what would now be the impact of adding the terminal 5 on the capacity of the system? Me: Let’s assume that the current capacity of the terminals is X, then the current capacity of the system is min(960*2, X), and after the new terminal comes online the capacity of the system would become min(960*2, X + 1200). (I actually clearly wrote down the mathematical form) So depending on the value of X we will know how much the capacity of the system can improve by, and our decision should be driven by if that new number is enough to achieve our goal or not? For any positive value of X > 720 it seems we will only be able to go up to a max 1920 ATMs per day, without adding a new runway or decreasing inter ATM time for runway usage. JC: Good I think we are done with the case. Do you have any quick questions for me? Me: Sure why don’t you tell me a bit about the nature of work you have been doing and the kind of work BTO London does? JC At each stage laid out (by writing in the pad) 3-4 options and then asked the interviewer which one he would wish to explore further. Kept the discussion on track, and kept summarizing/synthesizing Kept asking clarificatory questions, and closing blind alleys Admitted my initial oversight and recovered well Maintained eye contact with the interviewer to keep track of cues and ensure that what I was telling was being understood Missed the distinction between the capacity of the system and the capacity of the terminal issue. Was nervous to begin with as this was the first interview of the day, but eased in gradually, and from then on just took the interviews as they came. Listen carefully, especially the case question/problem framing Maintain a pleasant disposition, Do Smile Be ready to admit your mistakes and over sights Speak slowly (Especially when dealing with international interviewers) Write down stuff in your pad - write legibly Steps should be Think, Write, Read out & Discuss. Do revise the core concepts – just helps you with the right terminology in

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Outcome

the interviews. On the interview day take each interview on by one – Never think about any that you have already given, and nor about any to come. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Nitin Kashyap McKinsey & Company Noshir F Kaka, Director & Global Practice leader – outsourcing and offshoring, BTO Singapore

Round 1, Interview 2 The interview started with one, I was led to the interviewer who was taking a break after taking 2 interviews and having a snack. So he apologized and said by the time I finish why don’t you tell me something about yourself? Tell me about your work experience so far in the two companies, one instance each of where you had an impact. Not a formal case, but broad industry level strategic discussions about IT & IT Products and Innovation Discussion & Industry Perspective NFK: McKinsey has done some work in innovation in the BPO and outsourced project management space.. …yes the Process 360 & Project 360 initiatives (brought in the fact that I had gone through the article. This also happens to be Noshir’s research)… NFK: right.. they are operational excellence frameworks we have come up with to assess the best practices in the BPO and outsourced application domains.. so the question is if you were to develop a similar framework for excellence in the product development or product development outsourcing space what metrics do you think can be used to measure those? Sure, may I just have a minute to think this over.. NFK: Ok.. (wrote down a few bullet points and then started).. We can think of different parameters/indicators at different levels – Individual/Company/Market/Users. The idea is to measure excellence in product development by not just focusing on the inputs, and the processes, but also by outputs both direct market facing and indirect outputs. So for examples some measures we can focus on can be: Patents filed Both at an individual employee and company level New Incremental Features At an individual/team level to Proposed by local product assess the breadth of new development teams ideas proposed New Features actually To assess the quality/efficacy of making to final product the new ideas Market TakeOff of To access the actual impact of features implemented the same based on monitory measures Usability of Features To access the actual impact of the same based on customer feedback % ownership of products To access the degree of involvement

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 To access the performance of % Execution Plan the development process conformation of product development % time involvement in Another measure to access the feature spec degree and nature of development/product involvement design We had a 1 minute discussion about each and at the end NFK seemed reasonably satisfied with the suggestions. NFK: Great, so we all know India has been known for outsourcing in the services and process space, what do you think ails the Product development? In particular I would say some companies like Adobe, Intel, TI and MS (only to a very limited extent though) have been successful at doing product development out of India, but not many others. What do these companies do differently? What do you think have been the critical success factors for them? (took a little time to ponder over things and really tried to dig into my experiences at Adobe an TI & what I thought was salient about the senior management there – therefore the lesson – do not ignore the Sr. Management talks & Company vision and strategy meetings that you used to have back in offices ☺) Well I think two overarching factors in the success of companies like Adobe and TI have been Vision of the founder & Execution, and I would want to break down Execution further into 1) Hiring & focus on employee growth, 2) Process & Discipline, 3) Sr. Management Commitment & push back, 4) Clear & continuous communication with the International parent. It might be a coincidence but in the case of both Adobe and TI, their India offices have been led by very strong and committed senior leadership teams who have grown from within the parent companies’ home operations. Therefore, one they knew what were the parent’s best practices, and two they had the ambition to set up something in India and make it succeed. Then once they had the go ahead they focused single mindedly on the execution…. NFK: What do you think are the key strategic challenges for a company like Infosys going forward? (again after a minute of pause and jotting down stuff) I think the three key challenges would be 1) How to remain competitive now that they are in the 4B+ league and starting to compete with the big league of IBMs, Accentures, EDS etc, not just in outsourcing but end to end IT management 2) How to manage such a huge work force and manage their skills 3) How to remain relevant in the face of changing business models specially the move to hosted & cloud computing and software as a service models. rd NFK: Let’s talk more about the 3 one! (He immediately latched on to the cloud computing thing.. so this is an example of a hot word for a particular interviewer) We then had a lively discussion on what cloud computing and Software as a service and software on demand is etc., and what impact can it have for IT companies and their business models. NFK: Good. Any questions that you may have for us I asked on what the role definition of BTO was and how was it different from the high-tech practice of McKinsey?

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What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

NFK: And then he gave me a lengthy but insightful answer, that all other IT consulting is primarily focused on cost side things, and have been in t eh domains of outsourcing/offshoring, IT enablement, Performance management etc. No body has given serious thought on revenue side impact of Technology. BTO has the mandate of thinking about how could technology help transform the Operations and Revenues of Businesses. Etc. etc… Was able to connect and bring in references to the interviewers research Linked answers to personal experiences and insights at previous employers

-If possible do read a bit about the interviewer’s background. You wouldn’t get to know your exact interviewers till shortly before the interview so you obviously can’t read about all, but try to read up about the senior people as well as people who will be from similar backgrounds as yourself. Excellent way to do that is to get on to company sites and browse for interview panelists profiles. In the case of McKinsey, try to get to McKinsey Quarterly, and then search for the interviewer and articles written by the person Be prepared to get the broad discussion cases even in the first round. Have a perspective on the industry of your choice and or background – again a good way to do that is to browse articles and industry reports. If you are able to go through even one consulting firms site reasonably you should be in good shape. Try to change the plane of your answers depending on the interviewers interests – when to give thr 50,000 Ft view and when to give the 100 ft view. In hind sight I think the corporate strategy course had a lot of articles about outsourcing and different models of comp advantage for multinational organizations and how to leverage offices in different geographies. Though I myself didn’t recall much of that article but then it just shows you never know which reading might come in handy where ☺ Have questions that you want to ask ready Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Nitin Kashyap McKinsey & Company Ramesh Mangaleswaram, Partner, Mumbai office

Round 3, Interview 1 All Personal. Very direct and sharp questions. The interviewer was very direct and blunt, which did not go very well with me. In other words no sort of connect could be established, which put me at a little discomfort. The entire thing was over within a 15 minutes without even a trace of anything like a smile! Ramesh did not give any feedback or react to any answer at all, but generally kept on jumping from one question to another and consciously (at least I felt so) never established any eye contact with me – kept on fiddling with things on the interview table and looking else-where. I am listing down here some of the questions (I can remember now) I was asked (without necessarily the actual answers I gave) RM (Straight away without any introduction): So how would your friends describe you? Me: RM: What do you want to do in life? Me: RM: What are your 3 shortcomings? Me: RM: What are you doing to improve on them? Me: RM: Why Consulting? Me: RM: Why McKinsey? Me: RM: What is the one thing in your life you would want to do differently if given a chance? nd Me RM: Give an example of a failure at your prior professional life Me: RM: Do you have any question for us? Me: None None

None

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 What do you think went right for you in this interview

What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Can’t say much. Just decided to stick to being honest and let the answers flow directly from the heart. Some amount of prior practice on PI questions did come in handy but only as much. In-fact at some places gave a different answer from the ones I thought I had prepared in the PI sessions. Wasn’t prepared for such an interview on day 1 after 4 previous interviews already through on day 0. In-fact I thought after the interview t hat this was possibly the worst one I had had Was kind of losing patience at the end of it and did not ask enough questions at the end Be prepared for entirely different interviewing styles. Don’t let lack of eye contact or connect shake you. Don’t lose patience and stick to your guns Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Pankaj Gupta McKinsey and Co. Kaustub

Round 1, Interview 1 Asked about my work experience and then ‘Why Consulting’ – to which I replied with two reasons (1) Consulting provides an environment to which I relate to as a person and bring out my best (related to my work exinteraction with people, multiple project based work) (2) Working with uncertainty – challenging nature of work, in every assignment one faces new issues, new domain etc. also asked a bit about my hobbies. A client wants to start retailing business. He intends to attract as many people as possible, to his stores. How would you go about advising the client. I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) The purpose + Does client have anything specific in mind (wrt retail format, target segment, products to be sold, location etc) 2) What exactly is meant by attracting maximum number of people (footfalls? Purchase conversion?) At this stage itself I got information about the target segment : It is primarily income based and Delhi and Mumbai are two cities which have large % of population as set of people who can be attracted. Then I split the issue in two aspects that could attract/ bring people to store: a) Awareness b) the in-store experience/ value from shopping He said awareness is not an issue. Hence, I looked at experience aspects – (1) Proximity (2) product mix available (3) Value for Money in shopping (low price vs product differentiation)

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

Kaustub told me to look at it as a case of Food Retailing. During this conversation the scope boiled down to identifying the parameters to maximize profits. I started considering Revenue and Cost as two aspects of profit. Revenue is driven from Quantity (Footfalls* conversion) and Price. Price dint come out as something to be considered as fixed. Hence quantity was to be maximized. Considering that Mumbai and Delhi were target cities, I asked if I needed to estimate the revenue. He told me to proceed and I estimated revenue using population -. Households (HH) -> HH greater than and less than 2 lpa of income (more than 2 lpa expected to visit stores). I asked about average usage of food by such a HH and Kaustub gave me certain numbers. He then asked me to proceed to other parameters in Food Retail. Having covered Revenue as the first part, I moved to Cost. He directly asked me to focus on location/ proximity. I said food retail (especially in Indian context, considering the mobility issue, vehicle ownership, road infra etc) is something that needs to have close proximity. The areas to be focused on would however be determined by per square foot cost. The high-end areas may not be a feasible option. However, emerging areas present a case to be considered. I asked if there was any data available on property rates. He told the rates were 200/sqft/month in high-end areas vs 100/sqft/month in emerging areas. Hence client should focus on

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Profit/sqft/month as primary metric for deciding where and how many stores to open. He asked me to end the case here.

What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

In the end (time for me to ask questions) I asked him about his views of Reliance’s strategy in retailing (they are entering many formats in retailing) and had a discussion around certain viewpoints. Consistent efforts and energy level to solve the case. Initially the case appeared a bit hazy in terms of problem definition. However scoping happened during the case. Also, I think I striked a chord with the interviewer as both of us write (myself-poetry and Kaustub is writing a book)

I should have arrived at the profitability structure a bit earlier. Be confident and persistent even though the cases may seem kind of undefined or large in scope. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Pankaj Gupta McKinsey and Co. Dr. Mandar Vaidya, Engagement Manager

Round 1, Interview 2 General chit chat – how was the day, how many interviews. Again ‘Why Consulting’. Also asked about my experience at Asian Paints. Asked me about poetry – why do you write? To which my answer was “I am an observant person and poetry is one of he manifestations of observation” The case flowed from PI itself. The problem was ‘How would you commercialize poetry” I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) What is exactly meant by commercialization – business/ profits/ practical usage 2) Is it general poetry or my poetry 3) Is there any time frame I need to consider for this. He said the purpose would be to make money from my own poetry and there is no specific time frame. I took a customary minute to think. I used MECE classification to consider two aspects of poetry usage/applications: (1) Academic usage (in text books etc) (2) Non Academic (NA) usage. I further classified NA usage into three areas – NGOs, Corporate(s) and Other commercial applications (namely lyrics for movie songs, advertisements etc. I told him that I had written a poem taking inspiration from a Cadbury’s advertisement) At this stage I said that for any further consideration one important parameter is the FIT of the product (my poetry) to these application areas. I defined FIT in terms of language (I write in Hindi, at time English) and content vs the actual need in respective areas (I gave a coupel of examples – my poems published in magazine by an NGO, couple of Hindi ads etc). I also said I can write for all of the identified application areas. In order to commercialize I assessed each usage area in terms of following parameters (a) Profit Margin (I stated here that the cost = my effort would be nearly same for all kinds of poetry) (b) Capability (FIT) c) Market Size (d) Access (my access to identified market)

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

I made a matrix for assessment along these parameters and rated each on scale of Low, Medium and High. He asked me to focus on How to go about commercializing Other commercial applications. I said our of two areas - namely movie songs and advertisement, I should focus first on Advertisements first (as I have better access to this market). I also looked at another metric - % of advertisements/songs needing my poetry while defining the approach. I further looked at Access to Advertisements in terms of existing and New

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 i.e. existing is through my past organizations and through my friends’ network. New means developing contacts through mails and agencies. He asked me to stop at this point and said ‘why don’t you start it right away’. In the end I asked him about his experience at McKinsey and his happiest moment while working there. What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Cracking a personalized case. It also showed awareness and interest in things linked to poetry as my hobby.

I think this interview went very well. Both the PI and the case. Be prepared to solve such cases based/ customized to your personal interest areas. I got two such cases (one in McKinsey and another one, related to Ball Dancing, in some other interview) Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Pankaj Gupta McKinsey and Co. Shirish Sankhe, Director, Mumbai Office

Round 2, Interview 1

‘Why Consulting’. Asked me if I had interest in Public Policy. I answered saying Not much but I would be keen to learn about the same and work in that area if an opportunity comes. A steel company wants to increase it’s Market Capitalization. How would you go about it. Asked some questions to understand the problem better: 1) Something more about the client- location, which part of value chain does it operate in? 2) Is there any time frame in mind 3) By what magnitude does the client want market capitalization to increase He said time frame would be 4- 5 years. I drew the value chain of steel industry: RM (Iron ore, coal etc) -> Manufacturing of steel -> Distribution. He said client is currently operating in all. He also provided some information on location – the client had made acquisitions for Iron ore (worth 3 million USD) in US. I said that Market Capitalization would be essentially a multiple of Operating income and hence we should see the problem in two aspects – increasing Revenue and decreasing Cost. I asked him if this approach was fine. He told me to proceed. I said revenue was determined as Price* Output. I asked if price could be increased, which he told me to park aside. Then I discussed output: one way to increase would be through M&A. Other ways would be through Greenfield, Brownfield projects of Joint Venture. He asked me what should be done even before M&A and then dropped a hint about current operations. I immediately said ‘that is something to be looked at first’. Any excess capacity may be utilized to raise output. Further more, the aspects to be looked at would be (1) efficiency (2) RM (biggest chunk of cost) He told me to look at RM. I asked the need vs capacity of the acquisitions done by client in US (3 million tones of output). RM need was not satisfied. Hence more RM sourcing should be ensured through either contracts, locating close to RM sources, acquisitions as RM is biggest part of cost and would help increase the margins and hence market cap also.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

At this point he asked me about other possibilities of increasing the market cap. I said some ways of indicating god future growth (investments, strategic tie ups) would increase the market cap. He asked me what else could be done and indicated spin offs. I said there could be alternative to float a new firm (separate venture for RM) or sell shares as different types – Type A and Type B while keeping the firm as one entity. He was fine with that.

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What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview

Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

He stopped the case here and said I I wanted to ask anything. I asked him if this was a real case and what had they done in this situation. Then I said that I have wondered what has prohibited systems such as Social Security from being implemented in India and how does he see that coming in future? We had a discussion around the same for about 5-7 minutes and the interview ended. I think PI went well and it worked for me. I was confident and answers were both crisp and good. The question that I asked him was relevant to his work experience as well as connected to initial PI discussion. The case did not that well. I had to pick on hints a couple of times during the interview (which I personally didn’t see as something good). Also I thought I should have defined the problem more concisely. Does not matter much even if your case is not going exactly how you want it but don’t hesitate to take a step back and to make efforts while solving. Do keep interviewer involved in the case (Think aloud – may be ask the interviewer at times…if the approach is fair/ assumptions are fair) Prepare intelligent questions (which you have to ask to the interviewer). These could be either based on the case, interviewer’s field of work (typically they introduce themselves at the start of the interview) or relevant to PI in respective interviews. ‘and don’t worry, you can practice drafting good questions while the interview is going on’ Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Pankaj Gupta McKinsey and Co. Rajiv C. Lochan, Partner

Round 2, Interview 2 Asked about myself to which I gave an already prepared answer. Personal opinion on “tell me something about yourself” – prefer not to recite your resume, rather bring out some personal traits (link to personal/professional examples) and some story (beyond resume). Also discussed a bit about my work experience and why I had moved from Asian Paints to IBM Daksh The client is a Financial service distributor. It currently sells only Fixed deposits (FD) and is considering selling of two new type of products –Life Insurance (LI) and Mutual Funds (MF). It has sales force of 1000 and operates in southern India. Will this work and what should he do about the sales force (hire more/ allocation) I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) Tell some more about the client – are they only a distributor? Answer was Yes. 2) Is profit the criteria to be looked at for feasibility/ Sales Force allocation The structure that I made considered three aspects of the problem. • Customers – are we targeting the same customers, how much of cannibalization (Share of wallet aspect) can we expect if same products are sold to same set of customers? • Feasibility – in terms of skills (different selling skills for different products) Need/ demand in the market, training issues (all sales people selling all products?) Amount of investment required. • Incentive alignment – He gave me information about prices of different products and clients margin (basis points). Target customers were same. As product type and related needs are different, cannibalization was not taken as an issue. Feasibility parameters were also fine. I calculated absolute margin (which is Revenue for our client) on each product. Then I said, for financial feasibility, Cash Flows need to be calculated and hence Revenue and cost need to be found. Hence Profit is a function of product Mix: Profit = Sum (Pi-Ci) And we know the values of Pi. I identified the possible costs as the commission to sales agents + The cost of channel (for each product). He was fine with this. He told me to focus on revenues only.

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

He further gave me the capacity of Sales person (while selling only FDs, each person sells 10 FDs per month and if all products are sold the mix (4,8 and1 FD, MF and LI respectively). I calculated the as is case revenue (selling FD alone). I also found the profit (revenue for our client) in each category of products (as per the new mix) by existing sales force. (There were indeed a lot of calculations)

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 The incremental profit was around 170 % more and I said on the basis of calculations, the model seems feasible but there are other parameters to be taken care – how to align incentives. Some part of incentives needs to be pegged to the number of products sold else higher margin products likely to be sold more (moreover there could be strategic reasons for selling even low margin products to customers – acquisition, customers may prefer to buy a basket of products from a single contact point/ sales person). He asked what would I say on basis of intuition ie, Should the client proceed with this. I thought and said Yes because the incremental impact is very high and even if some contingencies arise, the proposition is highly likely to be profitable. He agreed and seemed to be happy with this. What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

He seemed happy with my PI as well as the case, especially the last bit about intuitive call. A minor calculation mistake but he said it was no issue (as it was already very late in the day) Try to present your opinion beyond the direct (numerical, as case may be) solution. It does help. Yes

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Pradyot Anand McKinsey & Company Jamie ______, Cant recall designation

First Round, First Interview

Some Qs relating to leadership experiences. Why is a new terminal at an airport required? Operations LHR airport is building Terminal 5. Why? Identified the purpose of terminals, and its physical layout. Defined capacity as throughput of baggage (big mistake: capacity here was supposed to be that of airport with runways being the bottleneck!!). Compared capacity of T-5 with that of other terminals. Basically, T-5 is being built to accommodate the A380. I knew this from my GK but didn’t exactly shine through in the interview. identified it as an operations issue. After that everything went downhill. About halfway through the interview, I realized that I was dinged anyhow (I’d have rejected me had I been the interviewer), so there was less pressure and I had a relaxed time with the case after that. Made a couple of unwarranted assumptions. Did not clarify the concept of “capacity” as required by this problem. Don’t neglect operations based cases. These were the least favorite ones of mine during prep. Even if interviewer is hostile, keep a cool head and think logically, don’t let the pressure get to you. NA. First round anyway had 2 interviews.

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them) Case question Case Type Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible) What do you think went right for you in this interview What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience Outcome

Pradyot Anand McKinsey & Company Noshir Kaka, Don’t recall designation

First Round, Second Interview

None 3 mini cases Software (since I come from an IT products background) 1. How does software development metrics (efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility) differ between IT products and IT services? 2. Who would SAP choose as its best Indian partner? 3. Cant recall

Pretty much most of it was on track. Nothing much except on one aspect relating to Q2, where the interviewer and I chose to disagree.

Did not make it to next round

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third)

Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Varun Khullar McKinsey Shirish Sankhe, Director (Mumbai Office)

st

R1, 1 interview Shirish is the ‘big boss’ for recruitment decisions in McK. I had interacted with him during the McK dinner and he had come across as a person with an extremely ‘high-level’ view of business situations. He has worked with the Indian PM on public policy. Shirish only comes for interviews at ISB among all B-schools in India since he likes the experience of ISBians and the maturity that comes with it. Since this was my first interview at McK and that too with ‘supposedly’ the main decision maker, I was pretty tense. However, Shirish put me at ease almost immediately. He came out of the room to escort me in, then he remembered my interaction with him over dinner and remarked on it. We started talking as we entered the room. Then he asked me about my experience in ISB, memorable moment, grades. Then he commented on my good experience in ITC and asked me about an achievement in work. Also Why consulting? Overall the tone was very conversational, and I was smiling a lot which helped. There is a steel company with 2 plants in India. Now it has done recent acquisitions abroad. What should be the organizational structure that it should put in place in these places, and what are the pros and cons of each? Strategy I asked him some clarificatory questions on where all in the world have the plants to get an idea of the kind of local areas. He replied in US, Indonesia, Trinidad etc. I then proceeded to succinctly put the problem statement to Shirish and he was ok with it. Then I asked for “some time to structure my thoughts” ☺. The structure I laid out was: 1. What is meant by ‘organizational structure’? Is our end goal to figure out the number of levels in an organization, the number of people at each level and the skill they require? 2. Understand the goal of the organization: a cost focus or a responsiveness focus, whats important in this industry? 3. Map the existing processes that the company is involved in (value chain) and look at how best the goal of the organization can be served with: a. Existing company people redeployed to the new countries b. People from the acquired companies to continue working c. New people to be hired

Narration of the case (please be as descriptive as possible)

It seemed that Shirish was looking for something else in the structure that I missed as indicated by his body language. However, he answered my queries – For point 1 he said I should look at a broader picture of what an organizational structure means. What I had defined was a very micro view. For point 2 he said I can assume an undifferentiated product market and that cost is the main focus. Here I pointed out that since we are acquiring

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 the plants, the main concern in the short term maybe quick ramp up of the plant. He liked that and said that there are actually 3 measures that we will rate our structure on: - Ramp up time - Cost - Accountability of the plant employees of its performance For point 3 he said it might not be so relevant to our discussion!! Clearly I was in a situation where I didn’t know what hit me since I thought I completely missed what he wanted on 2 of my three points. However I kept calm and asked him what is the way to understand the org structure? He said think about how it was organized in ITC. So I said: 1. Since ITC is a conglomerate, it has a structure of various businesses or divisions which function independently. A ‘Corporate’ division is common to all. 2. Within each division there are functional verticals like the Marketing function, Technical function, HR, Finance functions. Shirish liked the way I described the structures in ITC so he said good. He said that that is a macro ‘Product’ structure of businesses around products like cigarettes, paperboards, clothes. Then he probed me on what could be other structures? I replied that the sub-structure of ‘Functions’ like marketing, HR etc could be the macro structure itself. He said that’s the nd 2 , what else? Then we had a discussion on other kind of structures and he led me to two other kinds – ‘Geographical’ and ‘Type of Customer’. Then I started to list of pros and cons of each structure. However he said are you missing the criteria, so I quickly referred my notes and realized that he had given the 3 measures to rate each structure earlier – ramp up time, cost and accountability. I then ranked each on the above and after a discussion with him concluded that we should start with a functional set up to ensure quick ramp up and then move towards a geographical set up to ensure the local accountability, and minimization of costs. Shirish was happy with the way I recovered and synthesized. He then went on to explain that actually they went in with the geographical setup directly, and the functional setup was a pseudo layer on top, as there were ‘functional specialists’ that traveled to a location to ensure quick ramp up.

What do you think went right for you in this interview

What do you think went wrong in this interview Any tips for future batches based on this experience

Then Shirish said is there anything else I wanted to know from him. Then I told him that in our previous meeting we had not talked about the challenges of working with the govt sector. So he talked on that for around 5 mins. I thought I blew the case since Shirish had to lead me in various areas in the case. He put me on the spot on a few occasions, but the key was that I handled them calmly. Also, the PI was good as I built on the connect from my previous meeting with him, and the fact that he remembered me. I should have thought about the structures that exist in various companies and laid it out up front as options from which we could choose. Also I should have not missed the criteria that had been discussed for rating. I think at that point since I had become a little nervous, I could not concentrate well. Overall I thought I blew my chances at McK! 1. Proceed in the interview the way the interviewer wants you to. If he wants a free-flowing discussion, which was the case here once I laid out my structure, be flexible to do so. However, keep a track of open ends on your structure.

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Outcome

2. Don’t hesitate to ask the interviewer for help in case you are stuck. In my case it helped me a lot. 3. Don’t get flustered if stuck. Persevere and be calm. R1 has minimum two interviews, but I was sure I would not make it to R2 (but I did! ☺)

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ISB Consulting Club Case & CV Book- Class of 2008 Name of student Company interviewed with Name of interviewer and designation Round and interview number (First, Second,Third) Personal interview questions (with indicative answers if you wish to share them)

Case question Case Type

Varun Khullar McKinsey Dr. Mandar Vaidya, EM

R1, 2

nd

interview

Mandar said that he was impressed by my ITC experience. He was a smoker and asked some basics of the cigarette manufacturing. We quickly moved onto the case. Somehow I got the feeling that the PI st was not being tested as it had gone well in the 1 interview. The IPL is a 20-20 league of cricket. It consists of city teams, with players from within the city,