Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow Placement Interview Questions

• Q1. Tell me something about yourself.
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• Q2. Explain how do you pursue your hobbies and how do they help you? Tell something about the Premier League and Liverpool Football Club.
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• Q3. Share your experience with online learning and the online placement process.
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• Q4. Describe your journey from Data Science to Consulting.
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• Q5. Explain briefly about your pricing project.
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• Q6. Explain briefly about the fraud detection project and showcase the impact the project created.
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Our client is a sports manufacturer, and their business has been affected by the ongoing pandemic. They sell fitness products and accessories to the customers. What would be your strategy to increase the revenue of the client?
Used profitability and growth framework to identify ways to promote the business in pandemic.

Our client has 20 fitness outlets in semi metro areas in USA. The company has been observing a decline in revenue from last 5 years. Try to analyze the case and find the potential solutions to improve the situation.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: To reiterate, our client has been facing decline in revenues for that last 5 years, and as their consultant you want us to find the reasons and some possible solutions for the same.

I: That is correct.

C: Since when are we experiencing this decline in revenues and what has been the quantum?

I: The decline has been for 5 years and the decline is >20%.

C: By fitness outlets do we mean a setup like a gym?

I: Yes.

C: How many such outlets do we have and where are they located?

I: We have 20 such outlets in the semi: metro areas. (Used profitability and growth framework & used CPCC to get the basic understanding of the problem) Divided problem in Revenue and Cost parts. Discussed on multiple components from both the branches. Identified multiple bottle necks in the costing part. After having a discussion for around 15 minutes, we could cover all the potential problems.

I was then asked to provide a short term and long-term solution and once I answered that, I was asked to perform A/B testing on 10-10 fitness outlets. It was asked mainly to check what all factors I was able to come up with.

• Q1. Give me a quick introduction about yourself.
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• Q2. You said you are into sports. What is the learning in life which you gain from it?
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• Q3. What makes you apply to this firm, given that you left it after working for 2 years?
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• Q4. Explain the work which you did in Deloitte as an Analyst. What kind of challenges did you face working with US based clients?
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• Q1. 1. Guess the total no. of order complaints placed on the major online food delivery service in the location of your choice. 2. Guess the total no. of executives...read more
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There is a financial company with data centers across three countries (USA, France, India) and the cost of the data centers have increase by 10% over the past 6 months? Help us to know the exact reasons for it. As a consultant, what kind of solutions would you propose to tackle this situation?
Initially, I enquired about the cost distribution of the data centers across the locations. It was uniform. Then I created multiple buckets for the reasons of cost in a data center:

1. Fixed Cost (rent of land: I shifted it to VC with long term aspect with the assumption of one-time establishment of the infrastructure).

2. Variable Cost (employee’s salary, maintenance, upgradation, security patches for data centers, power consumption) I further discussed and asked questions on all of these.

Then I used PESTEL framework. They asked more on the IT part of the costs, more on security patches, software upgradation charges, storage capacity and scalability. After this, I was asked to discuss on the solutions given the problem was scalability and maintenance cost. I talked about storage data on cloud using 3rd party services like AWS/Azure. I discussed the usability of it for a large company daily, the costs that it cuts and the new costs and tradeoffs if any and the long-term feasibility of it.

• Q1. Tell me something about yourself, your biggest achievement.
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• Q2. Tell me something interesting in your life recently.
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• Q3. Tell me about your hometown.
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• Q4. Do you follow politics? Who's Guntur’s(hometown) MP? How did he win when he is not in the ruling party? If you are his upcoming campaign manager, how would you ...read more
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• Q5. What are the 3 things you liked about the Deloitte USI? Any suggestions or improvements?
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• Q6. Tell me something about the toughest project you have worked on and your contribution in it.
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• Q7. How was your previous work experience at Oracle? Was it good? If yes, why did you leave it in these unprecedented times?
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Your client is a pharma company and is willing to optimize its IT infrastructure because of COVID-19. They have 6 data centers out of which 2 are critical. And have around 10 internal applications. How would you optimize it?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

I: You seem to have some experience in cloud. Do you have any preference in what type of case you want to do in cloud? Like scaling up, cost cutting etc.

C: Yes, most recently I have worked on a project to migrate to cloud. So, anything related to cloud migration would be great.

I: Sure.

C: I observe that two Data Centers (DC) are critical and the rest four DCs are not. So, we can migrate them to cloud and scale them according to our needs. This is with the DC part.

I: We would like to know the steps of how you do that.

C: Identify which 4 need to be migrated, check the capacity they need, negotiate with all vendors like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and go with the one with the most competitive price. Sometimes the vendors help in data migration so the data center migration will be taken care.

I: Is that it? Is nothing else required?

C: With respect to DCs I cannot think of anything else in this moment. But we must build the links to the applications with the migrated DCs.

I: Exactly! How would you go about it?

C: Can I assume there are around 10 applications in the company which we want to focus on? Like ERP, CRM, HCM, Salary applications and HR applications etc.?

I: You need not classify them, just assume there are 10 out of which 4 are critical, 4 non-critical, 2 are not at all critical. C: If our client wants to show the progress to their higher management, I would like to start with the biggest application so that they can show a big impact in the first few months.

• Q1. Give me a quick introduction about yourself.
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• Q2. Are you aware of the DevOps cycle?
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• Q3. I was asked about my experience of working in a startup and how would that be different from working at Deloitte?
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• Q1. Estimate the market demand for iPhone 12 in India.
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There is a retail company that has been growing tremendously for the last few years. Recently, there has been an increase in the data center costs. As the data centers are old, there have been a lot of outages lately. The owner has heard a lot about cloud technology from his friends and is thinking of moving to cloud. Should he make this decision? What will be the cost of moving to cloud?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: Where is the company located?

I – India.

C: What is the size of the company and the user base?

I: Like Flipkart.

C: About outages - if it is a trend or a seasonal issue?

I: Seasonal/ Promotional.

C: Since it is not a consistent issue, the company can consider moving to cloud as it allows the flexibility to upscale/ downscale storage as per requirement. If the company increases the data storage at the current data center, that might become redundant at other times of the year, hence incurring him extra costs.

I: Alright.

C: What is the infrastructure/platform of the data center?

I: Why do you want to know that?

C: This would have a huge impact on my decision to move to cloud. Certain cloud platforms are not compatible with some technologies. For example - AWS does not support Mainframe applications and Unix based applications. They need to be refactored and re-platformed respectively to perform the migration. Since you mentioned the data centers are quite old, they might be using one of these (obsolete) technologies.

I: Fair enough. What are the other considerations?

C: I would want to do a cost-benefit analysis of moving to cloud vs having an in-house setup with regular maintenance. I would also look at the current employee expertise, data security and compliance issues, also the number of applications that we are
looking to move to the cloud.

I: Let us talk about the last point more. What do you mean?

C: Say, we have multiple small applications which are not in use anymore, we might not want to move those to cloud, rather do away with them or integrate them. Basically, do a suitability and a financial analysis.

I: Let us talk about the costs now. What are the different costs involved in an in-house setup vs on cloud in terms of capital costs and operating costs?

C: Mentioned some costs under both the headers stating the rationale behind them:

Capital costs - Hardware & Labor Costs,
Operating costs - Maintenance Costs.

• Q1. Give me a quick introduction about yourself.
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• Q2. Tell me about major accomplishments in your work experience.
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• Q3. Tell me about yourself.
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• Q4. Briefly explain your role/day to day working in both corporate roles in the work experience.
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• Q5. Briefly explain my project with a PE Fund. This was followed by a discussion around recent developments in the healthcare industry (as based on my work experien...read more
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Your client is Sigma Automotive. They have $10bn revenue and are the current industry leaders. They have been facing growth challenges since the past couple of years. The slowdown is industry wide. The industry is moving towards a consolidation landscape and smart vehicles. The growth beyond core offering is the company’s current target.

A. Growth Objects: Historically, the company had 8 - 10 % growth. New target is 5%.
B. Geographical Split of Revenues: USA - 80%, Canada - 25%, Mexico - 5%.
C. Margin - 10% ($1bn).
D. Revenue split by Products: Heavy Vehicle sales - 70%, Light Vehicle sales - 30%.
E. Revenue by channels: Automotive sales - 75%, Services - 25%.

Sigma lags in EV innovation and advanced driving systems. Sigma is open to expand to new markets. The competition is following cross border M&A and the norm is traditional auto companies looking to acquire tech startups in other countries.
I used the Ansoff matrix to deploy growth opportunities as organic and inorganic opportunities. This was followed by a discussion where the interviewer presented a document to analyze 3 options.

• Q1. We had a general chat on my previous company. The interviewer knew about it and discussed about my experience there, what did I like, what did I not like. How w...read more
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• Q2. Further discussion on IIM Lucknow since the interview was an alumnus. What are your career goals and expectations from work and workplace?
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• Q3. I had a reverse cloud migration project mentioned in the CV, the interviewer asked questions around that to try and understand what exactly was done and why.
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1. A financial firm which uses old legacy applications is growing rapidly, you must recommend a cloud migration strategy, how would you go about it?

2. Guesstimate: Estimate the total number of videos on YouTube.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

I: A financial firm which uses old legacy applications is growing rapidly, you must recommend a cloud migration strategy, how would you go about it?

C: There are 2 aspects to this, firstly an analysis of the current systems and communicating the benefits of cloud migration to the client. Secondly, the actual strategy around how would we go about the migration. Which aspects do you want me to focus on?

I: Let us focus on the benefits part, what all benefits will you communicate to the client? Give a top-level overview.

C: The benefits that the clients get include easier, faster, and cost-effective scalability since the firm was growing. In addition to this, better security features provided by cloud service providers. The client will have cost-saving in terms of having the ability to dynamically demand server resources with pay as you use pricing models.

I: Let us move on to a guesstimate Estimate the total number of videos on YouTube.

C: There are 2 bn YouTube users currently. I would like to assume that the content creators to content consumers ratio of 1:10000 based on my assumptions. Can I go ahead with this assumption?

I: Yes, you may proceed.

C: I would further like to break down the content creators into 3 segments based on frequency of video uploads as high frequency, middle frequency, low frequency content creators (10%, 20%, 70%). Then estimated high frequency uploads around (1500 videos a month - example would be news channels), middle frequency (100 videos a month - example would be coaching class channels), low frequency (10 videos a month).

I: Very good, go on.

C: For the total number, since YouTube was started in 2005, I would assume a base number x and an average year on year growth percentage and equate it to the 2019 figure obtained. This will help me find the total number.

I: No need to estimate for the entire duration, 2019 is enough. How would you go about it if you did not know the 2 bn figure of user base?

C: I would estimate the userbase for India by segment based on internet penetration in urban and rural segments and then age groups and get to a number, extrapolate that to the world population considering some valid assumptions.

What are the benefits of cloud migration, challenges to be considered and planning required as part of the cloud migration strategy?
I listed down some major factors to be considered for the adoption of cloud computing as Internet connectivity, Internet speed, availability, reliability, data storage location, security, data sovereignty, cost, integration, data backup, provider dependability, employees’ knowledge, and transportability.

Further, I discussed the migration strategy as to which systems to prioritize first, how to decide what upgradations might be required, how to group systems for migration, when to do the migration (as this would involve a downtime), can the downtime be avoided, data transfer costs as a major barrier.

• Q1. Give me a quick introduction about yourself.
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• Q2. What are your aspirations?
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• Q3. Can you elaborate on the segmentation project as mentioned in your resume?
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• Q4. Why did you leave KPMG in 2 months? If given a chance, will you re-join KPMG?
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Your client is Sigma Automotive. They have $10bn revenue and are the current industry leaders. They have been facing growth challenges since the past couple of years. The slowdown is industry wide. The industry is moving towards a consolidation landscape and smart vehicles. The growth beyond core offering is the company’s current target.

A. Growth Objects: Historically, the company had 8-10 % growth. New target is 5%.

B. Geographical Split of Revenues: USA - 80%, Canada - 25%, Mexico - 5%.

C. Margin - 10% ($1bn).

D. Revenue split by Products: Heavy Vehicle sales - 70%, Light Vehicle sales - 30%.

E. Revenue by channels: Automotive sales - 75%, Services - 25%.

Sigma lags in EV innovation and advanced driving systems. Sigma is open to expand to new markets. The competition is following cross border M&A and the norm is traditional auto companies looking to acquire tech startups in other countries.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: I will just try to summarize all I could gather about the problem statement and please fill in if I missed anything.

(Repeated the Summary.)

I: Sounds good. The first question is what is the acquisition framework that you would follow for this firm.

C: I would follow the following steps:

1. Identification - Do an in-depth analysis of our requirements to have a clear understanding of what we need from the start up and the acquisition.

2. Market Research - Do extensive secondary research to identify the startups which fit our requirements.

3. Narrowing down options - Once we have a list of startups that fit our requirements, do a detailed analysis on the shortlisted companies about their financials and operations.

4.The work towards the mode.

I: This makes sense. Now you must meet with CEO, and you must give a summary of growth options. Please suggest.

C: I would suggest 3 growth options:

1. Organic growth - We have a strong foothold in the heavy vehicle market, and we can use the brand name to expand into the light vehicle market within USA.

2. Inorganic growth - We are already looking into options for technology start up acquisitions to drive innovations in EV and advanced driver systems.

3. Expanding into other continents - We have a good name and market in the USA, and we can explore international markets like Europe and Asia.

I: Okay now we will display three options of the startups on the screen and you tell us which one you go with and why.

C: I would go with option 3 since it is in Europe and Sigma is looking for expansion into other countries. Additionally, the revenues that the startup generates align with the company's target and they have a fair experience of working in the automotive industry.

• Q1. Tell me something about yourself.
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• Q2. What did you like/not like about the interview process?
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• Q3. Tell me something about your internship experience and work culture at Unilever.
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• Q4. Tell me about your CLV project during PwC internship and what was your role in it.
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Your client is a Head of Customer Department of a Tours and Travel Agency like MMT (Make my trip) in the month of April 2020, what problems do you think they are facing and what is the way out?
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

C: What are the areas the client operates in, what is the team size, what are the operating conditions now and locations.

I: The client operates in tours, experiences and travel, a large established firm, having both online and offline presence.

C: Can I have a few moments to structure my thoughts.

I: Yes surely!

C: I will divide it into internal & external buckets. There will be WFH and infra needs as well as saving in internal. External bucket was the major part in which I bucketed customers in Pre-booking, During-booking and Post booking, backlog created and how problems can be handled.

I: What else can you think about?

C: Do you think I have missed anything, or can I proceed? From the above heads is there any one you want me to focus on?

I: Talk more about internal issues that can arise.

C: Divided into different teams after asking for dependency on online/offline channels. Operations, Marketing, and Tech team were the major divisions and went to speak about their possible problems. I mapped the employee journey from basic needs to motivation and engagements, did cost comparison for the expense borne by the firm and discussed some ideas on how to make it productive.

• Q1. Give me a quick introduction about yourself.
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• Q2. Why do you want to join Deloitte and enter consulting? How have your buddy interactions been?
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• Q3. Can you talk about your projects at Axis Bank?
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• Q4. What were the various positions of responsibility at college and key learnings from each of them?
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Our client is an online travel aggregator like MakeMyTrip and is facing issues in customer service. They have asked us to help them to respond in the short-term.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate]

I: Our client is an online travel aggregator like MakeMyTrip and faces issues in telephonic support & customer service. They have asked us to help them respond in the short-term.

C: For how long has the client been facing this issue, and do we have any data on the service levels or any other KPI affected? Also, what time frame do we consider as short-term for the given situation?

I: Assume that the case was around March 2020 when the lockdown was imposed. Our service levels have decreased, and we cannot service all the calls. We need a quick solution to be implemented in phases in one week to one month.

C: Got it. So, we need to focus on the contingencies created due to the lockdown and find the immediate short-term fixes.

I: Yes.

C: So, before we move onto the case, I would like to understand a few factors about the client and the situation.

I: Go ahead.

C: I would like to understand the client's business model, its location, and its scale.

I: Our client is based in Gurgaon and serves customers nationwide. You can consider it like any other online travel aggregator like MakeMyTrip, Go IBibo, etc. What do you think are the kind of services do these aggregators offer?

C: From my understanding of the aggregators mentioned above, I understand that they offer travel booking and hotel booking broadly. Do we have any information on any of these segments which are facing an issue?

I: Both the travel booking and hotel booking segments are facing the issue. Can you elaborate on the major issue which both customers might be facing across both segments?

C: If we are focusing on the time just after the lockdown was imposed, the major issue which both corporate and retail customers were facing was the cancellation of travel plans. For retail customers, the plans of leisure travel and meeting friends/family were cancelled while for the corporate customers, the meetings requiring travel were canceled. The trip cancellations would lead to a demand for a refund and related customer service queries.

I: Correct, so what do you think maybe the broad reasons for the client is facing the issue?

C: To diagnose the issue, we can look at the customer service from the perspective of people, process, and technology. Later, we can see if the problems exist for the competitors too or not.

I: Our competitors are also facing similar issues and hence let us focus on our client only. Can you list the probable issues in each of the buckets mentioned above?

C: In terms of the customer service, we can have issues in terms of #people *#hours*productivity. The number of people might have decreased as people might not be able to work from home due to maybe travelling to hometown, permanent migration to hometown combined with attrition, etc. I assume that the call center employees are mainly from the low and middle-income families trying to earn a quick buck. Hence, they might have space constraints at home due to the smaller home sizes at times.

Thus, the number of hours might be reduced as people might not be able to work late nights, especially in shared spaces at home. Productivity may be reduced too, as the home environment needs time to adapt and might not be conducive for operations. In terms of the process, the management, coordination, and resolution of WFH related issues might be a problem.

In terms of technology, we can have issues in terms of the hardware (laptop, router, etc.), software (call center management software, VPN, video/audio call), and internet (availability, speed, and reliability).

I: Yes, our client has been facing issues because of the lack of people due to migration of people to hometowns and/or the lack of proper infrastructure. A major issue is that we have not provided laptop to most of the employees working from home due to cost considerations. Some of the people have been facing problems in installing various software required to operate. Moving ahead, why do you think a customer calls customer service in our business?

C: A customer calls our service center mainly for help regarding booking a ticket, queries regarding travel booking, and cancellations.

I: So, which of these queries might have increased or decreased during the period.

C: The queries regarding booking a new flight and related follow-up may have decreased as no new flights were allowed for a month or so. At the same time, the queries for flight cancellations, rescheduling, and refund processing will have increased.

I: Fair enough, our client is facing issues due to many cancellations and problems in refund processing. Can you suggest some quick fixes for the same?

C: Sure. To reduce customer dissatisfaction, we can focus on either increasing the no. of many hours and productivity of call center, or we can get a quick solution with the same set of people. Since the time frame is short, can we proceed with a solution using the same number of people?

I: Yes, that is correct.

C: The main point we need to keep in mind here is to do things quickly and clearly communicate with the customers. So, with the same number of people and their efficiency in the short-term, we can have a few changes in the app or processes which can be implemented at the earliest. We can make the self-induced ticket refund process easier for the customer and put it on the front page of the app or announce it before a call begins, we can auto-refund the customer and send an email without any customer intervention or we can give customers a coupon for future purchases instead of instant cash if we have limited cash.