My Honest Flipkart Business Case Round for BA Interview

It was my first ever guesstimate kind of questions I encountered in an interview, and it didn’t go well in my opinion :(

I thought this interview went well, but I think I could have done better, let me tell you the questions so that you can prepare well from my mistakes.

Interviewer asked me that he wants me to do the following things from problem statement.

Problem Comprehension Skills —

1. Breakdown the problem into smaller parts.
2. What are your relevant hypothesis?
3. What are the important KPI you will monitor?

Question: Domino’s is opening its first outlet in HSR Layout, Bengaluru. If we don’t provide delivery in x mins, we will provide y% off to the customers. Decide x and y no.s considering that you don’t have any historical data.

Snippet of my notebook on which I solved that problem :)

Answer: It was a guesstimate question, so I knew I have to assume no.s on my own. So, I started with assumption

1. We have ample supply for pizza.
2. No supply issue
3. No festivals on the opening day
4. Only competitor is Pizza Hut

I started thinking about the locality first. If the area is residential then traffic will be lesser, if its official area then during office hours it would be jam packed. So I divided the areas into two — Residential and Official as delivery time would be different for both the areas. Since the city is Bangalore, so rain will be another external factor that will affect meeting demand on time. Next factor should be which day we are opening our new outlet weekend or weekday. Then we can also look at which time period we are running this offer, are we running different offer in different time period.

After jotting down all the factors which will affect the discount, I started with assuming no.s.

1. Pizza consumers = 30,000 per day,
2. Variable cost = Rs. 75,
3. Fixed cost = Rs. 200,
4. Selling Price = Rs. 350,

5. We are delivering pizzas within 7km radius.

A — — — — → 7km = 30 minutes on an average. But, since the traffic is most of the time, so 30% of 15mins and 70% of x = 30 minutes, x = 36min.

This entire thing took me 45mins to do, so I failed to answer how to get the value for y. I still don’t know how to solve this question. If you know then tell me your answer in the comment section below.

Then he asked me one more question — Which is your favourite restaurant? I replied — Suku. Then he asked me the average footfall in the restaurant.

Snippet of my notebook on which I solved that problem :)

Then I started by assuming that prices are decent, and there are 50 seats in the restaurant. I divided the entire problem statement in different time brackets. On an average people take 1.5 hour to finish their meal. Considering that restaurant will operate from 11pm-11pm, I divided the time periods as 11pm — 3pm (lunch period), 6pm-9pm (after office), 9pm-11pm.

11pm — 3pm (lunch period) = 60% can be the footfall = 35 seats

6pm-9pm (after office) = 75% can be footfall = 40 seats

9pm-11pm = 50% is the footfall = 25 seats.

So, on an average day, 35+40+25 = 110 is the footfall.

Then at last he asked me one common riddle asked in any interview -

There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?

Lets assume: Box 1 is labelled Oranges (O) Box 2 is labelled Apples (A) Box 3 is labelled Apples and Oranges (A+O) and that all the boxes are labelled incorrectly, then

Pick a fruit from box 1, 1) if you pick an Orange: — box 1’s real label can only be O or A+O — box 1’s current label is O — since all labels are incorrect then box 1’s real label can not be O — box 1’s new label should then be A+O by elimination — since all label’s are incorrect— box 2’s label is changed to O — box 3’s label is changed to A — solved!!

Overall, I think I did pretty decent, not that great tbh! So, Yes I did got the call for my next round, Stay tuned to know further more rounds.

So, I have been getting a lot of messages and queries about different preparation strategies and how to negotiate offer with recruiters, I will try to answer everyone for free, but if you want me to be obligated to talk to you and solve your problem then do book your slot on Topmate!