BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 1

A Message from Us
Dear Business Technology Club members,
We are really pleased to present to you all, BTC Interview Handbook, an aggregation of the
interview experiences of candidates from Co’19 with some of the firms coming in for
recruitment.
Before you dive into the interview experiences, it is important to have a strong foundational
concept of design thinking and problem solving. We strongly recommend reading up “Decode
and Conquer” and “Cracking the PM interview”. Only when you are done with these resources
should you try to address the questions in this handbook.
The handbook contains a comprehensive list of interview questions, cases, scenarios you can
expect in your interviews and resources that will be useful to prepare from. Whether you want
to secure a career at big giants or with a tech startup – we hope the handbook proves to be
helpful.
We wish you good luck with the preparations and look forward to strengthening ISB's brand in
the technology industry with record-breaking placements this year.
We would also like to thank the BTC Team of Co’15, Co’16, Co’17, Co’18, both from Hyderabad
and Mohali for laying foundation of this handbook. And last but not the least, a big shout out to
our Co’19 friends who have filled up their interview experiences. Without all these people, the
handbook wouldn’t have been possible.
We would also request to refer to past BTC interview handbooks, BTC Co19 analytics handbook
as well as BTC Co19 Product Management Handbook.
Cheers!
Business Technology Club (BTC),
Hyderabad | Mohali
Class of 2019
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 2

Table of Contents
Resources .................................................................................................................................................. 3
1. Flipkart ................................................................................................................................................. 4
2. Microsoft ............................................................................................................................................ 11
3. InMobi ................................................................................................................................................ 21
4. Alphonso ............................................................................................................................................ 23
5. Apple : Singapore ............................................................................................................................... 24
6. Shuttl .................................................................................................................................................. 25
7. Amazon............................................................................................................................................... 25
8. Wynk .................................................................................................................................................. 26
9. Nykaa .................................................................................................................................................. 27
10. MakeMyTrip ...................................................................................................................................... 29
11. Arcesium ........................................................................................................................................... 30
12. Deloitte USI ....................................................................................................................................... 31
13. Athena Health ................................................................................................................................... 33
14. Innovacer........................................................................................................................................... 34
15. Oyo .................................................................................................................................................... 34
16. Media.net .......................................................................................................................................... 35
17. Samsung R&D Bangalore................................................................................................................... 36
19. Jivox ................................................................................................................................................... 37
20. MindTree ........................................................................................................................................... 38
21. Jocata ................................................................................................................................................ 39
22. Genpact ............................................................................................................................................. 39
23. Swiggy ............................................................................................................................................... 40
24. Myntra............................................................................................................................................... 43
25. Zeta ................................................................................................................................................... 44
26. Paytm ................................................................................................................................................ 47
27. Zynga ................................................................................................................................................. 48
28. Rivigo ................................................................................................................................................. 55
29. Times News ....................................................................................................................................... 57
30. Freshworks Inc. ................................................................................................................................. 57
31. Uber................................................................................................................................................... 58
32. Droom ............................................................................................................................................... 59
33. RazorPay............................................................................................................................................ 60
34. Accenture Tech Consulting ............................................................................................................... 61
35. Tripoto ............................................................................................................................................... 62
35. Magicpin............................................................................................................................................ 62
36. OpenText ........................................................................................................................................... 63
37. MAQ Software................................................................................................................................... 63
38. Bizongo .............................................................................................................................................. 64
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 3

Resources
Product Design
• Https://hackdesign.org/
• https://www.productmanagerhq.com/
• Medium Blogs
• https://stellarpeers.com

Books
• Decode and Conquer
• Cracking the PM interview
• The mobile playbook
• Inspired: How to create Products Customer Love
• The Product Manager Interview: 164 Actual Questions and Answers

Frameworks
• Clarifications: 5W and 1H
• For product design: CIRCLE Method
• For metrics: AARM Method
• Guestimates: Top Down and Bottom-up estimations methods

Trends and Blogs

• Medium, TechCrunch, UX Magazine, Next Design, VentureBeat, The Ken, Product
School, Product Hunt, Blogs on AI; ML

Algorithm Design
• Although rarely asked, one can expect the basics in firms like Google, Microsoft etc.
“Cracking the PM Interview” has a chapter on algorithms.

Case Interview
• ISB Consulting Club Casebook, Case in Point, Harvard and IIM A casebooks
• Victor Cheng’s YouTube videos
• Profitability, New Market entry and New product launch frameworks are most
important

BTC resources
The link has all the previous year’s interview book, handbooks etc.
• https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hbF2AevzFzM2zbCu-II6_avovgvwGj9v
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 4

1. Flipkart
Interview Interview #1 : 4 Rounds
Questions Round 1 (Problem Solving)
Duration: 45 min
Role: Was asked 2 cases:
Product 1. How to reduce number of SLA breaches (essentially mismatch between promised
Manager delivery time and actual delivery time) in Flipkart’s supply chain?
2. Assume Virat Kohli comes to you and tell you that his batting average and strike
rate have been dropping in the last 3 months and asks you to find a solution. How
would you solve his problem?

Round 2 (Engineering)
Duration: 30 min
Interview was taken by an engineering manager. Aim was to figure out if the engineering
team(developers) can get clear requirements and communication from me.
Questions centered around the following:
1. Past work experience. What product you worked on? What were its applications?
2. Product/System architecture of the product you worked on?
3. How you handle conflicts between development team and customer regarding
timelines etc?
4. What are the things you would do differently in your past company if you were the
PM?

Round 3 (Product Design)

Duration: 30 min
Was asked 1 case and some behavioral questions:
Design an elevator system for a building?
- Upon scoping further specifications were given such as it’s a 50 stories tall commercial
complex. Each floor has 1000 people working. 60% of the people arrive between 9-11am
and leave between 5-7pm. It takes 1 sec for a person to enter or leave the lift. The lift takes
1 sec to traverse between 2 floors etc.
The case boiled down to designing a methodology to calculate the number of lifts which are
needed to serve the building’s needs
Most challenging thing in past work ex?
- Describe a situation where you faced failure in your work?
-If you could change something in your past work ex what would it be?

Round 4 (Product Design)

Duration: 45 min
If Flipkart wants to enter into selling Jewelry what should it do?
- Solving the case involved doing market sizing to evaluate feasibility, supply chain
design for jewelry, value proposition for stakeholders, go to market strategy.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 5

Interview #2
Round - 1 (Business)
Q) How's ISB going on so far?
Q) You are thinking of creating a startup, you’ve observed Housing Societies have free
badminton courts available and there are kids who are looking to play badminton but do
not have access to courts. Can you find a way to create value here?
Q) Have you had any problems dealing with people?

Round - 2 (Problem Solving)

Q) You are a PM at Facebook, you notice that the revenue is falling over a period of 2
weeks. What actions would you take next?
Q) How do go about dealing with a situation when you have to convince your superior or
say your product manager about a disagreement that you’ve been having regarding [work-
project] ?

Round - 3 (Problem Solving)

Q) How would you go about launching Gold as a category on Flipkart? What all factors
would you keep in mind while launching it?

Round - 4 (Tech)
Q) Describe the architecture for a product that you’ve worked on? What type of replication
were you using (MySQL DB)?
Q) What is your biggest fear? Is it that your feature will not be prioritized?
Q) How would you deal with Tech-Debt as a PM?

Interview #3
Round 1: Problem Solving
Q: Facebook’s DAU(Daily Active Users) has been decreasing w-o-w for last 3 weeks. As a
growth manager for Facebook, how will you identify and resolve the problem.

Round 2: Product Design and Resume

Q1. Describe 1 project from your past experience that you like and implemented from end-
to-end.
Q2. Design a movie-booking app for elder people (someone who is not very tech-savvy and
just started using smartphones)

Round 3: Business Round

Q1. There is a Product Category on Flipkart which has seasonal demand such as ACs. What
stress does this unpredictable seasonal demand have on Flipkart’s supply chain? Assume a
Stock and Sell model.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 6

Round 4: Technology and Behavioral Round

Q1. Explain the technology architecture from your previous company on product.
Q2. What was the technology stack used in this product?
Q3. Explain in detail how a particular project from the CV was executed.
Q4. What parameters will you use to decide the priorities in a feature backlog.
Q5. What are the major challenges you think you’ll face when working with different
stakeholders such as technology, marketing etc when working as a product manager and
how do you plan to overcome these challenges?
Q6. If I asked your best friend, what will he say are your 2 biggest strengths and 2 biggest
weaknesses?

Interview #4

Round 1 : Product Round- This was a product design round where I was asked to design a
product which will help to bring together all interested outdoor game players in a gated
community. This should address their schedules, availability, their interests of games, their
preference to play with certain players based on their behaviors and skills etc. It went for 45
minutes

Round 2: Business Round- This was a very long round ~1 hr 45 minutes and most crucial
after which rest 2 rounds seemed more like a discussion, probably because I am not from
Tech. background. It had multiple questions. It started with a question on my hobbies (car,
bike, motorsports, tuning scene) etc., followed by a talk about car/bike tuners in India,
followed by my interest in & understanding of the 2nd hand car market, followed by a
business question wherein a 2nd hand online car market place is suffering a loss in revenue,
why ? and solve it for them.

Round 3: Tech. round: As I am not from tech. background, the questions were designed to
find out my understanding of the tech. ecosystem, the team dynamics, how will I handle or
prioritize different situations at the job etc. It was very small 40-45 minute

Round 4: Business round: 2 questions primarily with each being discussed for half an hour.
1. Convince a big electronics firm to choose Flipkart and e-retail and not go to offline shops.
- to check my understanding of e-retail value chain
2. How will I predict the weekly demand of air conditioners at SKU level for every Pincode of
the country. Methods used, factors considered etc.

Interview #5
Round 1 : Problem Solving& Product Design : One arithmetic problem, one product design
problem based on my hobby, gave me some numbers for the metrics of the product and
was asked to analyze
Round 2 : Business Round : Price & Cost Structure if Flipkart rents heavy home appliances
instead of selling. Where can it save money?
Round 3 : Product Design Round + Behavioral : Design a smart dialer app ( No voice/NLP) ,
Tell me a situation when you had to convince the founder of the startup about a decision
opposing his view
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 7

Round 4 : Behavioral : Why Product? How will you deal with engineering team in a
prioritization conflict? If given a team of 10 fresher engineers, what criteria will you
consider to pick 5 of them to make a feature?

Interview #6
Round 2 Type : Problem solving
Questions
Q1 Introductory questions about me and my work in Paytm (just 5-7 mins)
Q2 How will you design a solution for Bangalore traffic? Not interested in your
solution per se please talk about your approach to the problem. For solutions you
provide, also think about how you will run pilots to validate the solution.
Q3 How will you measure the success of Google Photos?
Responses
A1 : Started off by clarifying who I am? Interviewer said someone like a government
minister. Then spoke about different types of traffic in the city: Types of commuters
(Office, students, business, students), routes (junctions like Silk board, Airport), and
time of day. Asked interviewer if there’s any particular combination I should focus
on. He said upto to you. Mentioned that I would use social media data to look at
complaints or alternatively would use traffic speed data from Google maps/Uber or
satellite imagery to find out areas of areas and average travel speed. To benchmark
the data, I would look at urban planning advisories available worldwide as to the
optimal speed of vehicles in an urban area like Bangalore. Mentioned that this is an
exercise in matching demand with supply. Demand is commuters looking to travel
and their configuration; supply is road bandwidth available. Supply is affected road
capacity. I jumped towards talking about various solutions. Interviewer pulled me
back and hinted that there is severe underutilization of capacity and that I should
consider various types of vehicles. Realized that I had been ignoring public
transport. Mentioned all types: Public, private, cab. Discussed with interviewer and
the problem boiled down to the configuration of traffic; there was enough capacity
except too many people were using private vehicles with low utilisation. Also
perception of public vehicles was poor. Based on this suggestions were 1. Tax
rebate for travelling via Shared cabs and buses 2. PR campaign for buses. 3. WFH
incentives. USPs of public transport were to be: Price, Availability, Conveniece and
time saved for all.
A2 : Started off by describing to the interviewer my own understanding of Google
Photos – Backup solution which users AI/ML to make photos searches via content in
them. Free with a paid tier.
Broke it down into Acquisition, Engagement and Monetization. Acquisition had 3
routes: Organic, Paid and OEM pre-installs. Organics and Paid were measured
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 8

through standard funnels: Search/Display, CTR, Page visits, Installs. OEM pre-installs
were measured as coverage of top 20 OEMs we’re being pre-installed
on. Engagement was measured through MAU (Most appropriate given the nature
of usage of this product), Photo searches, Photo views, Organizing activities (Album
creates, adding photos to album, etc.), Photo shares. Monetization was measured
through CTR of “Upgrade” CTAs, conversion rate of upgrade page and monthly
revenue.
Round 3 Type : Business
Questions
Q1 How will launch the Air conditioner category on Flipkart?
Q2 Customers are not convinced about buying ACs online. How will you change the
online experience so that it is at par/better with offline?
Q3 Customers are going to take time to get habituated to buying ACs online, uou are
considering Offline Stores. How will decided the go/no go?
Responses
A1 : 5Cs for category launch question.
A2 : Used CIRCLES method for improving online buying experience. Included the
post-purchase experience: payment, installation and delivery which is one of the
biggest pain points here.
A3 : Offline vs Online was based on stage of digital journey of consumers. Most
Indian consumers will not buy ACs anytime in the next 5-7 years, better to go offline
to capture market share.
Round 4 Type : Technical interview with engineering manager
Questions
Q1 How will you handle PM/Developer conflict?
Q2 How do you measure product quality?
Q3 What do you do if engineering lead refuses to build a particular feature?
Responses
A1 PM/Developer conflicted should be pre-empted as much as possible. Involve
devs early in process, get buy-in as early as possible. Try to understand the source of the
conflict: Conflicting timelines, module they don’t want to touch, etc.
A2 For product quality, I first clarified what kind of product quality – in eyes of customers or
with respect to developers. WRT customers, it is measured via NPS, App store rating,
Market share, Repeat usage. WRT devs, it is measured by no. of bugs per release, no. of
bugs per line of code shipped. Relatedly, it measured by timeliness of releases.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 9

Round 5 Type : Product

Questions
Q1 Introductory questions (Tell me about yourself, etc.)
Q2 Why are you interviewing at Flipkart?
Q3 If you had offers from Amazon and Flipkart which would you join? Why?
Q4 How will you launch a grocery service for Flipkart?
Responses
A1 Mentioned that I had a bad experience with both companies and wasn’t a big
fan of shopping in general. Mentioned that Flipkart was a better place to work than
Amazon because of it’s fighting spirit. India wasn’t just another market for Flipkart,
it has to compete as aggressively as possible.
A2 For the product, I followed the CIRCLES method pretty much through and
through. Unlike other instances, the interviewer kept adding lots of detail and
nuance to the question which I had to continuously incorporate in my answers.
Other Questions
1. Design a product which will use an innovative technology to improve batsman's
performance. How do you go about with the marketing and pricing strategy?
2. Facebook DAUs are dropping - Why?
3. Returns are increasing. Figure out why and solve for it.
4. Design an eco-friendly car.
5. Suggest if Flipkart should follow the Amazon Prime model or do something else.
6. Build a price estimation model for the Smartphone category.
7. Experience with tech, mostly resume related + behavioral questions on
communication with engineering manager
8. Category manager for fashion category, revenue down by 20%. What would you
do?
9. Manager for Nike looking to launch a product for the golfing community. What all
parameters would you look at before sending a proposal to your business manager?
10. Manager for Samsung have to launch your own OS and App Store instead of using
Android. How would you design it and how would you attract the consumers to
your platform?
11. You are a PM at Facebook, you notice that the revenue is falling over a period of 2
weeks. What actions would you take next?
12. How do go about dealing with a situation when you have to convince your superior
or say your product manager about a disagreement that you’ve been having
regarding [work-project] ?
13. How would you go about launching Gold as a category on Flipkart? What all factors
would you keep in mind while launching it?
14. Describe the architecture for a product that you’ve worked on? What type of
replication were you using (MySQL DB)?
15. What is your biggest fear? Is it that your feature will not be prioritized?
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 10

16. How would you deal with Tech-Debt as a PM?

17. You are thinking of creating a startup, you’ve observed Housing Societies have free
badminton courts available and there are kids who are looking to play badminton
but do not have access to courts. Can you find a way to create value here?
18. Lot of Netflix users log out in the few minutes when the video buffers. Design a
product/feature using the existing Netflix offline feature to solve this problem.
(Expectation: use cases, features, UX, metrics)
19. Returns in Flipkart are increasing. Why and how would you solve this problem?
(Expected 3-4 solutions)
20. Flipkart is planning to launch a category to tackle the competition from new e-
commerce sites like Shein. Is it worth launching? How would you go about it? What
are key business aspects that you would look into? What is the short term and long
term vision? What tech and product changes would you implement for this
category?
21. Behavioral : About challenges in a project. People management in study group.
22. Design an app for sportsmen.
23. The revenues of a second hand car dealer website is falling. Why?
24. Problems with managing tech teams
25. Who to value more, customers to tech teams?
26. Your tech team wants a high end machine , you’re short on budget , how will you
deal with it.
27. How do u determine the demand of an Air Conditioner at SKU level for every
Pincode in the country for every month.
28. Introduce a new category for Flipkart
29. Design an application to monetize under utilized badminton courts in gated
communities. Also discussed trade offs, how to get buy in from gated community
residents and roadblocks in implementation
30. Technical round: technical architecture of a product I worked on, challenges
encountered, good qualities observed in a pm, how to negotiate with engineers and
some other behavioral qs
31. Flipkart click through rate decreased, perform root cause analysis
32. A fitness app churn increased to 50% - how to decrease?
33. Design bookmyshow for elder people
34. Prepare a business pitch to the CEO: introducing medicines as a category in Flipkart
35. A company has a product mix of 5 products A, B,C, D, and E. Each have their starting
revenue numbers given. The company has a revenue growth rate of 5%, and
product B has a growth rate of 12%. Show me approach as to how you will reach
the number of years it takes for B's revenue to reach 50% of the company's revenue
36. Imagine you want to teach your hobby to people. How would you go on about it?
Decide media, target segment, product design, success metrics. Given some
absolute numbers of the success metric, how is your business doing after 6
months? If there is a problem in the numbers, what might be the possible reason?
How would you check if another segment is also a viable one? Customer journey,
consumer behavior checked. Fast number crunching checked in a business scenario
37. Flipkart wants to lease washing machines instead of selling it in their platform.
What will be the pricing structure? How will Flipkart achieve profitability?
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 11

38. Design a smart dialer app. Constraints: No voice, no search, no filter. Assumptions:
Contacts already stored in a database for you to play around with
39. Describe a time when you had to convince the startup founder to take a decision he
was not in support of
40. Why product management? How will interaction between developers and PMs
happen? What do you think is the relationship?
41. Say you have 4 features to be implemented, and the dev team has their own
planning. How will you go on about getting the features implemented? Say one
quarter has passed and your features are still not implemented. What will you do
then?
42. Say you have 10 fresher developers. You have to get a product developed. What
factors would you look at to select 5 people from the pool of 10?

2. Microsoft
Interview Interview #1
Questions Role : Program Manager
Round -1
Q) Tell me about yourself.
Role: Q) Tell me about your work. Explain some technical architecture of any project on your
Program resume.
Manager Q) How would you go about building a crowd-sourced knowledge management portal.
Q) Technical architecture for the same knowledge management portal

Round -2
Q) Walk me through your resume.
Q) There are a ton of applications targeting music industry. I think there is still some gap
in the industry that is not yet fulfilled. Can you create something in this space which
could be viable?
Q) How would you build a text editor kind of application, which had to read a 3 TB file,
how much of the file would you display(classic scrolling/pre-fetch problem), how would
search work, jumping instantly to any entry?

Round -3 (senior partner)

Q) Why PM? Why Microsoft?
Q) Build a web-scrapper for a search engine(essentially build Bing).
I(interviewer) am an engineer. Tell me what I need to do. Where do I start?

Suggestions
Play to your strengths, drive the interview to the areas you want to talk about. It is also
important to be very context aware(e.g. priorities of a startup != priorities of Google)
and continuously think of edge cases or 2nd or 3rd angles other than the most obvious
solutions.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 12

Interview #2
Round 1: Group Round- 12 students were given the same question in an LT. But
discussion was one-to-one. 2 discussions of around 10 min each. Total round duration:
75 minutes
Question: Design a News App for younger generation.

Round 2: 1-to-1 interview. Duration: 90 minutes

Questions:
- Resume Walkthrough in depth
- One big feature I don’t like in Ola and Why?
- One big feature I’d like to add to Ola? This turned into a product design case.
Went on for more than an hour. I suggested Ola Tourism. Was grilled on every small
aspect of the offering. Target users, needs, competitor analysis, Ola’s existing and
required competencies, user flow, integration into existing app, technical design and
architecture, wireframes, possible challenges and their solutions, future road map of
offering, primary and secondary metrics to measure success and problems and how to
collect these metrics, integration with Cortana through Prime Play devices etc.
Round 3: 1-to-1 interview. Duration: 60 minutes
Questions:
- Design Bing for Kids and follow up questions.
- Product strategy discussion for Bing and competitor google search
- One product I like – reasons for liking it, what feature would I add to it? I chose
Google Pay.
- Product strategy discussion between Paytm and Google Pay
Round 4: 1-to-1 interview. Duration: 50 minutes
Questions:
- Designing related products recommendations in Bing Shopping – types of
recommendations- complementary products and alternative products, interface design,
algorithm design and considerations, online vs offline algorithm, frequency of updates
etc.
- Why Microsoft? Follow up question: Most used/ favorite product of Microsoft. I
chose Visual Studio IDE
- Difference between good team and bad team. Personal experiences around it.
Lead to short discussion on importance of culture within an organization.
- What else should Microsoft do?

Interview #3
Round 1 - Product Design - Design a news app for Youngsters - This was the GD round,
but Microsoft took one on one interviews - It was critical to define the audience
correctly. I was also asked how the backend of the news app would look like. This round
lasted around 35 mins

Round 2 - Problem Solving & Product Design - To design a platform that helps users
know about the relationship between celebrities (something like Six Degrees of Kevin
Bacon). I was asked how to implement it. I was also asked questions like what a database
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 13

is, how is a database different from a data warehouse. What is Business Intelligence,
what is predictive analytics? Give an example of both. How would you implement
predictive analytics in this question to make the platform better? I was also asked to
draw the UI of the platform. I was asked questions on Amazon Redshift - what is it? what
makes it unique? What are its competitors? What's the difference between Redshift and
MySQL Server? Also, I was asked to start with the design of a data scraping engine for
celebrity pages on Wikipedia to scrape off relationships between various celebs. This
round lasted around 40 mins.

Round 3 - Product Design - Design a platform for wedding planners in India - The
interviewer gave me a background of the problem - A lot of communication happens
over Whatsapp during weddings in India, which results in numerous groups being
created and information getting lost (contacts, venues, timings etc.) due to so many
groups and messages. I was also if this problem is worth solving or not? Should it be a
separate platform or integrated in Whatsapp. This round lasted around 30 mins. Some
CV based questions were also asked.

Round 4 - Product Design - Design a personal assistant for a physical shoe store that
eliminates the need of a salesman. This round was extremely grilling. I was asked to
define the customer, what sort of shoe stores would this work at? and how the personal
assistant would work. I was also asked which Team in Microsoft would I like to join and
why? What should Microsoft focus on in the near future and why? What new things is
Microsoft doing in AI?

Interview #4
Round Number 1 (75 minutes)
Interview type - Group case solving
Question - Design a news app for younger generation
Answer - I designed the app with keeping UPSC and other state Public commission exam
aspirants, focusing a lot on exam preparation than just reading news

Round Number 2 (60 minutes)

Interview type - Technical and Problem solving
Questions
1. Resume walkthrough in brief
2. Algorithm and data structure that can be used to reverse a string converted into text
by Cortana - assume a separate engine records the speech and converts to text to the
best of its ability. Work with whatever you get
3. What challenges could you envision in reversing the string - again assume the above
4. Suggest a couple of new use cases for Cortana on laptop - very simple use cases
(Cortana can't take dictation)

Round Number 3 (75 minutes)

Interview type - Product design
Questions
1. Discussed the experience behind the MS PM Challenge for 10 mins
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 14

2. Launch Bing for France (Market Entry)

a. What factors to look at ?
b. What data sources ? What can be used from pre-existing (made me write
20+) and what new is required
c. Which market segment to target ? - Made me write about 10 and then pick
one - I picked Fashion
Ans - I went with the 5C's framework to talk about factors for market entry
3. Design the user experience for the selected business category assuming a certain
query - lots of follow-up questions as I went ahead
Ans - I selected the query as "latest summer trends" and then designed the search
results page

Round Number 4 (60 minutes)

Interview type - Product design
Questions
1. A small discussion around case competitions I had done and why PM, Why Microsoft ?
2. Design a attendance feature for WhatsApp for SME business who typically take
attendance on registers
a. asked me write problems of using a register
b. Design the feature and lots of follow up questions on that
3. Re design the checkout experience for any ecommerce of choice - I did for MMT

Interview #5
Round 1 : Type - Group Case
Questions
Design an app for attractions in a city
Response
Initially designed an app for museums. After first discussion I was asked to
broaden my scope.
Picked key stakeholder as the Government of India. Challenge was the rise of
international tourism by Indians. Goal was to increase domestic tourism and increase tax
revenue through tourism expenditures.
Designed a content suggestions app allowing users to explore various destination and
bookmark places. The app was also a social network with had gamification elements:
Users received points for every destination they visited. Visiting certain type of
destinations also unlocked Badges (E.g.: “Mughal history buff”, “Tea lover”, etc.). You
could see the activity and badges of your friends. Also designed a travel card that gave
people discounts on museum, tourist attraction tickets as well as discounts on select
restaurants in tourist areas.
Round 2 : Type - Product/General
Questions
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 15

Reverse a Linked list using only two pointers.

Design a drone-based solution for farmers
Design an editor for very large files (in terabytes)
Responses
For LinkedList question, I was first stunned but stumbled my way through it.
Received a prompt from the interviewer because I started at the wrong end of the
LinkedList. Managed to get to the right solution.
For drone-based solution, I spoke of farmers needs as I understood them.
Mentioned that this applies only to farmers with large land holdings, not the typical
farmer in India with tiny land. Interviewer agreed to pursue this persona. Mentioned the
advantages of the drone, it could quickly traverse the farm, reach remote parts without
any humans moving. Drone could be used to detect water-logging during monsoon,
invasions from pests and monitor crop health. Was asked to specify a rough scanning
algorithm for a single drone.
For large file editor, I converted the problem to editing large video files
generated during TV/Movie recording. Mentioned the two processes in post-production
– heavy editing to get the footage in sequence and finally some light touch-ups and
tunings. Mentioned caching next/previous contents of the file locally for easy access.
Provided an index-based navigation structure and generating thumbnails for previews to
prevent retrieving the actual file. Was asked if different parts of the editing process
should have different products/editors, I said yes as needs and patience levels are
different, products should be separate. Alternatively, they can be different modes of the
same products (the way Photoshop does it).
Round 3 : Type - Product/General
Questions
What next are you looking for in your career? What direction is it going in?
How will you remove detect Fake news on Facebook?
Responses
I had worked on the same problem for my Flipkart PPT so I had lot of context. First, I
segmented fake news into various types – urban legends, rumors, propaganda and
narrowed down my scope. After this I defined different user personas - tech savvy,
gullible, bhakts/followers and chose 2 personas. Then I discussed building a growing
corpus of fake news that is updated with inputs from fact-checking organizations and
journalists. This along with the reputation of a domain could be used for labelling a news
story a suspicious or providing a warning.
Round 4 : Type - Product/General
Questions
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 16

Design a voice assistant for elderly folks.

Why Microsoft? What are your goals out of your next job? What sort of products are
you targeting?
Responses
Followed CIRCLES method to a tee, cited the persona of my grandmother;
started speaking her life and needs. Interviewer stopped me mid-way saying structuring
the problem is fine, he wants to hear actual features and solutions that would into the
product. Discussed a few reminders and music-based solutions. Reminders of various
sorts to be help an old person stay connected with other parts of the family. Another
was health-related reminders to take medicines, go for health check-ups, etc.

Interview #6
Round 1 - Case based
Q- How would you integrate tech to improve customer experience of any public place
like amusement park, sporting events, historical sites, etc.

A- For this I picked up Universal studio as my area of work.

Applying CIRCLES framework aggressively, I started with defining the customer persona -
Families with small kids, youth, older population (45+), school children

Then i picked up on the issues they face currently - prioritizing issues of long waiting time
in lines for rides like roller coasters and creating a memorable experience by getting pics
clicked at crucial moments/candid pics

Once getting the defined on above lines, i moved onto creating solutions.
My basic idea was to get customized app made for the park, which can be downloaded
on entry. It would have a map of the place, point user's location and show his colleagues
if they separate out for trying different rides.
this would help large groups to not keep calling but reach out directly to fellows.

The next important feature i would include is generating a "customized route" for the
user based on his interest. E.g. if the user is aged 25 and is adventurous and risk taker,
the route will direct him to those rides which would satisfy his need. for another user
who is 12-14 years old, the route would be different.

Lastly, the app will show the latest waiting time for all rides. it would be a indicator for
anyone to make his/her decision to move towards that ride rather than going all the way
there and finding out. this would give user a clear view and will act as load balancer for
the park.

Lastly, the app will be used to push notification to the user - about the Hollywood parade
starting time or the adventure show timings.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 17

Once the scope was defined, i made a quick wireframe of the app along with discussion
with the interviewer

Post this, I analyzed some risks -

1. the app may direct a lot of crowd to same place and this would add to waiting issues.
To counter this, i suggested on using GPS services and having a real time data on where
the customers are and accordingly, giving updates to new users for different rides and
balancing the load
2. the battery usage would be huge - for this, i suggested to have charging points inside
the locker where every user has to submit his belongings before going for the ride. this
would actually assist users in getting quick charge on every ride

we also discussed the implementation strategy on what resources would be needed

which was short and quick.

Round 2 - Case based

Q- How can you use mobile phones for quality control of a bottle making plant?

A- I first started with gathering more information from the interviewer about what is the
plant about? how’s the process of bottling? what is the current process for quality
control?
the scope of discussion post above questions was just to make sure that every bottle
that comes out from the assembly line is proper. If yes - accept it, if no reject it. this is
currently being done by humans and i was given liberty to use only mobile phones to
make the process automated.

My customer in this scenario was a small-scale bottling factory.

There was no need to focus further on needs and thus i moved onto designing the
solution.
I first introduced hawk eye process to the interviewer. I knew a bit about it and thus
explained that one of the ways to complete this process is using 6 cameras adjusted at
particular angles to capture the 3D image of the bottle.

then there was a question on orientation, for which I advise on having a marking on the
bottle, a line running from the top to the bottom which would be taken as reference and
the image would be aligned accordingly. This would then be checked with the ideal
image and if ok, it would be passed else thrown out.

Lastly, I highlighted about the issue of not able to capture the image from below as the
conveyor belt would not be opaque. for this, the interviewer highlighted that this can be
ignored.

Post this, I worked on costing for a bit and suggested the pricing would be based on
service and not the product. It would be given out on rent and payment collected
annually. This helps us in recurring revenue and also a good way to perform B2B
marketing by constant interactions.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 18

the risk was again about the battery usage and low definition cameras, but this were
countered by low cost phones available today and a constant power supply providing
ability at the factory. also, the backend program would have to be developed in-house to
check for quality and that can be improved in multiple iterations and new versions
upgrade

Round 3 - Case based

Q - Design Bing for kids (up to 10 years)

A- now this was ideal case of applying the Circles Framework again.
I started with what’s the current situation

- The UI is not cool

- internet and search engine usage is difficult for kids to adapt
- Language barriers (since most kids speak their native language and English can be
tedious)
- too long and complex content with high vocabulary isn’t acceptable to kids
- too much text
- no fun
- internet access to poor is low

Once this was discussed in detail, we moved onto identifying our customers and their
attributes
- Kids in age of 6-10
- need internet mostly for school homework’s
- interested in games and fun
- like color and images over text
- Language has to be made easy
- Child lock/ Parental control facility needed to avoid exposure to unwanted content
- lite pages for poor who have limited data packs

The basic need identified was

"creating a search engine which is focused on kids with cool, fun and colorful search
results in various languages and based on lite pages for easy search and download"

Then I enquired on whether I have to start from zero and make a new Bing altogether, or
use current version and have a toggle between normal Bing and Kind Bling. On this the
interviewer mentioned about using a single product but having various versions.
Once this was confirmed, I decided that I would be prioritizing language settings and
colorful, fun searches in phase 1

I started listing solutions

- on opening Edge, Bing would come up with profile-based images. for normal user, a
password would be asked
For kids’ profile, there would be no password and would directly load the Kid Bing
homepage with a game of the day present there.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 19

the search box would be big and there would be autocorrect feature present as kids can
make mistakes while searching and using AI, the system should be able to rectify the
input for proper search.

Secondly, on search, there would be 2 features present - Only Display result and Display
Audio result
the results would be only those which have kid content flag marked on it. This would be
an activity which has to be done in backend while mapping and indexing the pages. the
flag would be a new attribute for every page uploaded onto the net.
Once the search is over and results appear, firstly, the font or image would be too huge,
there would not be much scroll feature available, but the page layout would be in sort of
a book with "Turn page" / "arrow" marked on the right side for next page. This would
give them a feel of using a book.

There would be audio feature available besides the search and the kid can click on play
button for listening to the content. the language would be both - English and regional.

Lastly, the whole of history would be stored for every session which would be available
for parents/guardians/teachers. This will not only help in control but also to refer to the
pages which the kid saw and not wants to use but forgot to bookmark or copy the data.

While this discussion was being done, I also made a framework on the paper which
assisted me in explaining my solution.
The fun game part was a brownie solution as the interviewer seemed to like it when i
explained that this would actually be a crowd-puller, encouraging kids to play the game
and then see how they performed over time. the games would be analytics and GK
based and would act as barrier-breaker for parents to allow their children to access net.

The Risks highlighted were

- Support of regional voiceovers
- Disturbance to surroundings by kids misusing this feature
- Reworking on the indexing of the whole content on the engine

The discussion ended here, and the interviewer highlighted about the missing point of
usage of current search data to identify what is primarily being searched in schools and
learning from it to determine the new content to be made.

Round 4 - Discussion and Mini-Case

This was the last round with a very senior person from the firm
We started by discussing cricket as it was one of the extra-curricular activity mentioned
in my resume.
There were some behavioral questions on what you learn from cricket, how do you plan
to incorporate the learnings into your work environment, have you ever captained the
team (on saying yes) What are your key learnings on team management?
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 20

The discussion went on for around 20 minutes and this eased the pressure of the final
round. Then we went onto a short discussion
Q - Microsoft is thinking of incorporating speech-bot for movie booking on Bing to
replace the current process of search and book- You are the product manager for Bing
overall- what is your view?

A- In this case, I initially started with applying the framework again but was cut short by
the interviewer. He asked me to directly jump to the core issue of what is good, what
isn’t and give a suggestion.

So i quickly moved to the pros of Speech bot-

Advantages- Easy, Fast, Exciting, doesn’t require attention to the screen, tickets can be
booked on the go - while driving, travelling, walking
it is the new tech which Microsoft is investing in (as shared by the interviewer) and thus
there is a need to incorporate it in many more products. Movie booking can be the pilot
for integration with Bing and thereon it can be expanded into different searches. Here i
quoted about the Bing for Children (from last case :P)

Then i moved onto disadvantages- the biggest one for me was disturbance and lose of
privacy while making such bookings, others were disturbance, still not a foolproof
technology, lot of languages present in India, pronunciation difference across people,
limited results

I gave example of each disadvantage

Loss of privacy - what if a son is planning to go for movie with girlfriend or friends and
while booking, if he uses speech, the parents may come to know which he doesn’t want -
so he would avoid
Disturbance - although a person may use earphones to hear the bot but while speaking,
he may disturb others - say a person booking tickets in office
Disturbance - In India, there is a huge crowd at public places like metro and local trains
and thus the chat could be impacted by noises around. the user may have to shout at
times
Not foolproof - I gave example of Bhagat Singh movie (from top of the mind) and
highlighted there are multiple movies with same name, so giving additional information
which would take a long time may get incorrectly reported with the bot.
Languages - Easily explained through multiple film industries in India in regional
languages and thus the bot has to cater to many such languages
pronunciation - In India, again there maybe children or not English-speaking people who
maybe wanting to go for an English cartoon movie but they lack the clear pronunciation
and these may lead to errors E.g. going for Ratatouille

Based on above, and with discussions on each, i took the decision that i would not like to
incorporate speech bot in Bing as of now.

He was convinced but followed with another question - that while you took the decision,
the VP of Speech Bot who reports to CXO member has reached out to you - highlighting
that this incorporation needs to be done. what will be your response?
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 21

I replied with a firm NO for current day's implementation. I said that although there is a
lot of push, i would highlight the same disadvantages to the VP, make him understand
the issues, if there is any disagreement - I would recommend to go for a market study
and check how a sample population is responding to the change and that would provide
us a better evidence for decision making.

As the intention is to incorporate speech bot and movies was a suggestion, I would also
look at other possibilities for speech bot rather than movies - like story reading, novel
reading or news reading. Maybe Food booking services.

However, in the end if the push is still on, I would go ahead but with the disclaimer
highlighted to all my stakeholders. The interview ended post 45-50 min. This was the last
round and then i was offered PM2 role in Microsoft.

3. InMobi
Interview Interview #1 : 3 rounds + Case
Questions Role: Associate Product Manager
Case Submission: We had to submit a case assignment along with the resume. The topic
was around ad-tech: getting into the OTT segment, market potential, disruptive features,
GTM and trade-offs.
A) Make sure that the document has structure. You will mostly be asked to run through the
case. State your assumptions and sources clearly while speaking and be prepared for cross-
questions.

Round 1: Problem Solving

Duration: 40 minutes
Interviewed by a Senior Product Manager (VC from China). The round was mostly around
my resume and a thorough discussion on the submitted case.
Q1. Walk me through your resume- focus on the numbers and your contribution
Q2. How would you approach a problem you faced at work differently now if the
constraints are changed?
Q3. Run me through the case you submitted.
Round 2: Technical/ Product
Duration: 40 mins
Q1. Questions on resume points
Q2. Algorithms- Sort order algorithm for an e-commerce search page (Specify what your
optimising the search for, goal and metrics, define variables, data sources and mathematical
expressions, if any).
Q3. Design: Ad publishers would not want ads with restricted content (porn, alcohol, arms,
violence etc.) to be shown on their website. Design a feature so that publishers can define
these restrictions.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 22

Ans: There are two key aspects to this question - 1. Understanding how ad-network works,
ad-exchange, DSP/SSP and what data is available at each phase. 2. Scope out which kind of
ad (banner/text/video) and define how would you separate a restricted ad.

Round 2: Technical/ Product

Duration: 40 mins
Q1. What is product market fit?
Q2. Is Apple i-Pad a success or failure ?
Q3. If you were to enter into the app-based taxi market where Uber and Ola are already
present, what will you launch?
Q4. Design an app to ease out the ISB campus hiring process. What North-star metric will
you go after? Estimate the improvement in this metric if the app is launched.

Suggestions:
Have a conversation with the interviewer, ask as many questions and don't jump into the
solution without understanding the premise correctly. Product thinking is vital to crack PM
interviews. The interviewer is mostly assessing you on how you think and approach a
problem. Be confident!
Interview #2 : 3 rounds +Case
Role: Associate Product Manager
Round 1 (Product based)
Duration: 1 hour
Q1. A small Discussion on the case. What feature would I like to add apart from advertising
on the publisher space and how to price it?
Q2. Market Entry: How to take Rajasthani Shoe business from online to offline? All the
aspects: market sizing, frequency of buying, competitors, sell with amazon/myntra or own
shop, price, marketing strategy, etc.

Round 2: HR
Duration: 5 mins
Q1. Location Preference
Q2. Other offers

Round 3: Behavioral + Technical.

Duration: 1 hour
Q1. Details on previous work experience
Q2. Market entry of New Energy Bars. Similar to the first interview.
Q3. Why product management? (Expected more detail)
Q4. Why inmobi? (expected more detail)

Suggestions:
If you do not have prior coding experience, prepare to be grilled on why do you suddenly
want to move into this kind of role. Even though coding is not required for a PM role, it
helps to gain traction with developers. Have a good answer ready.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 23

4. Alphonso
Interview Interview #1 : 3 rounds +Case
Questions Role: Product Analyst
Case Submission: A case based on its product was presented in which we had to think as
a product manager for answering 1 question and as a data analyst for another. There
was some data made available from their website for which we drew insights and
presented in 1st question. And in the second, how could we improve the website for
customer's ease and relevance and suggestions on the same were to be provided.

Round 1: Resume based interview

Duration: 1 hour
Q1) In depth analysis of my resume. Every modelling technique and technical skills were
asked in detail. Alternatives were presented and i was asked to state advantages and
disadvantages of logistic regression method.
Q2) The interview panel (2 people) asked me to walk through my approach at work using
a dummy dataset and I had to draw a random dataset on the paper and show how the
algorithm worked with cross questions on every step.
Q3) Product perspective of the case presented.
Q4) Why Alphonso?
Q5) What are your expectations from Alphonso?

Round 1: Technical, Problem Solving

Duration: 1 hour
Q1) Nuances of all the techniques that i had mentioned in my resume and the pros/cons
of each. In depth understanding of the techniques that i had used.
Q2)A mini case in which i was asked to improve their product (website). The techniques i
would apply and the dataset i would require and how would i obtain that.
Q3) Explain why I provided certain recommendations on the case I submitted.
Q4) Guesstimate on TV ad revenue per year in US.

Suggestions:
It was not a stress interview but just an in-depth analysis of my knowledge in data
analytics and of my resume. This was to check whether i actually knew what I spoke and
whether I checked their website thoroughly before giving the recommendations.

Do's:
1. Do research about the company and their website before the interview.
2. Be as calm as possible and think before speaking. You might not remember a few
details and speaking anything wrong will not go nicely in an interview.
3. Use a pen and paper and be comfortable in drawing your work and showing a step-by-
step approach to how you would accomplish a task or how you accomplished a task.
Don'ts:
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 24

1. Don't lie. Not on your resume, not in the interview, not about anything. If you didn't
attend the ppt and they ask you about it, tell it honestly.
2. Don't start solving a case/guesstimate without talking. The interviewer is an expert in
the industry that he has given you the case from and you should continuously tell them
your approach so that they can guide you before you hit a dead end.

5. Apple : Singapore
Interview Interview #1 : 2 rounds +case
Questions Role: Business Analyst

Case Submission: Detailed case with four questions, required intensive number
crunching and data analysis.
Suggestions: Stick to your basic understanding of the problem statement and state all
your assumptions clearly.

Round 2: Group Case Discussion

Duration:

Q) A real business case was presented in a group of 5-7 people. Each one of us was given
a specific role and we were told to discuss the case as a group and come up with a
detailed solution.
Ans.) A brief description of your answers/approach: We discussed the problem in hand
from different angles - considering each function in detail. In the end of the discussion,
we presented the business model of our idea to the Apple representatives in the form of
a presentation.

Round 3: Technical
Interview Type: In-Person Interview with a panel consisting 7 Apple representatives
Duration: 1 hour

Q1) Tell me about yourself

Q2) Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult colleague
Q3) Biggest achievement
Q4) Resume based questions

Next part of the interview was case presentation - the at-home case we submitted
before the GD round. We were given 10 minutes to give a detailed PPT on the case,
which was followed by 30 minutes of Q&A session.

Suggestions:
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 25

Just be yourself and explain your assumptions from the basics. The case was quite open
ended with no definite right answer. They want to see how you performed based on the
assumptions you took and the practicality of the solution you presented. State them
clearly and make sure you know all the calculations you performed in detail.

6. Shuttl
Interview Interview #1 : 2 rounds +case
Questions Role: Manager, Analytics

Round 1: Case Based, Telephonic

Duration: 1 hour
Q) Cases related to reducing cost and optimizing the capacity utilization were asked.

Round 2: Resume and case based

Duration: 1 hour

Q) Resume based and 2 cases related to Shuttl's operations and how analytics could
improve it were asked.

Round 3: Resume and case based

Duration: 45 minutes

Q1) All the techniques that i had worked on were asked and again 2 cases based on
Shuttl's operations were asked.
Q2) How would a customer choose between alternative modes of transport and what
could Shuttl do to make the customer loyal and interested.
Q3) Identify cause of a revenue decline.

Suggestions:
Interview is very conversational so you should just focus on the work that you have
done and present it in as relevant a way as possible. Be thorough with the operations of
Shuttl and understand the value chain and role of analytics in their domain.

7. Amazon
Interview Interview #1 : 3 rounds
Questions Role: Program Manager

Round 1: Generic
Q1) interviewer discussed a last mile delivery problem and kept pushing me for more
ideas
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 26

Suggestions:
This round is the most important round as the interviewer tries to gather whether you
are a good fit for the role or not. At the same time, Amazon tests candidates on its
leadership principles and checks how you react in a fast paced and competitive
environment. I reckon he had something in mind and was looking for it. Most of the
people are sent back after this round itself.

Round 2: Resume based

Q1) what was my impact in the work and other similar questions were discussed.
Q2) The interviewer discussed in detail each item - a lot of my friends had this discussion
in first round itself. Each and every number of the resume can and might be discussed.
Suggestions: Focus on each aspect of the resume. The interviewer is interested in
knowing how you proceeded with the problem and came up with solutions.

Round 3: Generic, Role based

This round is with a Senior Manager who again wants to understand how and why you
should be hired. He asked me a lot of questions on what my understanding of the role is
and how I would do in data analysis operations.

Suggestions:
Be very professional in your conduct even with the HR team and know your profile
thoroughly. Be very confident too!
Also, know that almost no negotiation takes place while signing the FIF so don't wait for
the last round to bring something that you want to discuss.

8. Wynk
Interview Round 1
#1 Type: Problem Solving & Product Design with Product Manager

Product Duration: 1 hour 30 min

Manager
Questions asked:

1. Guess estimate: Number of people in Hyderabad Airport in a day. Follow-up

questions on the approach were asked
2. Name 3 favourite apps. Pick one of these for subsequent question (I choose
Netflix)
3. Product critique (for the app chosen above): What are the issues with Netflix.
Pick one issue and describe how you would solve this problem. How will you
redesign the recommendation system for Netflix to alleviate the problem of
stale choices?
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 27

4. What is the one feature you would like to introduce on Wynk? Discuss how you
will design the feature.

Round 2
Type: Interview with Wynk CEO

Duration: 1 hour 20 min

Questions asked:

1. Guess estimate: List down cost structure of Airtel Wynk. Calculate the possible
number of songs in Wynk. Then calculate the total cost of accessing the content
if Wynk uses AWS as hosting platform
2. Discussion on Amazon Prime: Why is Prime so successful? Design a strategy to
increase the Prime users by 5x
3. Tell me about yourself
4. Since I had background in Music, was asked to design a feature for audiophiles
in Wynk

Round 3
Type: HR round with VP-HR

Duration: 40 min

Questions asked:

1. What do you think about the strategy of OTT players in India?

2. What all competitors do you anticipate in future in this Industry?
3. Further probing on few questions asked in Round 1 & 2

Additional Suggestions:
1. Get familiar with the product offerings of the company you are interviewing for.
2. Understand the industry they operate in and the competitors
3. Practice guess estimates before interviews
4. Stay calm as some interviews can be stress interviews

9. Nykaa
Interview Round 1
#1 Type: Problem Solving with VP-Product

Duration: 30 min
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 28

Senior
Product Questions asked:
Manager
1. Tell me about yourself
2. Return to origin (i.e. to warehouse) for Nykaa has increased from 5% to 7%
within a span of 1 month. What are the potential reasons for this increase?
How will you solve for these issues (I first drew the entire process from order to
delivery and the reverse logistics. Then I discussed my hypotheses and asked
clarifying questions to reject/ accept the hypotheses)

Round 2
Type: Data Analytics round with Product Manager

Duration: 30 min

Questions asked:

1. Tell me about yourself and the data analytics projects done

2. Detailed discussion on one project on hotel recommendation system I built as
data analyst. Probed on why it was done, data used, techniques tested and
implemented, performance metrics
3. Questions on SQL (Basic). Asked questions on types of joins, lag functions
(Refer sqlzoo.net for basic SQL functions)

Round 3
Type: Problem Solving & Product Design

Duration: 45 min
Questions asked:

1. Nykaa currently has X million registered users, only Y% of them have

transacted till date and out of Y, 60% of them have done only 1 transaction.
How would you increase the repeat transactions (i.e. 60%) and how would you
increase Y i.e. increase the share of transacting customers?
2. What are the product changes required for solving above problem? How would
you prioritize these features?

Additional Suggestions:
1. Understand what the company is looking for. Example: Nykaa requires its
Product Managers to be capable of doing data analysis hence look for skills like
SQL/ R/ Python etc. So, a quick refresher of SQL concepts before interviews can
help
2. Practice Product Design questions. You should be able to engage the
interviewer throughout the discussion (right from scoping to designing)
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 29

10. MakeMyTrip
Interview Round 1
#1 Type: Mix of Product Design, guess estimate and behavioral

Product Questions asked:

Manager 1. What features will you add for WhatsApp and what features will you
remove/improve in WhatsApp?
2. Guess estimate: How many people are there in ISB's cafeteria right now?
3. Behavioural questions like greatest failure, Why ISB? Why MakeMyTrip?
4. Questions regarding resume, past experience (Connect past experience with the
role that's offered)

Round 2
Type: Business and Product Design

Questions asked:
1. Design a business plan for RedBus if it wants to enter into Indonesian market
(Market Sizing, 4Ps, Competition etc.)
2. In a normal e-commerce user flow, how will you determine the points at which
the drop-off rates are high and what to do about them? (Take any e-commerce
website and walk through the steps. You can use A/B Testing, experiment design
to discuss solutions for fixing drop-offs)
3. Design UX to promote a new feature in MakeMyTrip. Where do you want to put
the feature, and why? (Data-driven UX. Identify where most clicks/heat map is
happening and use A/B Testing)
4. Design a digital video streaming service. GTM and Monetization as well (Used
CIRCLES Method. Structure is important in such questions)
5. Questions regarding resume, past work experience

Round 3
Type: Behavioral

Questions asked:
1. Develop a 5-year strategy for MakeMyTrip.
2. How am I a good fit for MakeMyTrip (Discussed about Value add, previous
experience)
3. Future goals, long term and short term. How does MakeMyTrip feature in
them?
4. Behavioural questions like situation when I had to handle conflict between my
manager and my team, situation when I had to go against my manager's
requests etc.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 30

11. Arcesium
Interview Round 1
#1 Type: Case based

Senior Duration: 1 hour 30 min

Product
Manager Questions asked:

1. Tell me about yourself

2. A case based on the operations and business model of Arcesium. It revolved
around the various services provided by Arcesium. Determine price of the
MVP, pros and cons of targeting a given segment and determine the target
segment for this product. (Approach to answer- Go through Arcesium's website
and refer "After the trade is made" by Daniel Weiss. The case will be based on
Arcesium's services)

Round 2
Type: Case Interview

Questions asked:

1. Tell me about yourself

2. The interviewers asked me to justify each point written in the case solution.
There were lot of cross questions also because I was coming from the same
industry (Approach to answer- Be prepared with the assumptions and
statements mentioned in the case. You will be tested on every statement
because Arcesium makes sure that candidate well understood the case. You
might not remember every case detail. It is ok to ask the interviewer for a copy
of case for reference)

Round 3
Type: Technical Interview

Questions Asked:
1. This round tested my previous work experience and some parts of the case
(Approach to answer- Be well prepared with every detail mentioned in the
resume. If you are coming from the same industry, you might be asked to
whiteboard your company's business model or the data flow of the
applications you worked on)

Round 4
Type: HR Interview
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 31

Questions Asked:
1. Biggest weakness?
2. Why Arcesium? How can you be an asset to the company?
3. If you have to choose between staying in India and moving abroad, what would
you choose?

Additional Suggestions:
1. Prepare the answer to “tell me about yourself” well. This is the first question
that was asked in every round and in every other company's interviews as well.
2. Research well about Arcesium- new clients, technological developments etc.

12. Deloitte USI

Interview #1 Round 1
Type: Resume based
Consultant- IT
M&A Questions asked:
1. Questions on past work experience
2. Why Deloitte?

Round 2
Type: Case based

Questions asked:
1. Company A wants to divest from B division - 500 systems, 200 used by only
A, 200 used by B and 100 used by A&B. How will you go about it. The
interviewer added few more constraints as the case progressed (There are
about 10 most popular cases in tech consulting, approach for most of them
remains same)

Round 3
Type: Behavioral round with the Partner

Questions asked:
1. Why M&A?
2. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
3. Do you plan to go to any other interview if I give you a FIF? (This is a
behavioural based interview. Practice makes you look more confident in
this round).
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 32

Interview #2 Round 1
Type: Behavioral round (fit with Deloitte)
Consultant-
M&A Tech Questions asked:
competency 1. Introduction- Things about me which are not on my resume
2. Walk me through your resume
3. Questions about my work in the companies I have worked
4. Questions on Agile (since I mentioned agile expertise and scrum master
role in my resume, but anyways since its a big practice now, its good to
learn about it before you go for tech interviews). Questions were like, in
finance industry how you would apply agile methodology, Scrum
ceremonies- retrospective, backlog grooming, sprint planning (only high
level discussion, did not dig deep)

Round 2
Type: Case Round with Partner

Questions Asked:
1. Basic introduction, things which makes me unique
2. After this, there was a case given to me on Mergers and acquisitions
• Situation: You work at PE firm and you want to acquire a vet clinic chain
which works in a franchise model with 20 clinics currently operating.
Questions asked were:
• Q1: Before acquisitions what kind of information you would want from
them? (Answer could range from their business model, capex, opex, IT
systems maturity, data governance model and many more things (I was
asked to keep it limited to tech side only)
• Q2: What would be your acquisition strategy? Things you would consider
while acquisition (again keep it related to tech only)
• Q3: Cost modelling pillars
• Q4: If you need to scale up, from 20 franchise clinics to 40, what things you
will look at?
• Q5: Vendor selection criteria
• Q6: Few questions on fixed and variable costs (Along the lines of cost
modelling only)

Interview #3 Round 1
Type: PI with Partner
Tech Consultant
Questions asked:
1. Tell me about yourself?
2. Why Deloitte? Why Tech consulting?
3. Are you okay with traveling?

Round 2
Type: Case based
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 33

Questions asked:
1. During migration from one system to another what are the various IT costs
that need to be considered.
2. What are the firm level decisions that need to be considered in these
decisions?

13. Athena Health

Interview Round 1
#1 Case Round where a team of 4-5 people are given a problem and asked to solve for a 1
minute elevator pitch. the time provided was 30 minutes. this exercise is repeated twice
Product over with a feedback session in between. the firm had provided pre-reads for the round.
Manager Knowing the content of the reads was essential to get through the discussions in this
round.

Round 2
Case Presentation and Product Design round - This round was about presenting the case
analysis provided to the candidate 2 days prior to the interview. A lot of cross product
questioning can be expected in this round. Furthermore, the round involved a multi
disciplinary assessment of the product. the panel consisted of 1-2 Product heads and
lead from product engineering

Round 3
Problem Solving and Product Design round - This was a hard grill round (lasting ~2
hours) were the only focus was solving problems and re-solving them as many times as
needed. Depending on the candidate's experience this is also used for a stress test. The
problems being solved could be very varied. It will involve application of logic, PM
methods (eg: Circles method), Guesstimates, Financial impact calculations, Product
Design and critique, Alternate applications of skills learnt over one's career etc.

Round 4
Why Athena round. Its s short round that lasts 30 minutes or so and its usually
conducted by the HR

Round 5
Director Round - This round was again a problem approach round conducted on a real
life problem in healthcare. Part of the round is also a resume round and fitment round.
This round will need one to be as energetic and crisp as possible. Passion for PM and
some connection to healthcare helped.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 34

Negotiation round
This was the last round after the offer.

14. Innovacer
Interview #1 Round 1
This was with the founder who is also the CPO at Innovaccer. It was mostly resume
Product based and why PM. I had relevant previous workex, so a lot of questions around that.
Manager Also, asked why Innovaccer and what excites me about them. why a startup?

Round 2
This was with VP of engineering at Innovaccer.
- Favorite project in the resume
- Favorite product/ app, improvements in that, metrics to track the improvements
- What impact would introduction of self-driving cars will have?
- Asked situational questions around - conflict management, leading by influence,
team management

Round 3:
HR Round
- why Innovaccer?
- Why PM?
- PM or PMM? Why and why not?
- What do you think you need to learn for the role of a PM?
- Discussion around soft skills and situational questions i had answered in round . For
instance, do you think "leading by influence is even a skill?" aren't hard skills what
really matters
- How do you plan on utilizing rest of your time at ISB? How has it been so far?

15. Oyo
Interview #1 Round 1
If you were a PM for a new e-commerce company, and you noticed that the fake
Senior
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 35

Product positive reviews on the site were increasing, design a short term and long term
Manager strategy to solve for it

Round 2
If you were a PM at Zomato, design the book table feature (assume it does not exist
right now)

Round 3
If Oyo were to get into weddings, design a solution and app for it
Convince engineering to build a new feature that is not on their roadmap

16. Media.net
Interview #1 Round 1
Type: (group interview - 2 interviewees and 1 interviewer) critically analyse the
Associate opponents case.
Product
Manager How would you handle the messaging to the end users of an chat messenger which
had 30 minutes of downtime due to a technical glitch in deployment.
What are the metrics you would track to assess the success for Facebook messenger.
estimate the ad revenue from Facebook messenger

Round 2
Type: Technical round

What is the difference between HTTP and HTTPS, where is the security enforced.
How does a browser work
How does a web request/response work.

Round 3
Type: Problem solving

You have 1000 bottles of wine, 1 is poisoned (cant detect it visually) you can use rats
to arrive at which bottle is poisoned. You have only 1 chance (no iterations), what is
the minimum number of rats you need for this experiment.
Estimate the number of doctors on Practo in Delhi
Which Doctors would you want on Practo to drive growth.

Round 4
Type: Product thinking
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Swiggy has seen an increase in average order value. Why? Is this necessarily a bad
sign?
(graph - number of orders placed vs avg time spent to place order) What intuition do
you get from this graph.
How would you design the zero state recommendation on swiggy (what factors
would you consider for ranking) - what data would you need and what is the goal of
swiggy.
How would swiggy price a display ad on the swiggy app
Build a contextual ad engine - what data would you use to evaluate the context of a
page.

Interview #2 Round 1
Case submission (About a month prior, Topic: Messenger's engagement is 4x lower
Associate than WhatsApp. Suggest features to close the gap)
Product
Round 2 (GD)
Manager
1-1 critique about each other's case (2 people in a group), Design moviepass for
India and suggest an appropriate pricing model

Round 3 (1st round of interview)

Guesstimate (Estimate annual passenger traffic from Hyd airport), RCA question
(Youtube's MAUs are up but average time spent per user is dropping. Discuss why),
Resume based questions, One design question, One algorithm question (Sort an
array of 1's and 0's in O(n)) - no coding, just explain the algo

Round 4
Talk about your favorite product and what you'd improve in it, RCA Question:
Swiggy's cart conversions is down by 15%. Discuss why
Design: Implement a new recommendation algo for swiggy's home page, discuss
pros and cons of each algo and briefly explain any 1

17. Samsung R&D Bangalore

Interview Round 1
#1 Type: Case Based

Product This was the elimination round after the resume shortlist. A case is provided to the
candidate and is expected to submit a 5-6 slide ppt in 24-48 hrs. With PM it’s important
Manager
to get this round absolutely right and it’s important to remember that nearly every PM
role will have a case submission. Nearly all of one's case submissions will happen close
to the placement dates and being aware of this massive workload is important for all
PM aspirants.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 37

Round 2
Type: Behavioral

This was a short round (~30-45 minutes) and it focused on What is PM, Why PM, About
oneself and then ended with a short Product breakdown.

Round 3
Type: Product & Problem Solving

This was a longer round and you can expect all the standard PM questions here. If you
are from a tech background then expect tech questions too. Product tear down,
Product design, Design of new products, detailed feature critiquing, feature selection,
success metrics, problem identification and road mapping etc. are some of the things I
was asked.

Round 4
Type: Director Round

This round is all about why you and why Samsung. Be very clear about these answers
and know a lot about your SWOTs

Round 5
Type: HR Round

Based on resume and one's life experiences. It eventually is part of the HR's fitment
round.

Additional Suggestions

When applying to this role, be clear on what you should expect as CTC and what the
components of the package really mean. Knowing and understanding their offer
package is essential and crucial to your decision making.

19. Jivox
Interview #1 Round 1
Type: Product Round
Product
Q1. Tell me about yourself.
Manager Q2. Which is your favourite app? How will you improve it?Draw mockups
Q3. Resume based Questions-A question on A/B testing .How I had implemented
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it?Few questions around the possible flaws in the projects I did at work
Q4. Why product management
Q5. Challenges a PM might have to face.

Round 2
Type: Stakeholder Management Round

Q1. How will you handle conflicts with engineering team? How will you negotiate
Q2. Long term and short term plans
Q3. What are the responsibilities of a PM
Q4. What can you do at Jivox. why should we hire you.Apart from having an edge at
the tech front what else could you improve

Round 3
Type: Behavioral Round (w/ Director)

Q1. Tell me about yourself

Q2. Why PM
Q3. Why did you leave your role as a developer?
Q4. Why jivox
Q5. Biggest challenge at work
Q6. Biggest achievement at work

Round 1
Type: Strategy

Q1. Any idea on what jivox can do more in terms of expanding their portfolio?

Round 5
Type: HR Round

20. MindTree
Interview Round 1
#1 Type: Resume and Product Design

General Resume based Questions on technology, Design question ( Buy now pay later
Product feature for Flipkart similar to credit card). My response included: Who to target , how to
Manager target, what will be the credit limit, what will be the strategy for defaulters and how to
(IoT) remind them, What will be the idle window for credit, Whether the feature financially
viable, how the competitor would react

Round 2
Type: Guesstimate and Product Design
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 39

Guesstimate question, Three features I like in Flipkart and why and three features I
dislike and why and how to improve them. A general discussion on IoT and how will it
impact our lives in future.

Round 3
Type: Product Launch and Go-To-Market Strategy

How to launch a new product in health care segment. Develop a go to market strategy
for a health care IoT product for B2B segment:
Response included from discovery till the operation. I described the full product
development cycle.
And then general behavioral questions

21. Jocata
Interview #1 Round 1: Product design
Question Asked: The supreme court has said that Aaadhar card is no more
mandatory. Design a product for banks as customers to verify end users data.
Product Data needed are: Customer name, Address and Income.
Manager Tell us:
• The data sources.
• Product design
• Pricing
• GTM

Round 2: Personal Interview + Discussion on product designed

Round 3: Product Design

Design a data sharing application for loan seekers. Loan seekers here are sellers on
ecommerce platforms.

Overall Feedback: Focus on structured thinking and be prepared for a deep dive.

22. Genpact
Interview #1 Round 1 : CV Assessment
Round 2: 3 Questions on Genpact, Industry and behavioral. Also had a recruitment
behavioral mini-game.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 40

VP Global Round 3. Final round was Panel interview ( CV plus Industry knowledge)
Operating
Leader

23. Swiggy
Interview Round 1: A new segment they are planning to venture into was given as a scenario, and
#1 then I was asked how would I, as a Product Manager of the product, would go about
implementing it. It included product design aspects as well as the general aspects.

Product Round 2: Another category they are planning to venture into was discussed. This time
Manager concentrated on more specific problems based on the logistics issues that they are
currently facing, could face in future and how to possibly get rid of those.

Round 3: This was more of resume based initially, some behavioral questions were
asked and then 2-3 general design questions.

Interview Round 1:
#2 If swiggy had a new user and we have no information about him other than his phone
number, how will you recommend restaurants to him?

Product
Manager Round 2:
If swiggy wants to increase the average value per order, how will you go about it?

Round 3:
Discussion with Product Head of Swiggy. General Discussion around resume and
motivation to become a PM

Interview Round 1 - User Experience and Pricing.

#3 The conversation started off with how my day went. We started off discussing whether I
use Swiggy or not. Since I was a daily user and repeated my orders daily, the
interviewer asked me to design UX/UI to improve repeat orders on Swiggy. I had prior
Product experience in UI/UX so it wasn't that hard but since the day was very long, thinking up
Manager with design ideas was a challenge. The interview was very conversational. For instance,
if I suggested a carousal popup for re-order, I had to critique it as well. Where would my
suggested design fail was the next question. Then after discussing the cons, the
interviewers asked me to suggest more design solutions to solve for reordering. While
suggesting design solutions, she asked me some basic data points required for an order
to be considered as a reorder and some elements mandatory for a reorder to occur -
price change, dish availability, restaurant on/off, etc.
Once done with design, the next question was about pricing Swiggy Super. How did
swiggy come up with Rs. XX for Swiggy Super? One should ask questions about the
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 41

average basket size on swiggy, avg number of orders placed per customer, delivery
charges per order, commission charged per order - then bucket customers basis
ordering frequency and use all the above mentioned data points to come with an
estimate for Swiggy Super.
The first round went on for 1.5 hours. The interviewer was very cooperative and
understanding. It was more like a conversation. No frameworks were used in this round.
Only prior knowledge about the industry, app design and swiggy as a product helped.
Practicing Pricing questions helped in structuring the answer.

Round 2 - Business.
2 interviewers( one was just observing or maybe experiencing how to take interviews).
He asked - if Swiggy were to optimize its delivery fleet time, what should Swiggy do?
The question was very open ended. I had read an article on Ken about Swiggys new
ventures, and that helped. Building on that, he asked me if swiggy were to get into 'free
delivery for 30 mins', how would you go about it. No structure was required for this
answer but having a sense of how swiggy partners operate would help here. Read blogs
given on Swiggy's website - great help. This round was more around logistics.
operations and business.
Tip - Subscribe to Ken. Great reads. read company blogs and industry reports.
Understand how the company runs and earns money. Ask questions. Read about
competitors (Dunzo/Zomato/etc in this case) and understand how they solve a similar
problem (if they are)

Round 3 – Mostly behavioral round.

Went on a walk with the hiring manager (product team). No specific questions - just
about the work I did in my previous company, how did I solve product problems, and
where do I see myself in 3-5 years. He explained me how Swiggy operates, what all
products does Swiggy work on and where would I like to work in Swiggy. This round was
late in the night (around 9 PM)

Interview Round 1 - Technical + Problem solving

#4 Questions Asked: Uber wants to design a Subscription Service, what will your key areas
of consideration, and how will you price it. Also design the algorithm/logic how will you
match the drivers. What are the various administrative considerations you’ll have to
Product consider?
Manager
Responses: I first tried to get clarity on the objective for designing the service. We both
decided it is not as much about cost advantage, but about reliability i.e. giving the
assurance that the rider will get priority over other riders and gets his/her Uber at the
given time.
Interviewer nudged me to draw the user flow and design for both scenarios - when the
feature is first announced (education part for customer) and for a regular user.
Then I listed out the various factors (using PESTLE framework) that needed to be
considered — this came in handy when I went on to do Pricing (next step)
For the pricing, I incorporated loss due to dynamic pricing into ‘value-based pricing’. This
is after doing cost-based and broadly competitor based pricing
Other Comments: The interview lasted about an hour. The interviewer was a no non-
sense guy and was just concerned about the approach and my though process. Am not
even sure if he even smiled throughout the interview. Overall, I felt it was a great
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 42

problem-solving exercise. Later I realised that fleet-optimisation was one of the major
problems Swiggy (and this interviewer) was working on, and hence this question was
related.

Round 2: Behavioural + Leadership + Problem-solving

Questions Asked: The interviewer was the VP-Product Management.
The conversation started with the discussion about common startup that we were both
associated with, and that helped me set a good rapport with the interviewer.
He then jumped into situational questions:
Consider there are 3 other product managers in the room with equally strong
product/feature ideas, how will you present your idea and differentiate yourself? How will
you sell your idea?
What’s your leadership style - If you have a idea, would you prefer directly approaching
me or any other senior product leader? (I later identified that he adopts a 360 degree
review approach - get your idea proofread, trashed and critiqued by at least 3 peers
before approaching him)
When was the time you faced a disagreement with your supervisor? How did you handle
the conflict? Would you do anything different now?
List down all the parameters you’d evaluate to design the restaurant recommendation
algorithm for Swiggy.
Other Comments: The interview would have lasted at least 1.5 hours. The interviewer
was extremely friendly and a great listener - he encouraged disagreements and looked
for the rationale behind decision making and structure in thinking.

Round 3 - Product sense + Design

Questions Asked: The panel had 2 Product Managers:
List down all the User modes or states of a prospect Swiggy customer who’s about to
order food from Swiggy i.e. list down all possible target segments and their use cases.
Design the Menu page for restaurants on Swiggy:
- how will you display the offers?
- how will you educate a new user of the top-selling items through the product
- how will your design take care of the price-cuts and discounts
Redesign the home page of Swiggy. Feel free to change/ critique any portion of the page
and suggest changes with rationale.
Other Comments: The interview would have lasted at least 1.5 hours. The panel was
friendly and from their depth of questions/ cross-questions it felt as if they were working
on the this problem itself i.e. designing restaurant’s menu pages on Swiggy. It was pretty
conversational and not at all a stress-interview, with more focus on customer-empathy,
design sense and product sense.

Interview Round 1 - Product Design

#5 Design a UX mockup for displaying nearest outlet for a multi-chain restaurant - Ask
clarifying questions, draw thought on paper, observe common mobile/desktop design
patterns for commonly used apps
Product
Manager
Round 2 - General/Swiggy Fit Assessment
Why Swiggy ? What do you know about Swiggy work culture, Business expansion ideas,
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 43

Interests - General conversation with Principal - Product, Swiggy - Always have an

interesting thing about you handy for a conversation

Round 3 - Problem Solving/Business

Swiggy wants to launch fitness meals ? What should be the price? Who to target?
Customer Journey ? Supply Chain Design - Structure the solution , started with market
research, asked for data from surveys/statistics, competition prices, price sensitivity, UX
mockups for customer journey, new App versus add-on feature pros/cons, current suplly
chain capacity of delivery, hire versus redistribute existing. optimization

Round 4 - HR
What people hate about you? How can you pitch a business idea to Swiggy head about
your hobbies? People Management QnA

24. Myntra
Interview
#1 Round 1 -: Problem Solving/Business.
You’re the PM for Amazon Prime. The number of subscriptions are falling - 30% since a
month. How would you go about it? - Scoping, user journey, break down 30%
Product
Manager
Round 2 - Product Design.
If you had to launch custom made-to-order products, how will you go about it?
Guesstimate on market sizing for the same. What are the 3 major things you'll take care
of? How can you attribute conversions? A question on SEO.

Round 3
With VP, Products - Was more discussion oriented than a typical interview. About me,
interests, fav product etc. More on Myntra.

Round 4 : With HR Head. Lots of behavioral questions, many on stakeholder

management - difficult client etc.

The first two rounds were core product focused, the last two were more behavioral
focused.

Interview Round 1 - Product

#2 Questions: What did you do in your role as a PM? What kind of a PM were you?
Technical, general, design?Design a subscription service for Myntra?
Product
Responses: For the subscription service, first clarified the goal with the help of the
Manager interviewer. He said it was to increase total amount spent. Discussed a the possible
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 44

personas of Myntra and decided not to focus on the Shopping enthusiasts/high spenders
but on the mid-tier users. Ended up with a service like Stitchfix.

Round 2 - Product

Questions: How do you create a roadmap? How do you prioritise features?

How will you launch vernacular content on Myntra?What will you translate? How will you
measure it success? How will you decide if it’s the right time to get into vernacular
content?

Responses

Mentioned the Amazon-style theme-based process I used in my previous job. Mentioned

ROI to get prioritise features.

Mentioned that more bottom of the funnel should be translated first as top of the
funnel stuff is very visual (photos of models, etc.) and is understood with language. We
can also use secondary economic data to translate a specific price range of products.

To decide when to begin the translation, it is better to be early than late. One can look
traffic from Tier 2 cities and towns that are primarily verncaluar speaking or can combine
traffic data with Google Analytics to understand primary language of users. When
fraction of visitors from a non-english language crosses 10%, it might be a good time to
start looking into translating content for it.

Round 3 - HR/Culture

Questions: How do you handle conflict?How do you get stakeholder buy-in?What’s your
process for change management?

Responses: Cited examples from my previous startup experience

Round 4 - Product

Questions: What is an app that you really admire? Why so?

Responses: This was a mostly casual discussion with the SVP – Product @ Myntra. I
had prepared Medium as the answer to “Favourite product” and spoke about the same.
Though I like it, I don’t admire it. Coming up with something seemed futile.

25. Zeta
Interview #1 Round 1
Type: Case Based
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 45

Associate About a week prior to Day 1, topic: Messenger's engagement is 4x lower than
Product whatsapp. Suggest features to close the gap)
Manager
Round 2
Type: Group Discussion

1-1 critique about each other's case (2 people in a group + 1 interviewer), Deep dive
discussion into the case with the interviewer, Guesstimates related to the case

Round 3
Type: Product Design

Go back when Swiggy was just being launched, design the restaurant facing module
for Swiggy. Draw wireframes and lead me through the features. Other questions:
Resume walkthrough

Round 4
Type: Behavioral & Product Based

Why Zeta, how would you handle some situation, explain why you'd be a good fit,
etc.; Product questions: Suggest improvements to Google Maps, if you're a PM at
Airbnb, what would be your top 3 metrics that you'd track

Round 5
Type: HR Round

Explain why and how you'd fit at zeta.

Additional Suggestions

Practise as much product design as possible, make frameworks but be flexible with
them, read about the company. Draw wireframes!

Interview #2 Round 1
Type: Case Discussion
Associate
Product Discussion on submitted case. The interviewer went into details of the solution and
asked to work on numbers and estimate the increase in engagement. Corner cases
Manager
and negative metrics and cases were discussed.

Round 2
Type: Behavioral & Product Design

Tell me about yourself and normal profile questions. Discussed on past projects.
Design question on point to point travel app. Was asked about the flow, UI/UX and
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 46

the reasons behind the decisions. Some other behavioral questions like when was
the last time you changed your viewpoint, etc.

Round 3
Type: Resume & Product Design

Started with past projects, why I wanted to join Zeta and previous rounds. Started
again with the point to point travel app, discussed on partnerships, finances,
customer acquisition, etc. Discussed corner cases and negative experiences and
dealing with those.

Interview #3 Round 1
Type: Case Based
Associate
Product Suggest feature improvement for increasing engagement of FB Messenger; Suggest
Manager an additional revenue stream for the same

Round 2
Type: Group Discussion

2 panelists interviewed 2 candidates (1.5 hours) where we were asked a lot about
our individual cases especially on the following points:
- the initial approach that we thought of - how did we evaluate the best alternative
- what would the launch plan be like?
The discussion also steered towards why FB acquired WhatsApp, what are the key
differences between Messenger and WA’s user base, data collected, and product
offerings

Round 3
Type: Engineering

1 panelist who was the head/director of engineering (1 hour). The interview started
with questions around my work experience at Samsung. Given my previous role in
building Samsung Pay, I was grilled heavily on the different players in the payment
industry, what happens when a user swipes his/her card, value proposition of
Samsung Pay. I was asked to design the architecture of Samsung Pay, explain the
contribution of each module to the entire Pay eco-system.

Round 4
Type: Product Based

1 panelist, senior PM (1 hour). Interview started around a case competition, on an

area launch of UberEats, in which I had reached the finals. We deep dived into the
solution our team had proposed and moved to discuss the feasibility of on-boarding
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 47

Uber car drivers for delivering food. The discussion led to different ways in which this
feature could be implemented, one of which included allowing drivers to pick up and
deliver food while being on a trip. This brought up questions like what market
research would I conduct to understand how the riders will feel about it, what all
measures to take to ensure no customer dissatisfaction, and the launch plan. Second
half of the interview revolved around more questions on my worked, and a product
improvement question on Samsung Pay.

26. Paytm
Interview Round 1
#1 Type: Resume Based

Product Started with the normal -tell me about yourself question. ( i answered primarily around
Manager my work experience before ISB - highlighting the type of product i was involved with
and the basic working of that product). Next he asked me about one of the case
competitions and what was the logic of the proposed solution. Next question was
about what apps you use in general (Answered - For grocery shopping (Bigbasket) , for
e commerce shopping (Amazon) and for payments (Paytm). Followup question was
why don't you use Paytm mall instead of Amazon. (i talked about that their is no
specific value proposition with Paytm that would force me to leave Amazon , also
talked about the customer service and facilities such as 1 day delivery). Follow up was
what would you do to move customers from Amazon to Paytm mall (i based my answer
on the premise that there is a significant section that would be moved by cheaper
prices as compared to Amazon -and suggested creating a Paytm assist that would
compare prices accross diff e commerce platforms - also suggested how would it be
implemented technically). He seemed convinced and no further questions were asked.

Round 2
Type: Resume Based

Started the interview with my past experience, the product for which i was the PO and
how it worked, what were the metrics that we used to measure success. Other
questions were around resume and which other interviews i was sitting for (answered
everything honestly - told a couple of other companies that i was interviewing for)
Round 3: Product Based - this round was telephonic - The person asked me about my
favourite product and why (answered Bigbasket and stated my reasons ). Asked about
what will you improve on this product ( told about subscription options) and how will i
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 48

advertise it (primarily focused on In App banners etc.) Shortly after this round, i was
offered the role.

27. Zynga
Interview #1 Round 1
Type: Puzzles, Resume based and PM case round
Senior
Product Questions based on case study submitted ( Choose an existing app and increase
revenue by 5% for existing users) and resume
Manager
1. Why did you choose MakeMyTrip for the case submission
2. Why can the feature fail?
3. Resume based questions
Puzzle
1. I have a Mathematical logic in my mind, and I would give you three numbers that
satisfy that logic. You cannot ask me questions but can only give me three more
numbers to which I would reply ‘yes’ if the numbers satisfy the logic and ‘no’ if they
do not. You can ask unlimited number triplets, but you have only one shot in solving
the logic. The numbers are 2,4,6. (E.g., If I say 3,6,9, the interviewer will respond as
‘yes’)
Solution: The numbers are in ascending order ( The key here is to eliminate all
possibilities and not jump to conclusion)
2. Three ants are sitting on the three corners of an equilateral triangle. Each moves at
constant speed and can independently move either in a clockwise or anticlockwise
direction. If they start at the same time find the probability of collision
Product Design
1. Design an online chess game. How will you monetize it? – Suggest five ways. How
will you increase retention? How will you increase engagement?
2. Why do you think most games have launched a system where they allow users to
buy coins through which they can make in-game purchases rather than allowing
users to purchase those items directly?

Round 2
Type: Case Round

1. Amazon’s daily revenue has fallen by 20%. Find the root cause.
2. In Farmville, we organize a seasonal sale during Halloween and Christmas where
we sell season specific game items such as Christmas tree, Halloween pumpkins
which can be added to the farm. The revenue generated through sale in Halloween
was $300,000. Now during Christmas sale, we plan to sell the following in-game
items: Reindeer, Christmas tree and Santa statue. The pricing and sales strategy lie in
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 49

your hands. Suggest a strategy to increase revenue to $1,000,000 during Christmas.

3. Imagine you are the PM of Dota-2; what do you think is the most important
“game-metric” that improved after the launch of Battle Pass. ( The question specific
to Dota 2 was asked because I had mentioned I was a Dota2 gamer in my resume.)

Interview #2 Round 1
Type: Product Design, Problem Solving, Tech, Business, Puzzles + Problem Solving
Associate
Product Candy crush is seeing a steep drop in the number of users between level 6 and 7.
Manager
Q. What can be the causes?
Ans: The difficulty level (too high in level 7) or fatigue (people are getting bored/tired
by the time they reach level 7)

Q. What test would you perform to find the cause?

Ans: Make the difficulty of level 7 same as level 6. If we see the same pattern, it
would be due to fatigue

Q. What's another way to do the test?

Ans: Replace level 5 with level 7. If the problem is difficulty, we would now see a drop
between level 5 and 6.

Amazon saw a very steep decrease in revenue today.

Q. What would be the first question you would ask? Answer to that question should
lead to 2 different approaches.
Ans: Was there a drop in number of users visiting the site? If yes, we need to check
why users did not visit amazon for their purchases. If no, we need to check why they
purchased less as compared to regular amount.

Q. There was no drop in the DAU. Nothing external. No change in functionality of the
site. Now how will you proceed?
Ans: Trace the user journey:
1) Lands on the home page (we know the user has visited)
2) Types in the search box or clicks on one of the categories or offers
3) Lands on results page (list of products, filters, etc.)
4) Clicks on filters to narrow down the results or clicks on an item
5) Lands on the product details page and selects buy now or goes back
6) Cart and Payment pages

Q. There was a drop in users reaching the product details page. What would be your
thought process (general idea not specific to a product category)?
Ans: Means users are reaching the results page but not going forward. Factors:
Relevance and Product Descriptions
Evaluate each one of them to check if something has changed.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 50

Relevance: Clicks on first page of results? Position of the clicked item in the list?
Navigation to 2nd page? Usage of filters? - Change in these statistics can tell us if the
results were relevant to what user was looking for.
Product Description: Name, Short desc, Reviews, Amazon fulfilled, prices - Check if
any of these factors have changed for the category that would be facing the problem.

Q. A game where you get to dress up avatars using different apparels, jewelry, etc. As
creativity is subjective, how will you judge the work of players and build a points
system?
Ans: I don’t fully remember my answer, but following were some of the points I
made:
• Let players judge each other's work
• Provide incentives for players to judge as many avatars as possible
• Show them two avatars and let them pick the best one. The picked one gets points.
This provides a frame of reference for players to judge.

Guesstimate:
Per day revenue of Swiggy in Hyderabad.

Puzzles:
2 ropes of different lengths and non-uniform cross sections/density. Each takes 1 hr
to burn. Measure 45 mins.
1 ant on each vertex of a triangle. Each can go along any of the two sides connected
to the corner. Find the probability that none of the ants collide.

- Other Comments: (Dos and Don’ts, What went wrong.. , What went right.. etc.)
Interviewer was pretty chill and very helpful. Whenever I was going in the wrong
direction, he was asking me questions that can help me get back on track. Also, as
they provided multiple cases, don’t worry if you screw up one case.
So be calm and take your time to answer the question. They were looking to
understand how you think, and not for a structure from any book.

- Did you clear the round?

Yes

Round 2
Type: Product Design, Problem Solving, Tech, Business, Game Design and Problem
Solving

Q. The interviewer first asked what game do I play in real life. I said table tennis. He
then asked me to design a mobile game for it.

Ans: I first outlined how the game will be structured. Types of matches (single,
double + tournaments). Points (11/21). Monetization strategy will be to sell different
quality bats.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 51

Q. Draw the wireframes.

Drew for all pages from signup to actual game play. In the gameplay I added some TT
related stuff like spin meter, type of serves, etc.

Q. Once a person owns all the bats, he will stop paying as we cannot keep adding
bats every month. What can you do?
I suggested we can add wear and tear factor to it. Every bat can be used for limited
number of matches after which its performance will decrease.

Q. Every month you are seeing a drop in the revenue from the app. How will you get
to the problem?
I listed down some high level factors to evaluate:
• Number of users onboarding every month is decreasing
• Conversion rate of new users to paid users is decreasing
• Paid users are not making repeated purchases

Q. I was told that conversion rates are decreasing. What will you do?
I listed a couple of suggestions to get users more acquainted with the benefits of the
premium bats:
• Popups while in tournaments: If you use this bat for this match, you will have 50%
more chance of winning
• Trial of the premium bats in single player matches
• Free bats for 1 match use per month

Q. How will you go about designing a subscription based model?

As subscription model will be attractive to regular paid users with spends on the
higher side, I will start with them.

Let us take the numbers for the top 30% of the paid users. If the bat costs on avg. $2
and avg. number of bats per month is 5. We have 30% of paid users spending $10 per
month on average.

Now, when we offer a subscription model, we take away the flexibility of buying only
when its needed and at the same time we ask a higher amount to be paid upfront.
Hence, we know there needs to be sufficient discount. But the problem is that we
don't know how much discount will give us best results.

I will start with access to 5 bats per month at a price of $8. This will not be final and
will be shown as today's offer is 20% discount on month's subscription. This allows
me to keep $10 as original price on the screen and also keep testing the price at
which it is being sold. I can now change the discount per day or user to identify the
price that gives me maximum output.

- Other Comments: (Dos and Don’ts, What went wrong.. , What went right.. etc.)
The interviewer was looking to check my ability to think and make a basic game. To
see if I can identify the parameters specific to the game that will be used during
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 52

gameplay and what can be used for monetization.

So don’t worry if your game sounds pretty basic, focus on covering all parts of game
design.

- Did you clear the round?

Yes

Interview #3 Round 1
Type: Technical Interview based on the case given. The interview was conversational
Associate in style and really interesting. We went from one question to another building up on
Product the answer given by me
Manager Case: Feature to increase revenue 5%
App chosen: FIFA mobile
1. Tell me about yourself
2. Run me through the case solution
3. You notice the revenues have been declining for FIFA over the past week. What
would you do as a PM?
4. What are the possible causes of DAU decreasing?
5. What could be reasons for revenue/users decreasing?
6. What would be the effect on metrics if you were to double the XP received per
match?
7. What are the ways by which you can increase the purchase/spend on the app?

For this round, choose the case solution carefully. Taking an app you are comfortable
with helps you go in depth and talk about multiple scenarios and solutions. Taking an
app in the gaming domain is a way to communicate interest in the company, though
this is not necessary. This round had several typical PM case questions and the best
way to prepare would be to practice doing a lot of cases and understanding metrics
well.

Round 2
Type: Problem solving - 1 hour
3-4 types of situations in games

1. Graph based- level based games-users playing suddenly drop at level 6

2. Puzzle-ant at every corner of an equilateral triangle. What is the probability that 2
ants clash if all the ants start moving simultaneously in either direction?
3. Design a scoring mechanism to decide winner of a game based on outfit design
(creativity is the criterion)

For this round, try to show the breadth of thinking by coming up with multiple
features and solutions. Also discuss the priority. Having some knowledge of mobile
games could help understand some questions better but it is not a MUST. You can
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 53

ask for explanation or clarifications on what the flow of the game is and the
interviewer would provide the same.

Interview #4 Round 1

Associate Type: Problem solving + product design

Product Questions about zynga games, gamify an app to increse user engagement, puzzles,
changes for words with friends to increase revenue by 5%
Manager
Round 2
Type: Product design
Changes for farmville for christmas. Identify customer segment and design a celebrity
based games. Describe the core loop of the game. Some puzzles

Ready about game strategy a bit. Be charged to answer some mind tickling puzzles.

Interview #5 Round 1

Senior Type: Problem Solving

Product 1. Zynga had asked for a case submission (Pick any product and increase its revenue
by 5%), so first few questions were based on that. I had suggested for monetization
Manager
by introduction of new feature and questions revolved around that feature. Why do
you think people will pay for it? How can you use data to justify if such a feature is
required? Be very specific w.r.t to defining customer journey and what are the data
points that you will collect through the journey to verify feature requirement before
you build it. Final question was, give a 2 min pitch for this feature to your senior and
how you will convince your bandwidth crunched technical resource to build this
feature.
2. Further, he gave additional problem solving of an e-commerce platform. Bounce
rate of an ecommerce website if up by 20%, what do you think is the reason.
Structure is very important here. Be well versed with the e-commerce funnel and
which KPIs you will look at to know what is going on. I started by asking the device
type questions (Mobile vs Desktop), he said the bounce rate is in mobile app and not
website. Further I asked for a trend (as in for how long we see this increment). To this
he mentioned that the bounce rate has increased suddenly in one day span. Post this
I went into the ecommerce funnel and tried to identify from which page customers
were leaving the application. Once that was narrowed down, I asked for has there
been any UI changes in this one-day span. It turned out that technical team had done
some UI changes because of which few call to action buttons were not visible on the
mobile screen (less than 4inch screen).

Round 2
Type: Product thinking and puzzles – 75 min
1. The interview started with a round of introduction. Behavioral questions, tell me
about yourself? Why PM? Life goals? Situations where you have failed? Biggest
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 54

success of life?
2. Further, there was a series of puzzle. He asked 3 puzzles and gave only 2 min per
puzzle to solve. 1st was a 25 horses puzzle, 2nd was, 3rd was
3. Lastly, he devoted around 45 min to product thinking. Gave multiple cases back to
back. 1st case was to monetize WhatsApp.

Round 3
Type: Product Design/Product Thinking
1. The interview started with a round of introduction. Behavioral questions, tell me
about yourself? Why PM? Life goals? Situations where you have failed? Biggest
success of life?
2. Further, there was a series of puzzle. He asked 3 puzzles and gave only 2 min per
puzzle to solve. 1st was a 25 horses puzzle, 2nd was, 3rd was
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 55

28. Rivigo
Interview Round 1
Questions Type: Problem Solving

Role: Question: Uber Pool wants to grow its business. What should it do?
Product
Manager Approach followed:
Clarifying questions asked: To clarify, the objective can be either to increase number of
users, increase revenue or increase customer satisfaction. Which one should I focus on?
Interviewer's answer: To grow the number of users

Step 1: User segmentation: Break the types of user into Professional and Non-Professional
and profile both of them.
Professional: Pressed on time, has fixed arrival/departure location, cost insensitive
Non-Professional: Cost sensitive, not pressed on time

Step 2: Break down the type of route followed by the service into Fixed and Dynamic and
list down attributes of both

Step 3: Compared Uber Pool with other alternatives such as Taxi/Auto and Uber Go on
attributes of Time, Convenience and Fare

Interviewer asked to solve for the Time attribute of the service

Solutions offered:
1) Auto cancellation: Have a fixed timer for the rider post which the booked Pool
automatically cancels
2) Route optimization: Allow Pool to be booked only within 2-5 kms range
3) Community sharing: Allow users (eg: professionals) to build communities to use Pool like
a Shuttle service.

Round 2
Resume/Behavioral

Interview Round 1
Questions Interview type: Problem solving (Broadly) + Resume
Interviewer was from Data Science team at Rivigo & ISB alum. I was first in the panel so we
Role: talked outside the room for some time as not all the panels at arrived by that time. It was
Senior mostly about ISB and then moved on to my work experience and graduation.
Associate,
Product Q1. Tell me about yourself.
Manager Q2. I had written about an ML project so he got interested & asked about how details of the
project. Why was this project taken up & what was my scope in the project. Some more
details on architecture & data.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 56

Q3. Interviewer opened Uber app & filled drop location. Once the ride suggestions & prices
came up (Go Vs XL vs Pool), he closed the app. He asked to analyse what could be potential
reasons for a user to do that. I gave answers like price or type of cab. Then he went deep
into which metric would you look for & how is that data collected. It was basically to check
understanding of metrics & underlying data (E.g. how would you measure price sensitivity
of a customer).
Q4. Design Uber's first MVP. Key idea was to keep in mind that first MVP would have most
basic of features & how to prioritise that. It is important to ignore Uber's current application
as it has gone through multiple iterations since first MVP.
Q5. List reasons of user churn on Uber.

Round 2
Interview type: Culture fit (Mixture of problem solving, PI, design etc.)
Interviewer was senior Product guy (perhaps director of Product Management) with 3-4
years of work-ex at BCG as well.
Q1. Tell me about yourself.
Q2. Deep drill down into one of the projects I had listed. How would you go about it as a
product manager now. Learnings, successes & mistakes from that project.
Q3. Give me an example where you made a mistake at Target. How would you make sure
you don't repeat the same mistake?
Q4. There was one design question which I am forgetting but it was simple.
Q5. Suppose you are a entrepreneur & a VC has given me $5M. Which industry would you
invest in. I started to draw frameworks from ISB case book but after a minute or two he
stopped me and said this is too frameworky :). He gave me 2 minutes to think on it. I finally
chose tech and gave reasons like asset light & ease of scaling up. Gave few examples.
Couple of follow up questions were asked. E.g. why does it make sense for any company to
choose your tech product vs in house implementation. Other question was a guesstimate
regarding market size estimation which was simple because I was able to draw on my work
experience and explain how much amount we used to spend.

Final thoughts:
Few learnings (Dos & Don'ts) from interview experiences (Rivigo & others):
1. Resume is very important & most of the companies focus a lot on it. Since resume related
questions are conversation starters, it is very important to ace such questions. So refrain
from writing about projects which you can't explain very well. Try to practice with friends
apart from case or design questions.
2. Read about companies and recent developments (like Flipkart asked about Flipkart plus
etc.)
3. Drawing Tech architecture is very helpful so do use pen & paper as much as you can.
Keep yourself updated with latest tech trends.
4. Practice guesstimates & behavioural questions
5. Any app can be brought up in the interview so try to use & evaluate as many apps as you
can in different categories like e-commerce, social media, payment etc. This should be a
regular part of group interview preparations.
6. Don't try to fool your interviewer, you will be caught for sure.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 57

Interview Round 1
Questions Type: Tech/Business/Behavioral
a) How would you increase revenues for your most used app - Selected Outlook ->
Role: Microsoft Office family -> Divided revenue streams / types - recurring/renewal
Senior b) Asked SQL common queries, explanations, design query for a given problem
Associate, c) When did you handle multi-party negotiations, Recent failure
Product
Manager Round 2
Type: Product Design

Launch a new product so that people in India stop going to places of worship - CIRCLES
framework application - align solutions to what technology the company is in if possible -
shows research/effort/creativity

In the middle of answering, the interviewee said "the product would fail" because it is
capturing only 80% of consumer segment - Had left out temple workers and brought this to
the table on my own.
Don't - Panic from a negative comment Do's- Use every word/information from the
interviewee, ask for time

Round 3
Type: HR

Why Rivigo? Why leave Microsoft ? Why product management? Which companies have I
applied to ? - Salary Negotiation

29. Times News

Interview Round 1:
Questions Product Design
Design a new app to enter food tech industry in India. How will you differentiate from the
Role: competitors?
Product
Manager Round 2:
Behavioral
General questions such as why Times News? Why PM? How do you think you are different
from other candidates?

30. Freshworks Inc.

Interview All the rounds were regarding the resume and previous work experience. There were a few
Questions behavioral questions asked based on the previous scenarios that were encountered. Fun
interview experience.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 58

Role:
Product Be prepared with whatever you mention in your resume, they might take a small thing that
Manager showed up and then get into detail.

31. Uber
Interview Number of Rounds - 3
Questions
Round 1
Role: Interview Type ( Product Design, Problem Solving, Tech, Business etc.) Tech, Product Design
Technical 2. Questions Asked (in sequence if possible) Started with the usual tell me about yourself.
Program After gauging the kind of work I have done in past, asked me to design a dashboard with
Manager some metrics which would help the Uber management improve the bottom line. Discussion
on the dashboard led to AI/ML algorithms. I was asked algorithms for K-means etc. There
were also some questions related to the parallels of work structure between my past
organization and Uber, to distinguish between EPM, TPM and PM etc roles and
responsibilities. Round lasted for 40-50 mins.
3. Other Comments: Even though my interview slot was much later, I reached the venue
early as I was very keen on this job. When the interviewers arrived I was the first one to be
interviewed and had a good discussion with the interviewer. I had done decent research on
the work that Uber had been doing across geographies at the backend (technology front)
and was well informed about the recent technology innovations and use cases. Also, I am an
extensive user of their app so had a good understanding of their offering. All these helped
in different points of the conversation with the interviewer.

Round 2
2. Interview Type ( Product Design, Problem Solving, Tech, Business etc.): Problem Solving
and behavioral
3. Questions Asked (in sequence if possible) The person interviewing was from the same
team I am supposed to join so they were trying to gauge my cultural and temperamental fit
in their organization and team. I was mostly asked to cite examples from my past
organization when I overcame challenges, faced failure and the likes. She also gauged my
understanding of emerging technologies. Round lasted for 30-40 mins.
4. Other Comments: (Dos and Don’ts, What went wrong.. , What went right.. etc.): Be sure
to go through the case studies or articles provided on the company portal and be aware of
the latest news related to the company. Put items on your CV which you can very well talk
about. These people are experts and might very well probe you. Also, anything that you say
on your own, trying to lead the discussion in a certain direction, make sure it is the tip of the
iceberg of your knowledge and more often than not they can have a full fledged discussion
on a single word you said or an idea you mentioned. Be enthusiastic about your responses
and always smile.

Round 3
2. Interview Type ( Product Design, Problem Solving, Tech, Business etc.): Pure Tech
3. Questions Asked (in sequence if possible): I was asked several technical questions in
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 59

terms of architecture design and understanding. Rest of the discussion was mostly based on
my past experiences. Was asked to cite examples of work I had done which showed
innovation, conflict resolution, influencing client opinions etc. Every interviewer asked me if
I had something to ask them(prepare your questions in advance). This round lasted 40-50
mins.
4. Other Comments: (Dos and Don’ts, What went wrong.. , What went right.. etc.) Be as well
versed in your technical know-how as with the items in your cv or with examples and
answers of the behavioral questions. All are equally important. Think of product ideas of
front end and back end beforehand.(I was lucky I figured something on the fly but on a
stressed out day, that might not work). Try to have a conversation instead of a monologue,
ask back questions, eye contact etc.

Interview Round 1
Questions Define a dashboard for Uber executives which will give them snapshot of daily company
performance, high-light problems, and potential causes. If possible recommendations as
Role: well.
Program
Manager Round 2
Resume driven + Behavioral + Past Company Product Architecture

Round 3
Resume driven + Majorly Behavioral + Past Company Product Questions + Data Driven
Decision instances from previous job

32. Droom
Interview Round 1
Questions Lasted ~20 mins.
Tell me about yourself. One guesstimate about number of smartphones in Hyderabad. Why
Role: Droom?
Associate
Product Round 2
Manager Lasted ~15 mins
Tell me about yourself. Conversation about work experience. How will I solve a dispute
between various stakeholders?

Interview Round 1
Questions Product Design
1. Design a page to sell jewelry on Amazon. What all factors will you take under
Role: consideration?
Product 2. What all factors should be considered while designing a page to sell cars online?
Manager
Round 2
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 60

Behavioral
1. What do you think are the challenges faced in startups? How do you handle unstructured
work environment?
2. What will you do if the other team member is not providing you the deliverable on time?
What if your supervisor is not available to resolve the matter?
3. Work can be frustrating at times. How do you handle such situations?
4. Why Droom? Why Product management?

Interview Round 1
Questions Interview Type: Product problem solving
Questions: The interviewer asked me about myself, my work ex. He gave me a case to solve:
Role: Drop in the use of WhatsApp's story feature is dropping. Figure out why?
Associate Approach: I drew the user journey for updating a story on WhatsApp. I asked him on each
Product step where he thought engagement was dropping. The problem lied with the fact that users
Manager didn't have the filters and photo editing features that they usually get on Insta, so they go
to the feature but drop off before updating the story.

Round 2
Interview Type: Product Design/Problem Solving
Questions: Design a way to increase engagement with dealers for Droom
Approach: I took the new feature design approach( Can be found in PM books), suggested
features that would allow dealers to adjust their pricing as per customers and competition

33. RazorPay
Interview First 3 rounds were design related and the final one was HR
Questions
Round 1
Role: Started with work-ex. Then moved on to tell me about your favourite product and 3 things
Product you like and 3 things you'd like to improve. I chose Swiggy and we had a detailed discussion
Manager on Swiggy's business model and tech-stack. Duration 45 mins

Round 2
Design a "Pay Later" feature for an e-commerce consumer website. In depth discussion on
features, metrics, trade-offs. Duration 90 mins

Round 3
How would you detect fraud reviews as a PM on Zomato. In depth discussion on factors
which the PM would consider in the algorithm. Duration 60 mins

Round 4
HR round on company policies and values and what I did at my startup.

Interview Round 1
Questions
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 61

Interview Type: Problem Solving

Role: Questions Asked: Netflix daily viewership is falling. How will you analyze the potential
Product reasons?
Manager A brief description of your answers/approach (Optional): Divided the potential reasons into
- a) Industry-wide problem, b) Competition, c) Product. For product, showed the entire
customer journey and the potential dropoff points
_________________________

Round 2
Interview Type: Behaviorist
Questions Asked: Mainly questions around profile, FinTech industry in general and tested
my fit.
_________________________

Round 3
Interview Type: Business
Questions Asked: Swiggy wants to get into a new business. Which business would you
recommend? Analyze from business and product standpoint.
Other comments: This was more of a stress interview where the interviewer questioned all
the assumptions that I was making.

34. Accenture Tech Consulting

Interview Round 1
Questions Type: PI and Resume Based
Questions Asked: IOT design; Resume based questions. Emerging tech trends
Role: Tech Answers: Basic PI discussion. god understanding of the firm, where they are headed(
Consultan acquisitions) and where this practice fits
t
Round 2
Type: PI and case based
Questions: Multiple Cases; How to pitch a SAP platform to a construction firm; Use
Blockchain to improve any industry of choice
Answers: Followed PPT format. Create the customer journey and give insights in how to
increase topline and also how to decrease costs. For blockchain used healthcare to remove
information asymmetry.

Round 3
Type: HR
Questions: Basic HR questions
Answers: No prep. basic HR answers.
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 62

35. Tripoto
Interview Round 1
Questions Product Design
1. Design an application to create a journey (using pictures) of all the vacations taken by
Role: the user
Product 2. How would you personalize the home page of Tripoto app and metrics to measure the
Manager success of the feature
3. Design a search engine and metrics to measure it's success
4. How does trending ( youtube/ twitter) work?
5. Questions on my work experience
Round 1 was technical with major focus on product design, metrics and previous work ex

Round 2
Culture Fit
Round 2 was mostly to check culture fit
1. Why PM, why Tripoto, one thing you don't like in the app and how would you improve
that, one company that you want to work for and the role

35. Magicpin
Interview Round 1
Questions General (Telephonic)
1. Tell me something about yourself.
Role: 2. Why Product Management? Why Magicpin?
Product 3. Favorite product? Why? Likes/dislikes?
Manager 4. What do you know about Magicpin?

Round 2
Product Design
1. What is the reason behind large number of MAUs of Whatsapp? How is it different from
Facebook Messenger?
2. Which is your favorite app? Likes/dislikes? How would you improve it? What is its
competitive advantage?
3. How would you increase DAUs of Google maps?

Round 3
Business/Tech
1. How would you convince the retailers to be a part of Magicpin? How do you think they
would be benefited by the platform? How much cost savings do you expect from retailer's
point of view?
2. How would you improve the platform of Magicpin?
 BTC Interview Handbook Co2019 63

Round 4
Resume based/General
1. Why have you not mentioned your GPA?
2. Why did you choose ISB? Why not IIMs?
3. Why product management? Why not consulting?
Rest of the questions were resume specific.

36. OpenText
Interview Round 1
Questions Interview Type : Product Design + Problem Solving + Tech +Business (1.5 hours)
Questions Asked : Background, Tech projects handled, How to leverage machine-learning in
Role: cyber-security? (I was from a cyber-security background - this constituted bulk of the
Product interview - specifics of algorithms delved into), How to incentivize users to give proper
Manager ratings and reviews? Two puzzles given to solve on whiteboard - one was on trigonometry
and the other was a logical puzzle, How to decide on product roadmap given various
obstacles?
A brief description of your answers/approach (Optional) : A good hold of the specifics of
resume contents is required. Do not extrapolate your previous projects/responsibilities as
they go into specifics.
Other Comments: Many people were called for two rounds of interviews before HR round,
so I would say the total number of rounds vary.

Round 2
Interview Type : HR round
Questions Asked : This was a 1-hour interview where they dug deep into my background,
what series of events made me land at ISB, my aspirations and what kind of work I was
looking forward to post-ISB.
A brief description of your answers/approach (Optional) : They are primarily looking for a
culture fit in this round.
Other Comments: Be clear about what you want from your future job and how effectively
you can contribute back to the business.

37. MAQ Software

Interview Round 1
Questions General questions on why to join Maq, Why MBA, Resume based questions on the
technology
Role: It was more of a discussion.
Technical
Project Round 2
Manager
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Complete tech interview. Tested my understanding on technology thoroughly (from my

resume). PM case competition discussion from my resume point. Behavioral questions on
how to manage team and conflicts

38. Bizongo
Interview Round 1
Questions Product Design, Guesstimate and Tech Questions Asked : Design a physical wallet, Design a
physical wallet for a 10 year old girl
Role:
Product Round 2
Manager Problem Solving, Product Design, Culture fit and business 5. Design an elevator for
commercial sector (Involved product design with problem solving), Guess max number of
people at the Heathrow airport
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