Grail Research : 1st round had 2 Estimation Case studies along with some HR questions.

2nd round again a mix of business case studies and HR questions. -Preparing a little for CAT will help in Aptitude test. - Prepare for puzzles. - Be extremely thorough with each and every point of your resume. There nothing as bad as the interviewer asking you something out of your resume and you not knowing it. - Prepare specific to the company. If sitting for Grail you ought to know about research tool,recent Market researches etc etc and what exactly the company does. One should always ask some good question in the end. It shows your interest. - Show lot of energy and enthusiasm in the interview. I was given this feedback in Grail that the person seemed to lack the energy to carry out projects. Questions previously asked by grail. 1.Calculate the market for a pair of female shoes in Mumbai. You are expected to ask for all the data i.e price, type of shoes etc. 2.Find the revenue of Barista in Mumbai 3.All the things you would tell to Wallmart planning to set up retail outlet in India, if you were their Consultant. 4.Market for washing machines in India in 2009,market for Laptops in India, HR Questions: The HR questions they asked are to elaborate on an academic as well as a non academic project, the advantages and disadvantages of working in teams. HR component is generally quite less. A candidate Name : B.Nivedita FINAL JOB OFFERED: Grail Research India, Pvt. Ltd There was no GD even though 60 candidates were shortlisted. They proceeded directly to interviews, primarily guessestimates in 2 rounds. The final round before selection was with Amit, the country head, who again asked a couple of guess-estimates with very little focus on numbers but taking in the approach of the candidate. Some number-crunching was required,but approximation was encouraged overall. My cases were pricing of an airline ticket and revenue of a restaurant in one day -both pretty simple cases.Proceeded systematically to arrive at reasonably accurate final answers. The interviewer was quite helpful and pointed out a couple of mistakes , and I corrected them immediately after reasoning them out. The second round was with Amit who asked me the revenue that PVR cinemas made in a day in India.Outlined my approach First.Started with no. of PVR cinemas in the country,screens per PVR,seats per screen,cost per seat etc to arrive at a rough number. He was convinced but then asked me to get more accurate,and to solve the case with minimum assumptions.So I proceeded further to classify the screens in terms of language of a movie and included occupancy rate to refine my calculations.I further related occupancy rate data to newspaper ratings of a movie and the possibility of getting one information from the other.That was the final detail.Was made an informal offer then and there. If someone wants to appear for this company, what all should he/she ideally prepare? Attend the PPT. Go through the web-site.Take a few CAT pattern tests to brush up fundaes. Read the newspaper (any standard daily) to improve and refine your ability to comprehend information in good English. Try your hand at a few basic guess-estimates, knowing some basic statistics about India can help. Do a couple of business cases to get a feel of common industry issues like growth,pricing of product etc. Dress confidently, be yourself in the interview and solve the primarily numerical cases with minimum mistakes. That should get you the job.

Estimation /Guestimates

THE guesstimate question is a usual type of question that you can expect to be asked when interviewing for a

position at a consulting firm.

Guesstimates come in four forms:

1. Population-Based: How many post offices are there in the UK?

Best way of answering: I live in a town of 12,000 people, weve got 3 post offices. Taking this as the average, Ill assume that one post office serves about 4,000 people. The UK population is 60,000,000, so there are 15,000 post offices in the UK.

2. Household-Based: How many toasters were sold in the UK last year?

Best way of answering: One household has about one toaster. The average British household consists of 3 people. Given that the UK population is 60,000,000, there are 20,000,000 households. Assuming a toaster needs to be replaced every 4 years, one quarter of all households are going to buy a toaster every year, i.e. 5,000,000 toasters are sold in the UK each year.

As an aside, you might consider any other places using toasters, such as hospitals, food courts and work places. Considering that these places buy approximately 500,000 toasters each year, there are 5,500,000 toasters sold in Britain each year.

3. Individual-Based: How many novels are sold in the UK each year?

Looking at the UKs population of 60 Million, and estimating average life expectancy in this country at 80 years, we can now calculate how many people there are in each age band. Realistically, there are fewer old people than young people, but to keep things simple well just assume that there are 750,000 people in each age band. Assuming that people between the ages of 15 and 80 are going to read novels (children are going to read childrens books while elderly people might have difficulty reading as their eyesight deteriorates), there are 75 age bands with 750,000 people each there are a total of 56,250,000 people who will read books. To simplify, Ill assume that 56,000,000 people read books every year. Ill suppose that on average each adult buys 3 novels a year. Multiplied by 56 Million, 168,000,000 novels are sold each year.

4. What do you think questions: These questions can range from: How heavy is a car? to how long would it take to evacuate London?

As a general rule, its best to break down the case into its smaller components. To use the car example: Think of

all the components of a car, e.g. steel exterior, windows, wheels, engine, interior as well as variable weights (number of passengers, fuel, luggage). Assign weights to each of them, making sure that you base your assumptions on some kind of logic (e.g. fuel will weigh less than water as it has lower density). Add up your values to reach an approximate total.

What will you be asked to do

A typical guesstimate question will require you to estimate a number by doing a rough back of the beer coaster calculation. You are supposed to reach a final answer by using a series of narrowing assumptions.

Your assumptions should have a sound basis and you should explain the logic behind your assumptions, however it is not important that your assumptions be 100% accurate.

What is being assessed

Your response to the guesstimate question will help the interviewer evaluate your strengths in the following areas:

1.Professionalism and ability to remain level-headed when placed in a tricky situation; 2.Creativity and sound judgement in being able to come up with plausible assumptions; 3.Logic and structured thinking; and numerical skills and level of comfort with doing basic arithmetic in your head. The guesstimate question is quite different from the kind of interview questions that you are probably used to. For the guesstimate question, it is better to arrive at the wrong answer with good assumptions and clear logic than to know the right answer because you saw it on the Discovery Channel last week.

Examples

Here is a list of example guesstimate questions to give you an idea of the kind of questions to expect:

1.How many births are there in America each day? 2.How many petrol stations are there in Sydney? 3.How many bottles of wine are consumed in France each month? 4.How many cups of tea are drunk in England each day? 5.How far does the average Premiership footballer run in a single game? 6.How much does Mount Kilimanjaro weigh?

7.How many pounds are spent on haircuts in the UK each year? 8.How many ping-pong balls will fit inside a 747? 9.How many weddings are performed in China each year? 10.How many mens suits were sold in the United States last year? 11.How many tennis balls fit in a swimming pool? 12.What is the annual size of the golf ball market in Japan? 13.Estimate the total revenues obtained from the movie Avatar. 14.What is the size of the market for mobile phones in America? 15.How many white cars are there in Australia? 16.How many people are buried each year in England? 17.What is the annual market for apples in America? 18.What is the annual revenue of Harrods in London? 19.What is the market for bicycles in America? 20.How many taxis are there in New York? 21.How many books are sold in the UK each year? 22.How many households use digital TV? 23.How many gas stations are there in the UK? 24.How many light bulbs are sold in Australia each year? 25.How many Scandinavians are born each year?

Following are examples of guesstimates and suggested solutions. There is more variation here than in business cases. Whereas in business cases we ask that you make no assumptions, here you may have to make assumptions if your interviewer does not provide any additional information. Remember to ask your interviewer each time you begin a guesstimate answer if they will provide information or if you will need to make assumptions. If you do, be sure to be perfectly clear where and when you are making assumptions.

This set of questions can be presented as either assumptive or with feedback from the interviewer.

1: How many gallons of white house paint are sold in the U.S. every year?

THE "START BIG" APPROACH: If you're not sure where to begin, start with the basic assumption that there are 270 million people in the U.S. (or 25 million businesses, depending on the question). If there are 270 million people in the United States, perhaps half of them live in houses (or 135 million people). The average family size is about three people, so there would be 45 million houses in the United States. Let's add another 10 percent to that for second houses and houses used for other purposes besides residential. So there are about 50 million

houses.

If houses are painted every 10 years, on average (notice how we deftly make that number easy to work with), then there are 5 million houses painted every year. Assuming that one gallon of paint covers 100 square feet of wall, and that the average house has 2,000 square feet of wall to cover, then each house needs 20 gallons of paint. So 100 million gallons of paint are sold per year (5 million houses x 20 gallons). (Note: If you want to be fancy, you can ask your interviewer whether you should include inner walls as well!) If 80 percent of all houses are white, then 80 million gallons of white house paint are sold each year. (Don't forget that last step!)

THE "START SMALL" APPROACH: You could also start small, and take a town of 27,000 (about 1/10,000 of the population). If you use the same assumption that half the town lives in houses in groups of three, then there are 4,500 houses, plus another 10 percent, then there are really 5,000 houses to worry about. Painted every 10 years, 500 houses are being painted in any given year. If each house has 2,000 square feet of wall, and each gallon of paint covers 100 square feet, then each house needs 20 gallons - and so 10,000 gallons of house paint are sold each year in your typical town. Perhaps 8,000 of those are white. Multiply by 10,000 - you have 80 million gallons.

Your interviewer may then ask you how you would actually get that number, on the job, if necessary. Use your creativity - contacting major paint producers would be smart, putting in a call to HUD's statistics arm could help, or even conducting a small sample of the second calculation in a few representative towns is possible.

2: What is the size of the market for disposable diapers in China?

Here's a good example of a market sizing. How many people live in China? A billion. Because the population of China is young, a full 600 million of those inhabitants might be of child-bearing age. Half are women, so there are about 300 million Chinese women of childbearing age. Now, the average family size in China is restricted, so it might be 1.5 children, on average, per family. Let's say two-thirds of Chinese women have children. That means that there are about 300 million children in China. How many of those kids are under the age of two? About a tenth, or 30 million. So there are at least 30 million possible consumers of disposable diapers.

To summarize:

1 billion people x 60% childbearing age = 600,000,000 people x 1/2 are women

= 300,000,00 women of childbearing age x 2/3 have children

= 200,000,000 women with children x 1.5 children each

= 300,000,000 children x 1/10 under age 2 = 30 million children Practice Question #3: How many square feet of pizza are eaten in the United States each month?

Take your figure of 300 million people in America. How many people eat pizza? Let's say 200 million. Now let's say the average pizza-eating person eats pizza twice a month, and eats two slices at a time. That's four slices a month. If the average slice of pizza is perhaps six inches at the base and 10 inches long, then the slice is 30 square inches of pizza. So four pizza slices would be 120 square inches. Therefore, there are a billion square feet of pizza eaten every month.

To summarize:

300 million people in America

200 million eat pizza

Average slice of pizza is six inches at the base and 10 inches long = 30 square inches (height x half the base)

Average American eats four slices of pizza a month

Four pieces x 30 square inches = 120 square inches (one square foot is 144 inches), so let's assume one square foot per person

200 million square feet a month