IIM Calcutta Interview Transcripts 2025: Real PI Experiences & Questions

Panel 2 Male 1 Female 

F1: You're from which college?

F1: How many students are in your batch? Is your ranking in the top 10 or 20 in class?

M1: How will your technical background help after your MBA?

M1: Major subjects you've studied?

Me: Machine learning and said I also did a project on it.

M1: Types of Machine Learning?

M1: Explain supervised learning. Give some techniques that come under this.

More about classification and Regression, and their difference.

M1: Explain unsupervised learning and its techniques.

M1: Tell me about your project, explain it to me like I know nothing about it?

M1: What data points are used?

M1: explain them and how they affect the result.

F1: What is the difference between the Current ratio and the quick ratio? (Data points)

M2 takes over from here 

M2: I'll give you a situation/ problem statement 

I have an Instagram page and had 10 posts

Use machine learning techniques and you have to increase the reach

You have to analyse data, take dependent and independent variables, and explain your process and results.

I tried answering but was not satisfied

M1 started to help me by giving me more clarity and how to approach the problem 

Answered according to my knowledge and their reaction was okay(not fully satisfied)

M1: what are the calls you have?

Answered LACKI , CAP, and MDI

M1:What are your top choices?

Me: A and C

M1: What will you choose between both and why?

Gave a silly answer and they laughed 

Me: Talked something around IIM C famous for Finance 

F1: They're just assumptions and not real

You will know once you join the campus 

F1: What kind of companies and roles do you want to get into after an MBA from IIM C?

Me: Talked about marketing roles

M1: Why are you interested in marketing?

Me: Talked about my experience of marketing college cultural fest.

M2: How does this experience help you in marketing job interviews?

The panel was chill and they're helping if you are stuck at any point.

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IIM Calcutta InterviewTranscript-2 

Feb 17th, Slot 2, ITC Kakatiya (Hyderabad)

9/9/8

1.5 yrs work ex in the Fintech domain as Analyst

WAT Topic: (25 mins)

What do you understand by the term "Globalization"? What are some of the positive and negative aspects of it?

Interview panel (M1, M2, F1):

M1: How's your life going?

A: Working as a Growth Analyst at a fintech startup called Uni Cards.

M1: What do Uni Cards do?

A: Credit card and personal loan business.

M1: What's your role in it?

A: Talked about performance marketing, acquisition, and analytics part.

M2: Explain performance marketing to me as if I know nothing.

A: Gave him the basic definition and then built upon that.

M2: What are some of the performance marketing channels for your organization?

A: Social media marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing, etc.

M2 (Interrupted): What are the channels?

A: Google Ads, FB Ads, and Other partners like Amazon, Flipkart, etc.

M2: What does your product funnel look like?

A: Explained to him step by step the step-by-step funnels for credit card onboarding with numbers.

(M2 cross-questioned on each step as to why I took that number, why funnel drop-off, etc.)

M2: What does the funnel before login look like?

A: Talked about Install to login ratio, then impression to install ratio.

M2: What is the CAC for your credit card business?

A: Answered.

M2: Where you are operating?

A: Answered.

M2: How do you calculate CAC?

A: Talked about CLTV and Payback period.

M2 (Interrupted): I'm asking how do you calculate CAC.

A (Again started explaining CLTV and CAC relationship)

F1: We are asking about what are the components under your CAC.

A: Marketing Cost, Sales Cost, Product Cost.

F1: Explain each of them and how they control the overall CAC.

A: Explained each component.

F1: If you want to reduce your CAC, which lever you can control, and why not other two?

A: Marketing cost, explained about product and sales cost being more or less fixed. However, marketing costs can be brought further down with better targeting and optimization.

M2: How would you do better targeting, let's say on Google ads?

A: Talked about audience signals.

M1: You worked in Groww earlier as an Associate Data Analyst. Who are the competitors to Groww?

A: Zerodha, Upstox, Angel One.

M1: How Groww is doing better than them?

A: Talked about Groww's principle of simplicity vs Zerodha being more trader friendly. Also, Groww focuses more on mutual funds as compared to Upstox.

F2: How did Zerodha become so big?

A: Started talking about first mover advantage as a stock brokerage platform.

M1 (Interrupted): How has Zerodha had a first-mover advantage? HDFC and ICICI Securities have been for so long.

A: Wil take some time to think again then.

M1: Leave it. And do an estimate question for us. Guesstimate number of demat accounts in India. Need approach, not numbers.

A: Segmented users first on age group and then penetration of stock market awareness assumption.

M2: Any question for us?

A: If I get a chance to get into IIMC, what should I prepare/do in the next 2-3 months so as to be a valuable addition to the classroom?

M2 and F1 together: Nothing. Just get mentally prepared for the 2 hours working year. Als,o enjoy some time with your family.

M1: What all calls do you have?

A: BCLKI

Ended the interview.

25 mins around.

Mostly conversational, went into very depth of my work experience.

Transcript-3 

IIMC 6 Feb morning, panel D4

F-35

M-50s

M-40s

Overall experience ( chill panel, no grilling as such, cracked jokes in between, no intro, no why MBA)

F1 - Arts?

Me - Yes ma’am BA foundations in management from IIM Indore.

F1 - Oh your batchmate was here as well.. you know harsh Aggarwal. 

Me - yes ma’am, he is my batchmate

F1 - So did he tell anything about us??

Me - Yes he said interviewers are chill

F1 ( laughed ) - oohoo chill, ok so we will take a chill interview.

Me - ( just smiled, no other option)

F1 - how are professors at IIM Indore?

Me - they are the best

M1 - then why are you coming here?

Me - diversity, grooming in 2 top tier b schools, etc yapped something around that. Also told why all the professors are very good in b schools ( thoda sa buttering)

F1 - Did he (harsh) tell you any questions? 

Me - (my biggest mistake) Ma’am I don’t know exactly, but I think something related to MPC I was able to hear.

M1 - you are not supposed to talk to candidates after an interview

F1 - he was smart enough to get the questions

F1 - who taught you probability?

Me - told

F1 - who taught you psychology?

Me - told

F1 - what did you study in psychology?

Me - OCEAN model, mailgram’s experiment, the banality of evil, the marshmallow test

F1 - what is OCEAN model

Me - told

F1 - what is it used for?

Me - to assess personality

F1- any other personality tests you know?

Me - I don’t remember the names but our professor made us solve some questions from the test.

F1 - what do you do apart from academics at IIM Indore?

Me - co-curricular - NISM investment advisor, Six Sigma green belt, casual gaming in free time, following financial markets. I have also done research projects under my profs.

F1 - what was your research?

Me - told (impact of festivals on stock market volatility) - then I told the methodology and all tests I tried (Bartlett test -> Levene test -> bootstrap test -> block bootstrap -> garch)

Also mentioned that since these were financial statistical models, I didn’t learn them in stats courses. I learned it from genAI and the internet, and then applied it to my project. <indirectly showed that I am not bounded by my subjects, I can learn stuff according to tasks, tried my best to shift the conversation to stats but I think none of them was stats prof so nobody showed any interest>

M1 - since you are so interested in finance, why don’t you do CFA? Or why don’t you invest and earn money then come to IIMC?

Me - Sir I am already a regular investor and I think I can carry it out along with academics, regarding CFA. I wanted to do something different, as most of my batchmates approx (50/150) are doing CFA, so I don’t want to do it out of FOMO. That's why I did NISM investment advisor.

F1 - how many students from your college got calls from IIMs?

Me - around 20 for the top 3 IIMs and around 30 for other IIMs.

M1 - so are you giving CAT out of FOMO?

Me - no sir, I decided way before that I wanted to give CAT. So my batchmates giving CAT didn’t affect me. (Something like that I told)

M2 - ok so you think you are different from others?

Me - yes sir

M2 - do you think a student in b school should think differently 

Me - yes sir, gave an example. (During an IEMT class, there was a GD going on how AIs would negatively impact students, etc. the class was moving towards group thinking, and I thought about the topic differently and brought up a new point that earlier tools like Grammarly and all were also not accepted by various institutions. It was believed that it would hamper a person’s linguistic abilities and grammar. But today we have come to a point where our institution provides a subscription of grammarly. This shows how Grammarly has reduced the language barriers in academia. Similarly, GENAI can also reduce barriers in academia and not even academia in any other field. If I want to revise any of my courses, I can do that in just 5 minutes using GenAI. After this point, the GD in the class went in a different direction.)

M2- do business leaders think differently?

Me - yes they do!

M2 - give an example.

Me - Elon Musk, ( gave an example of reusable rockets, and recently his company SpaceX completed a test where he caught a rocket up from space on his first try)

M1 - what is the difference between PE ratio and EV/EBITDA ratio

Me - told

M1 - which one of them accounts for loans (something like that he asked)

I - was confused at first, he said you just told it now in definition, then I got it and said yes sir it is EV/EBITDA.

F1 - name all the northeastern states

Me - Named 6 of them, forgot 7th (Manipur)

F1 - (laughing) We were going to ask you questions about the Manipur issue but you didn’t mention the state’s name.

Me - sorry ma’am it slipped from my mind

F1 - what do you know about the Manipur issue?

Me - sorry, I m not sure what are you asking, I can try if I can get some context.

F1: no, leave it, which national issue are you following?

Me - rupee depreciation, last time when I checked it was around 87/dollar

M2 - 87 points?? 

Me - don’t remember the decimal but it crossed 87

Me - explained why it is a problem, India’s costly imports. And India has foreign debts so now a depreciated rupee would attract higher payment in rupees when converted to dollars. And India regularly imports oil, it requires dollars. Yapped on this

M2 - in the past, also India has deliberately depreciated its currency. What was the reason for that?

Me - it was to boost exports in India because if the rupee value is depreciated it would be cheaper for a person sitting in the USA to buy Indian products as compared to products of other countries. This would boost India’s export economy.

M2 - last question, what is the difference between revenue deficit, fiscal deficit, and trade deficit? Or are they the same thing?

Me - (got confused), they got that I didn’t know the answer. I started trying. 

M2 -if you know it correctly then only tell otherwise don’t tell. Abhi budget aaya h isseliye puch rha hu.

Me - sorry sir I don’t know the exact difference 

(i felt a little bad because I didn’t answer the last question) F1 saw that I was not happy, and she said one last question from my side.

F1- you live in Bareilly?

Me - yes

M2 - is it rai bareilly?

Me - no, Bareilly and rai Bareilly are different.

M2 - what is the difference? 

Me - -rai Bareilly is in central UP and Bareilly is in northwest UP.

M2- neighboring districts to Bareilly

Me - badayun, Rhoda

M2 - neighboring districts to rai bareil?

Me - sorry sir don’t know.

M2- no problem, it was good…

Me - thankyou sir (left)

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