Student's Name: Mridul Gupta
The Current B-School: IIM Lucknow
The B-School To Which The Interview Experience Pertains: IIM Lucknow
Share A Brief About Your Profile: Mridul is a Mechanical Engineering graduate from IIT Guwahati (batch of 2018). After working for three years with ITC Limited in the operations domain. He scored a 98.83 percentile in CAT 2020 and joined IIM Lucknow in its PGP program.
The Interview Experience:
Date & Time: 3:27 PM,6th March
Checked my Aadhar Card
Interviewer: Tell me about yourself
Me: I am Mridul; I come from Jaipur, Rajasthan. I did my schooling in the same city. After school, I went to Guwahati, Assam, to pursue my bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Guwahati. Apart from academics, I was also a part of several extra-curricular activities when I was there. Some of them were being part of the basketball club and UG Senator. A UG senator is one of the seven representatives of the UG student body. While in college, I had an opportunity to work with ITC Limited as an intern. While on the internship, I worked to reduce quality defects in one of their products. I significantly reduced the defect occurrence, and based on my performance; I was offered an opportunity to work full-time with the company. One year later, I joined the company as Assistant Manager-Operations. I started to work for the Notebooks category, which works on a third-Party convertor manufacturing model. Initially, I looked after institutional operations, later I moved to GT operations, and I currently work in the same role.
Interviewer: Tell me about your family.
Me: My family lives in Rajasthan. My Father has a business, my mother is a housewife, and my brother is a CA.
Interviewer: What were your activities outside the campus.
Me: In my first year, as a part of our technical festival Techniche, we used to go to the village next to our college and teach government school students on Sundays.
Interviewer: Do you work for ITC's Stationery Business?
Me: Yes, I work for ITC Limited's Education and Stationery Products Business, in the notebooks category. They sell notebooks under brands Classmate, Saathi, and Paperkraft.
Interviewer: Ok, so who is your biggest competitor?
Me: Our most significant competitor in the domestic market is Navneet.
Interviewer: What is its market share, and what is your market share?
Me: Sir, Navneet's market share in the domestic market is 7 percent, and our market share is 25 percent.
Interviewer: So, what would you do to increase your market share?
Me: To increase the market share, we need to look after the customer and the retailers and distributors. For this, we are slowly shifting from third-party manufacturing to in-house manufacturing. This will bring us cost savings, and we will push that benefit to customers and retailers.
Interviewer: You have worked for two years in ITC and will be completing three years; what are your significant learnings?
Me: We do a variety of work daily, which we learn as and when required. But the primary skills I have gained in my experience with ITC are time management and the ability to manage multiple tasks at a time.
Interviewer: What do you like to read?
Me: I started to read while in my final year of college. Initially, I used to read fiction. The books I have read are majorly on self-improvement in the last two years. One of the books was about getting someone to yes in a negotiation. Another book on investing was called The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.
Interviewer: Get us to a yes that you should be admitted to IIM Lucknow.
Me: Sir, I work for a company for which many people will be working after graduating from IIM Lucknow. I have a perspective that most people would be getting in the future. When I am part of IIM Lucknow and working with other students there, I can give them the perspective of how things happen inside companies in real. I can also help them connect their theoretical concepts to reality.
Interviewer: What specialization would you like to pursue if you come to IIM Lucknow.
Me: If I come to IIM Lucknow, initially, I would want to learn about all the streams in the first year. Since I have worked for Operations, I would go for Supply Chain and Operations electives. But I am keeping my mind open so that if I like some other subject, like finance, I can opt for them.
Interviewer: What other calls do you have?
Me: Other than IIM Lucknow, I have IIM Shillong call.
Interviewer: So, this is your best call as of now?
Me: Yes, sir.
Interviewer: Thank You, Mridul. It was nice talking to you. You may disconnect now.
Me: It was nice talking to you too, sir; thank you so much!
Final Verdict: Converted & Joined
Any Advice For Upcoming Aspirants?
Prepare all the HR questions well. Go through all the points filled in the student information carefully and be prepared for an in-depth discussion on any of the points. Practice through as many mock interviews as possible.
