IIM Interview Questions and Answers

Q1. Tell me about yourself?
I started with my prepared pitch but I was cut short in between and asked to explain it in some other way, Thankfully, I had a back up plan, I blutered it out and in between quoted 40 million guests as part of World Culture Festival(I was a cultural coordinator)

Q2. What sort of company?
*described my idea and plan of action in detail*

Q3. Who, I thought was paying no attention..Jumped in between and said are you sure about 40 million?
I said yes and continued with my answer.
Meanwhile P1 took out his phone and googled something

Q4. You seem to have everything figured out. What do you need an MBA for? Go ahead and build your startup right now.
Sir, at the moment I don’t have a deep enough understanding of how businesses and markets work. I think an MBA will teach me the basics… *interrupted*

Q5. Do you know the population of Delhi
I said, it’s somewhere abound 1.5cr+ and as soon I said I realised guests were 4 million and not 40. I accepted my mistake and told him the right figure. He looked calm and I believe, I managed to duck that bouncer well.

Q6. Do you think we teach entrepreneurship here?
Not exactly, sir, but the course content is very relevant to someone who wants to start a business. IIMB also has the NSR cell that helps entrepreneurs… *interrupted*

Q7. So you were part of World Culture Festival, don’t you think you have destroyed the yamuna bank and water bodies? What’s your take on NGT’s ruling.
Thankfully I knew in and out of the project and was following the court orders. So I was able to explain my part. There were some counter questions, which I explained via the architecture brilliance of stage, fines, artists etc.

Q8. Name some of the startups in India.
Flipkart, Paytm, Ola Cabs… *interrupted*

Q9. Do you know anything about the founders of these companies?
I know their names sir. Sachin Bansal founded… *interrupted*

Q10. You have worked with Infosys, what’s your take on recent Sikka-Murthy controversy.
I have read about this issues multiple times so I was confident and went into greater details. P1 intervened and asked for some more details, which I humbly said I was not aware of.
Then discussion shifted to personality of Mr. narayan murthy, I was asked about his style of leadership, his philosophy, and his contributions.

Q11. How many of them have MBAs?
None of them do, I think. They are all engineers.

Q12. Ok that’s about murthy, what happened between Tata and Mistry. Any comments?
I told them whatever I knew of. I had read about the case so was comfortable but then P2 asked me to comment on some PSA theory of management. Honestly, I had no clue and said if you can explain a bit then I can definitely add on to it.
Theory was about how owners of business chose managers to run their company and later on fight it out for the company’s vision etc. He said this was very common in India, I added it’s a global phenomenon providing some examples.
He asked for an exception, I quoted Microsoft because of smooth transition from Bill Gates to Ballmer to now Satya Nadella without much intervention from Bill Gates. He seemed happy, and I thought it must be right

Q13. Do you think they had sufficient knowledge about how to run businesses?
I’m not sure sir… they might have got other people to handle the business while they tackled the coding part.