Case Question - Introduction

Now, I am going to start a new series on Case Questions and how these can be solved. Whenever we want to solve any case question, we can ask the interview panel like what is the size or what is the cost of the material etc. If the interview panel does not give any clue, then you assume or guess based on your experience. Even if it is a guess, it should be closer to the reality. For example, while assuming the cost of Super Lux bath soap, we may assume Rs. 7 or Rs. 10 per soap, but we can not assume Rs. 100 or 150 per soap. Moreover, whenever we assume a figure, it should be easier to multiply like multiples of 5, 10 or 100. Many a times, we have to round it off the intermediate results to the nearest tenths or hundreds. Say, we got a figure of 4250, then we round it off to 4000. Even while assuming percentages, you can take figures in multiple of 5 or 10 like 40% or 45%.

In general, we should know broadly the demographic statistics of India based on the latest census of 2001. I am giving a gist of demographic statistics of India as per the All India Census, 2001.

1. Population of India - 104 Crores (You can assume 100 crores)
2. Life expectancy - 64 (You can assume 65)
3. Rural Population - 70%
4. Per Capita Income - around Rs. 25,000 at Current Prices
5. Size of middle class - 300 million
6. Population dependent on agriculture - 62% (You can ssume 60%)
7. Population growth rate - 1.93%
8. Average family size - 5 (for both rural and urban)
9. Population below poverty line - 26%
10. How much Indians spend on food - Average 50% of their earnings
11. No. of tax payers in India - 5 crore
12. No. of individual tax payers - 4 crore (Income above Rs. 1,00,000 p.a)
13. No. of internet users in India - 37 million
14. No. of persons employed - 42%


Example : Estimate the size of the disposable diaper market in India.

First, I’m going to assume that there are 1000 million Indians, which is near to the actual population. I’m going to further assume that the average life expectancy of an Indian is 65 years, as per the latest Census of 2001. I’m also going to assume that there are even numbers of people in each age group. And that there are exactly same numbers of 8 year-olds as 62 year-olds.

You divide 1000 million by 65 and you get about 1.6 million people per age group. Children wear diapers from ago zero to 3 in India so that’s 4.80 million kids wearing diapers. So we’ll round it off to 5 million kids. It is said disposable diapers. So I’ll estimate that 30 percent of children wear disposable diapers, as 70% of them stay in rural areas. So now we’re talking about 1.50 million children wearing 2 diapers a day (again assuming). That’s 3 million diapers a day times 365 equals approximately 1000 million or 1 billion diapers a year.

I hope, i have contributed my two cents