Business Analytics Interview Questions in Kolkata

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CAC is total sales and marketing spend in a period divided by new customers acquired in that period. If you spend 10 lakh and gain 2,000 customers, CAC is 500 rupees. CAC payback period is how many months of gross profit from a customer it takes to recover that CAC. A shorter payback means the business can reinvest faster; many subscription businesses aim for under 12 months.

Write a SQL query to calculate the DAU to MAU stickiness ratio for a month.

Product AnalyticsMedium

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WITH daily AS ( SELECT event_date, COUNT(DISTINCT user_id) AS dau FROM events WHERE event_date >= '2026-10-01' AND event_date < '2026-11-01' GROUP BY event_date ), monthly AS ( SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT user_id) AS mau FROM events WHERE event_date >= '2026-10-01' AND event_date < '2026-11-01' ) SELECT ROUND(AVG(d.dau) * 1.0 / MAX(m.mau), 3) AS stickiness FROM daily d CROSS JOIN monthly m;

A company reports a profit every quarter but is running out of cash. How do you explain and investigate it?

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Profit is an accrual figure, while cash depends on timing. Check working capital first: receivables may be growing because customers pay late, inventory may be piling up, or suppliers may be demanding faster payment. Then look at large capex, loan repayments, and dividends. Review the cash flow statement and compute days sales outstanding and inventory days over time. Fixes include tighter credit terms, collection drives, inventory reduction and renegotiating supplier terms.

How is a product owner's role different from a business analyst's role?

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The product owner owns the product vision and the backlog order, makes final priority decisions and accepts completed work on behalf of the business. The business analyst works on understanding problems in depth: eliciting and analysing requirements, modelling processes and data, writing detailed stories and acceptance criteria and supporting the team and testers. In smaller teams one person may do both, but the PO decides what, while the BA clarifies how it should work.

What is the difference between ROI, ROE and ROCE?

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ROI (return on investment) is the gain from a specific investment divided by its cost and is used to judge projects or campaigns. ROE (return on equity) is net profit divided by shareholders' equity and shows the return to owners; high debt can inflate it. ROCE (return on capital employed) is EBIT divided by equity plus long-term debt and shows how efficiently all long-term capital is used. ROCE is better for comparing companies with different debt levels.

What are the current ratio and the quick ratio?

Financial and Business AnalysisEasy

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Both measure short-term liquidity. The current ratio is current assets divided by current liabilities; around 1.5 to 2 is often comfortable, though it varies by industry. The quick ratio excludes inventory and prepaid items: (cash plus marketable securities plus receivables) divided by current liabilities. It is stricter because inventory may not sell quickly. A retailer with a current ratio of 1.8 but a quick ratio of 0.4 depends heavily on selling its stock to pay bills.

How do you find duplicate customers?

SQL for Business AnalysisMedium

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SELECT email, COUNT(*) FROM customers GROUP BY email HAVING COUNT(*) > 1;

A KPI on your dashboard dropped 40 percent overnight. What are your first steps?

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Assume a data problem until proven otherwise, because real businesses rarely move 40 percent in a day. Check whether the refresh completed, whether source row counts look normal, and whether any tracking, pipeline or definition changed. Compare with a raw source query and a related metric, such as orders versus payments. If the data is fine, segment by channel, region and platform to locate the drop, then alert the owners quickly.

The CEO wants one KPI to judge the customer support team. What would you propose?

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A single KPI can be gamed, so I would propose one headline with guardrails. The headline could be first-contact resolution rate, because it reflects solving problems, not just closing tickets. Guardrails would be customer satisfaction score after the ticket and median first response time. I would also watch ticket volume per thousand orders, which shows whether product issues are falling. Review targets quarterly with the support head.

What is working capital and why does it matter?

Financial and Business AnalysisEasy

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Working capital is current assets minus current liabilities, mainly receivables plus inventory minus payables. It is the money tied up in running daily operations. Too little means the company may struggle to pay suppliers and salaries; too much means cash is locked in slow inventory or unpaid customer invoices. Analysts track it because a growing business often needs more working capital, so fast growth can create cash shortages even when the business is profitable.

What is ARPU and how is it calculated?

Business Metrics and KPIsEasy

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ARPU, Average Revenue Per User, is total revenue in a period divided by the average number of users in that period. If a telecom-style app earns 50 lakh in a month from 25,000 average users, ARPU is 200 rupees. It is tracked to see whether growth comes from more users or more value per user. ARPPU, revenue per paying user, is used when only some users pay.

In the middle of a sprint, a senior stakeholder asks to add an urgent feature. What do you do?

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Understand the urgency and the business impact of waiting until the next sprint. Bring it to the product owner, who decides. If it truly cannot wait, the team agrees to swap out work of similar size so the sprint goal stays realistic, and the trade-off is made visible to the stakeholder. If it can wait, add it to the top of the backlog for the next sprint. Avoid silently adding scope.

What is a BRD review and who signs it off?

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Stakeholders and the sponsor review the Business Requirements Document for completeness and accuracy, and the business owner gives formal sign-off before design begins.

Write a SQL query to find the second-highest salary in an employees table.

SQL for Business AnalysisEasy

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SELECT MAX(salary) AS second_highest FROM employees WHERE salary < (SELECT MAX(salary) FROM employees); -- or with a window function SELECT DISTINCT salary FROM ( SELECT salary, DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY salary DESC) AS rk FROM employees ) t WHERE rk = 2;

What does expectation management mean for a business analyst?

Stakeholder CommunicationMedium

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It means making sure stakeholders know realistically what will be delivered, when, and with what limits, before they form their own assumptions. A BA confirms scope in writing, states assumptions and dependencies, shares estimates with ranges, and flags risks early. When something changes, they update stakeholders immediately with options. Most stakeholder conflict comes from surprises, not from bad news itself.

What is a break-even point?

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The sales volume where total revenue equals total cost. It equals fixed cost divided by contribution margin per unit.

What are start, intermediate and end events in BPMN?

Process Modelling and BPMNEasy

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Events are circles that show something happening. A start event (thin border) triggers the process, such as a form submitted or a timer firing on the first of the month. An intermediate event (double border) happens during the process, such as waiting for a payment message or a 48-hour timer. An end event (thick border) marks where a path finishes and can carry a result such as a message, an error or termination of all paths.

Your Power BI report takes 30 seconds to load. How do you speed it up?

Power BI and TableauHard

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Start with Performance Analyzer to see which visuals and DAX queries are slow. Then fix the model: remove unused columns, reduce high-cardinality text, use a star schema and correct data types. Rewrite heavy measures, avoiding FILTER over whole tables and nested iterators. Cut the number of visuals per page, use aggregations or Import instead of DirectQuery where possible, and push transformations upstream into SQL or Power Query.

After a redesign, average time spent in the app increased. Is that good?

Product AnalyticsMedium

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It depends on the product's goal. For a content or learning app, more time may mean more engagement. For a payments or banking app, more time can mean users struggle to complete tasks. Check task completion rate, time to complete key actions, errors, support tickets and retention. A metric is good only when it moves in line with the value users came for.

Agile vs Waterfall?

Requirements and AgileEasy

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Waterfall runs fixed phases one after another with requirements frozen early. Agile delivers in short sprints with continuous feedback, so requirements can change. In Agile, BAs maintain the backlog and user stories.

What does the CALCULATE function do in DAX?

Power BI and TableauMedium

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CALCULATE evaluates an expression under a modified filter context. You pass a measure plus filter arguments that add, replace or remove filters, for example CALCULATE([Sales], 'Region'[Name] = "North") or CALCULATE([Sales], ALL('Product')). It is the basis of time intelligence, percent-of-total and comparison measures. It also triggers context transition when used inside a row context, which is powerful but a common source of confusion.

What is the cash conversion cycle?

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The cash conversion cycle measures how many days cash is tied up in operations. It equals days inventory outstanding plus days sales outstanding minus days payables outstanding. Example: inventory sits 40 days, customers pay in 30 days and suppliers are paid in 45 days, so the cycle is 40 + 30 - 45 = 25 days. A shorter cycle means less working capital is needed. Some marketplaces have a negative cycle because they collect from customers before paying sellers.

Tell me about a time UAT revealed a major issue that earlier testing missed.

UAT and BA DocumentationMedium

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Situation: a new claims system passed QA, but in UAT a claims officer tried a real scenario with two policies on one claim. Task: as BA I had to assess and resolve it quickly. Action: I confirmed the requirement never covered multi-policy claims, quantified that 8 percent of claims were affected, and agreed a manual workaround while the change was built. Result: we went live on time, delivered the fix in the next release, and I added real case samples to future test design.

What is the profit equation and how do you use it in cases?

Case Studies and GuesstimatesMedium

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Profit = Revenue minus Cost, where revenue = price x volume and cost = fixed + variable. Split each part to find which one explains a change.

How do you handle NULL values when calculating averages?

SQL for Business AnalysisMedium

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AVG ignores NULLs; use COALESCE(col, 0) if NULLs should count as zero, depending on the business meaning.

How do you write a query to find users active in consecutive months?

SQL for Business AnalysisMedium

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Get distinct user-month pairs, self-join or use LAG on month per user, and keep rows where the previous month is exactly one month earlier.

What do statistical significance and p-value mean in an A/B test?

Product AnalyticsMedium

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The p-value is the probability of seeing a difference at least as large as observed if the change truly had no effect. If it is below the chosen threshold, often 0.05, the result is called statistically significant. It does not mean there is a 95 percent chance the variant is better, and significance is not the same as business importance. Always report the confidence interval of the lift as well.

How do you use NPV and payback period to evaluate an investment in a case?

Case Studies and GuesstimatesHard

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Estimate the upfront investment and yearly incremental cash flows, then discount future cash flows at the cost of capital to compute Net Present Value. A positive NPV means the investment creates value. Payback period is how many years until cumulative cash flows recover the investment, which shows risk and liquidity but ignores later cash flows and time value. Present both, with a sensitivity check on key assumptions like volume and price.

Tell me about a time you built a business case for a project. Was it approved?

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Situation: our support team handled order-status queries manually, about 9,000 a month. Task: I was asked to evaluate a self-service tracking page. Action: I measured handling time from ticket data, estimated deflection conservatively at 40 percent, worked with IT on build and run costs and showed best, base and worst cases with payback. Result: leadership approved the base case. Six months after launch, deflection reached 46 percent, and I presented the benefits review to the same committee.

How do you compute CAGR in Excel?

Excel for Business AnalystsMedium

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CAGR = (End value / Start value)^(1/years) - 1, entered as =(B2/A2)^(1/n)-1.

How do you build a forecast in Excel?

Excel for Business AnalystsMedium

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Use historical data with FORECAST.ETS or trend lines, state assumptions, compare against actuals and show best, base and worst scenarios.

Tell me about a time you had to learn a new analytics tool quickly for a project.

Power BI and TableauEasy

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Situation: my team moved reporting from Excel to Power BI, and I had two weeks to rebuild the weekly sales report. Task: deliver it on time without errors. Action: I took a short online course, practised data modelling on a copy of our data, and asked a colleague to review my DAX measures. I reconciled every number with the old Excel report before launch. Result: the report went live on schedule, and refresh time dropped from half a day to minutes.

What is a spike in Agile and when would a business analyst request one?

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A spike is a time-boxed story used for research or experimentation to reduce uncertainty, not to deliver a feature. Its output is knowledge, such as a recommendation or a prototype. A BA might request one when the team cannot estimate a story because an external API, a data source or a regulation is unclear, for example checking whether a payment gateway supports partial refunds. The time box, often one to three days, prevents open-ended investigation.

Describe a time you explained a complex technical topic to a non-technical audience.

Stakeholder CommunicationMedium

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Situation: operations managers did not trust a new demand forecast that drove staffing. Task: explain it so they would use it. Action: I avoided model terms and showed how it used last year's same week, recent trend and festival calendar, with a chart of past forecasts against actuals. I compared the forecast range to a weather forecast. Result: managers started using it for rosters and gave feedback that improved it further.

What is the Ansoff matrix and how is it used in growth cases?

Case Studies and GuesstimatesMedium

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The Ansoff matrix maps four growth strategies by product and market. Market penetration sells existing products to existing markets, the lowest risk. Product development offers new products to existing customers. Market development takes existing products to new markets, such as new cities. Diversification launches new products in new markets, the highest risk. In a growth case it structures the options before you evaluate each one's size, cost and fit.

What are acceptance criteria?