01
What is the difference between COUNT(*) and COUNT(column)?
Show answer
COUNT(*) counts all rows; COUNT(column) counts only rows where that column is not NULL.
TCS Business Analytics Interview Questions & Answers
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02
SQL: top 5 customers by spend.
Show answer
SELECT customer_id, SUM(amount) AS spend
FROM orders
GROUP BY customer_id
ORDER BY spend DESC
LIMIT 5;
03
Explain Porter's Five Forces.
Show answer
A model assessing industry attractiveness through supplier power, buyer power, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes and rivalry among competitors.
04
Revenue grew but profit fell. Why could that happen?
Show answer
Look at the cost side: heavier discounts, higher CAC, logistics costs, product mix shifting to low-margin items, one-time expenses or pricing changes. Break contribution margin down by segment.
05
BRD vs FRD?
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A BRD states what the business needs and why. An FRD details how the system should behave to meet those needs (functional specifications).
06
What does GROUP BY do and how is HAVING different from WHERE?
Show answer
GROUP BY aggregates rows by column; WHERE filters before grouping and HAVING filters after, using aggregate conditions.
07
What are fixed costs and variable costs?
Show answer
Fixed costs stay constant regardless of volume, such as rent; variable costs change with volume, such as raw materials.
08
Difference between INNER JOIN and LEFT JOIN?
Show answer
INNER returns only matching rows; LEFT returns all rows from the left table and NULLs where there is no match.
09
What is sensitivity analysis?
Show answer
Testing how changes in key inputs such as price or volume affect the output, in Excel using data tables or scenario manager.
10
Guesstimate: how many cups of tea are sold in Delhi per day?
Show answer
Population about 20 million, adult tea drinkers about 50%, cups bought outside per person around 1 on average. This gives roughly 10 million cups, then adjust for offices and stalls.
11
Should a food-delivery app launch in a new city?
Show answer
Check market size (population, online ordering share), competition, restaurant supply, unit economics per order, CAC and payback period. Propose a pilot with clear success metrics.
12
What is a KPI and give examples for an e-commerce business?
Show answer
A measurable value showing progress to a goal, such as conversion rate, average order value, cart abandonment rate and customer retention.
13
What is a RACI matrix?
Show answer
A table assigning Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed roles per task so ownership is clear.
14
What is Agile and how does Scrum work?
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Agile delivers value in small increments with feedback. Scrum organises work in sprints with planning, daily stand-ups, review and retrospective, led by a Scrum Master and Product Owner.
15
Guesstimate: how many cars are sold in India every year?
Show answer
Structure it: households × car-owning share ÷ replacement cycle + first-time buyers + commercial fleet. State each assumption clearly and sanity-check the final number.
16
How do you protect a worksheet or workbook?
Show answer
Review > Protect Sheet or Workbook with a password, lock cells, hide formulas and allow only selected cells to be edited.
17
How do you analyse variance between budget and actual?
Show answer
Variance = Actual - Budget, shown as amount and percentage, with conditional formatting to flag large gaps and comments on the drivers.
18
A food delivery company's orders fell 15%. How do you investigate?
Show answer
Check data accuracy, then segment by city, restaurant, time and user type; look at supply, delivery time, pricing, competitors and seasonality before proposing fixes.
19
What is customer lifetime value?
Show answer
The total profit expected from a customer over the relationship, roughly average margin x purchase frequency x lifespan, compared with acquisition cost.
20
What is the role of a BA in Scrum?
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They help the Product Owner refine the backlog, write stories and acceptance criteria, clarify details with developers and support testing and demos.
21
What is root cause analysis and which techniques do you know?
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Finding the underlying reason for a problem using the 5 Whys, fishbone diagrams or Pareto analysis, then fixing the cause not the symptom.
22
How do you validate that a report's numbers are correct?
Show answer
Reconcile totals with source tables using SQL, check filters and joins for duplication, compare with prior periods and verify with business owners.
23
How would you forecast next quarter's sales in Excel?
Show answer
Use FORECAST.ETS or a trendline on monthly history, check seasonality, compare with a simple moving average and present a range, not a single number.
24
What is a break-even point?
Show answer
The sales volume where total revenue equals total cost. It equals fixed cost divided by contribution margin per unit.
25
What techniques do you use to elicit requirements?
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Interviews, workshops, surveys, observation, document analysis, prototyping and brainstorming, chosen according to stakeholders and project stage.
26
How would you price a new subscription product?
Show answer
Combine cost-plus, competitor benchmarks and willingness to pay from research, test tiers with experiments and check margin and churn impact.
27
Use case vs user story?
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A use case describes the full interaction between an actor and the system (main and alternate flows). A user story is a short statement of need from the user's point of view, refined with acceptance criteria.
28
What is SQL and why do business analysts need it?
Show answer
A language for querying databases. BAs use it to pull data themselves, validate numbers, check reports and answer questions without waiting for engineers.
29
How would you prioritise 10 features with a limited budget?
Show answer
Score them with RICE or value-vs-effort, align with goals, consider dependencies and risks, validate with stakeholders, then use MoSCoW for the release plan.
30
SQL: total revenue per month.
Show answer
SELECT DATE_TRUNC('month', order_date) AS month, SUM(amount) AS revenue
FROM orders GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1;
-- MySQL: DATE_FORMAT(order_date, '%Y-%m')
31
How do you validate data before analysis?
Show answer
Check row counts against the source, nulls, duplicates on keys, value ranges, date coverage and that totals reconcile with finance reports.
32
How do you manage conflicting requirements from two senior stakeholders?
Show answer
Clarify the underlying goals, present data and trade-offs, facilitate a joint session, escalate to the sponsor if needed and document the agreed decision.
33
How do you prioritise requirements?
Show answer
Use MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won't), value versus effort scoring or the Kano model, agreed with stakeholders based on business value and risk.
34
What is the difference between XLOOKUP and INDEX-MATCH?
Show answer
Both look up values flexibly; XLOOKUP is simpler with built-in not-found handling, while INDEX-MATCH works in older Excel versions.
35
What is a data table in Excel?
Show answer
A what-if tool that recalculates a formula for different inputs, for example loan payments across different rates and tenures.
36
How do you find the top 5 customers by revenue?
Show answer
SELECT customer_id, SUM(amount) AS revenue FROM orders GROUP BY customer_id ORDER BY revenue DESC LIMIT 5;
37
What is the use of the IFERROR function?
Show answer
It returns a custom value when a formula errors out, keeping reports clean, for example =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(...), "Not found").
38
How do you estimate the annual revenue of a coffee shop chain?
Show answer
Number of outlets x daily customers x average bill x operating days, then validate using footfall, peak hours and similar chains.
39
What is a use case diagram?
Show answer
A UML diagram showing actors and the actions (use cases) they perform with the system, giving a quick view of scope.
40
What are aggregate functions?
Show answer
Functions that summarise rows into a value, such as COUNT, SUM, AVG, MIN and MAX.
41
What is a KPI tree?
Show answer
It breaks a top metric into drivers: Revenue = Users × Conversion × AOV; Users = New + Returning, and so on. It shows which lever to pull and where a drop came from.
42
How would you build a simple financial model in Excel?
Show answer
Separate inputs, calculations and outputs, link all formulas to input cells, add scenarios and checks, and avoid hard-coded numbers inside formulas.
43
How do you use Excel's Scenario Manager?
Show answer
Define named scenarios such as best, base and worst with different input values and compare the outputs in a summary report.
44
What are the 4 Ps of marketing?
Show answer
Product, Price, Place and Promotion, the levers a business uses to bring an offering to market.
45
What is a product backlog vs a sprint backlog?
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The product backlog is the ordered list of all desired work; the sprint backlog is the subset the team commits to in the current sprint.
46
How would you estimate the market size for an electric scooter in India?
Show answer
Top-down: two-wheeler market x EV share x addressable segment. Bottom-up: target households x adoption rate x price. Compare both for a sanity check.
47
A client's profits are falling. How do you structure the problem?
Show answer
Split into revenue and cost, then revenue into price, volume and mix, and cost into fixed and variable; check internal factors and external market factors.
48
What are wireframes and why are they useful for a BA?
Show answer
Low-fidelity layouts of screens that help stakeholders visualise and agree on requirements before development starts.
49
What is Kano model in prioritisation?
Show answer
A model classifying features as basic, performance or delight attributes based on how they affect customer satisfaction, helping decide what to build first.
50
What are acceptance criteria?
Show answer
Clear, testable conditions a story must meet to be accepted, often written as Given-When-Then scenarios.
51
Which what-if analysis tools does Excel have?
Show answer
Goal Seek (find the input for a target output), Data Tables (see outputs for many inputs) and Scenario Manager (save best, base and worst cases).
52
What is a stakeholder and who are the typical stakeholders in a project?
Show answer
Anyone affected by or influencing the project: sponsors, product owners, end users, developers, testers, operations and customers.
53
What is a SWOT analysis?
Show answer
A framework listing internal Strengths and Weaknesses and external Opportunities and Threats to assess a project or business position.
54
What is Power Pivot?
Show answer
An Excel add-in for building data models with relationships and DAX measures over millions of rows, beyond normal worksheet limits.
55
Do a quick SWOT analysis for an ed-tech company.
Show answer
Strengths and Weaknesses are internal; Opportunities and Threats are external. Example: S = strong faculty, W = low brand awareness, O = AI upskilling demand, T = free online content.
56
How do you approach a guesstimate question?
Show answer
Clarify the scope, break the problem into logical parts, state assumptions with round numbers, compute step by step and sanity-check the answer.
57
What is a primary key?
Show answer
A column or set of columns that uniquely identifies each row in a table and cannot contain NULL.
58
How do you calculate the percentage contribution of each category?
Show answer
SUM(sales) per category divided by SUM(SUM(sales)) OVER () and multiplied by 100 gives each category's share of the total.
59
How do you handle changing requirements?
Show answer
Log the change, assess impact on scope, cost and timeline, get approval through change control or backlog grooming, and update documents and stakeholders.
60
How do you handle large datasets in Excel?
Show answer
Use tables, Power Query, remove volatile functions, filter before calculating and move to Power Pivot or a database when rows reach the millions.
61
How would you size the market for IT courses in Delhi NCR?
Show answer
Top-down: NCR population aged 18–30 × share of graduates × share wanting paid upskilling × average fee. Cross-check bottom-up with institutes × batches × students × fees. State your assumptions.
62
How do you compute CAGR in Excel?
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CAGR = (End value / Start value)^(1/years) - 1, entered as =(B2/A2)^(1/n)-1.
63
What is a process flow and which tools do you use?
Show answer
A diagram of steps, decisions and owners in a process, made using BPMN or flowcharts in tools like Visio, Lucidchart or draw.io.
64
Guesstimate: how many pizzas are sold in Mumbai on a weekend?
Show answer
About 20 million people, roughly 10% order pizza on a weekend, about 1 pizza per 2 people in an order. This gives roughly 1 million pizzas, adjusted for outlets and delivery capacity.
65
What is a stakeholder analysis?
Show answer
Identifying everyone affected by the project and mapping their influence and interest to decide how to communicate with and involve each group.
66
How do you handle NULL values when calculating averages?
Show answer
AVG ignores NULLs; use COALESCE(col, 0) if NULLs should count as zero, depending on the business meaning.
67
What is the difference between revenue and profit?
Show answer
Revenue is total money from sales; profit is what remains after subtracting all costs and expenses.