Zoho Corporation interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - Intern

Zoho Corporation
upvote
share-icon
4 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

expand-icon
Preparation
Duration: 4 months
Topics: Data Structures, Algorithms, System Design, Aptitude, OOPS
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Must do Previously asked Interview as well as Online Test Questions.
Tip 2 : Go through all the previous interview experiences from Codestudio and Leetcode.
Tip 3 : Do at-least 2 good projects and you must know every bit of them.

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: Above 7 CGPA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Have at-least 2 good projects explained in short with all important points covered.
Tip 2 : Every skill must be mentioned.
Tip 3 : Focus on skills, projects and experiences more.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Easy
Coding Test - Pen and paper
Duration125 minutes
Interview date22 May 2015
Coding problem0

Practice questions in geekquiz.com and C output questions in Codestudio (Basics of C) and GFG. Questions in pointers, strings, matrix etc. Nearly 60 students were selected out of 600 candidates. They didn’t select the top 60. They had a cutoff and those who cleared the cutoff were called for the next round

02
Round
Medium
Coding Test - Pen and paper
Duration120 minutes
Interview date22 May 2015
Coding problem4

5 DSA problems were given in this round.

1. Reverse the String

Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
IBMFacebookAcko

You are given a string 'STR'. The string contains [a-z] [A-Z] [0-9] [special characters]. You have to find the reverse of the string.

For example:

 If the given string is: STR = "abcde". You have to print the string "edcba".
follow up:
Try to solve the problem in O(1) space complexity. 
Problem approach

This can be done by iterative swapping using two pointers. The first pointer points to the beginning of the string, whereas the second pointer points to the end. Both pointers keep swapping their elements and go towards each other. Essentially, the algorithm simulates the rotation of a string with respect to its midpoint.
Time Complexity : O(n)

Try solving now

2. Intersection Of Two Arrays

Easy
10m average time
90% success
0/40
Asked in companies
IBMFacebookBig Basket

You are given two arrays 'A' and 'B' of size 'N' and 'M' respectively. Both these arrays are sorted in non-decreasing order. You have to find the intersection of these two arrays.

Intersection of two arrays is an array that consists of all the common elements occurring in both arrays.

Note :
1. The length of each array is greater than zero.
2. Both the arrays are sorted in non-decreasing order.
3. The output should be in the order of elements that occur in the original arrays.
4. If there is no intersection present then return an empty array.
Problem approach

1) Initialize an empty hash set or hash map mp;
2) Iterate through the first array and put every element of the first array in the set mp.
3) Repeat the process for the second array.
4) Print the set mp.

Time complexity : O(m+n) under the assumption that hash table search and insert operations take O(1) time.
Space complexity : O(m+n)

Try solving now

3. Ninja and substrings

Easy
20m average time
80% success
0/40
Asked in companies
LinkedInLivekeeping (An IndiaMART Company)Zoho Corporation

Ninja has been given a string 'STR' containing only lowercase alphabetic characters. Ninja has to find the number of all the different possible substrings of size two that appear in 'STR' as contiguous substrings.

For example:

If the string is “abcd”, then all possible substrings of size two are { “ab”, “bc”, “cd”}.
Problem approach

The brute force solution is to check for every index in the string whether the sub-string can be formed at that index or not. To implement this, run a nested loop traversing the given string and check for sub-string from every index in the inner loop. 
Time Complexity : O(n^2)
The solution can be optimised by using KMP Algorithm. The KMP matching algorithm uses degenerating property (pattern having same sub-patterns appearing more than once in the pattern) of the pattern. The basic idea behind KMP algorithm is: whenever we detect a mismatch (after some matches), we already know some of the characters in the text of the next window. 
Pseudocode:
Find Prefix:
Begin
length := 0
prefArray[0] := 0

for all character index i of pattern, do
if pattern[i] = pattern[length], then
increase length by 1
prefArray[i] := length
else
if length !=0 then
length := prefArray[length - 1]
decrease i by 1
else
prefArray[i] := 0
done
End
KMP Algorithm:
Begin
n := size of text
m := size of pattern
call findPrefix(pattern, m, prefArray)

while i < n, do
if text[i] = pattern[j], then
increase i and j by 1
if j = m, then
print the location (i-j) as there is the pattern
j := prefArray[j-1]
else if i < n AND pattern[j] != text[i] then
if j != 0 then
j := prefArray[j - 1]
else
increase i by 1
done
End

Try solving now

4. Segregate Odd-Even

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
Wells FargoThought WorksMicrosoft

There is a wedding ceremony at NinjaLand. The bride and groom want everybody to play a game and thus, they have blindfolded the attendees. The people from the bride’s side are holding odd numbers and people from the groom’s side are holding the even numbers. For the game to start quickly, all the bride’s side people should come first, followed by the groom’s side people in the same order.

The attendees of the wedding with their numbers are given in the form of a Singly Linked List, arranged randomly.

A singly linked list is a type of linked list that is unidirectional; that is, it can be traversed in only one direction from head to the last node (tail).

Example:
The attendees holding numbers from 1, 4, 3 are shown: 

As the organizers are busy, you have to arrange all the people by arranging the bride’s side people first followed by the groom’s side people sequentially.

Note:
For the above example 1 -> 4 -> 3, 1 -> 3 -> 4 is the only correct answer, i.e nodes should be grouped sequentially. Hence, 3 -> 1 -> 4 is the wrong answer as we have to preserve the same order.
Problem approach

Two auxiliary arrays can be used to solve this problem. Traverse the input array and put all even-placed elements in one array and odd placed elements in the other array. Next, sort the first array in ascending and second array in descending order. Finally, copy both the arrays to get the required result.

Try solving now
03
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration60 minutes
Interview date22 May 2015
Coding problem1

This was a technical design round with 1 question.

1. System Design Question

Design a Call taxi booking application
-There are n number of taxi’s. For simplicity, assume 4. But it should work for any number of taxi’s.
-The are 6 points(A,B,C,D,E,F)
-All the points are in a straight line, and each point is 15kms away from the adjacent points.
-It takes 60 mins to travel from one point to another
-Each taxi charges Rs.100 minimum for the first 5 kilometers and Rs.10 for the subsequent kilometers.
-For simplicity, time can be entered as absolute time. Eg: 9hrs, 15hrs etc.
-All taxi’s are initially stationed at A.
-When a customer books a Taxi, a free taxi at that point is allocated
-If no free taxi is available at that point, a free taxi at the nearest point is allocated.
-If two taxi’s are free at the same point, one with lower earning is allocated
-Note that the taxi only charges the customer from the pickup point to the drop point. Not the distance it travels from an adjacent point to pickup the customer.
-If no taxi is free at that time, booking is rejected

Design modules for : 
1) Call taxi booking 
Input 1:
Customer ID: 1
Pickup Point: A
Drop Point: B
Pickup Time: 9

Output 1:
Taxi can be allotted.
Taxi-1 is allotted

Input 2:
Customer ID: 2
Pickup Point: B
Drop Point: D
Pickup Time: 9

Output 1:
Taxi can be allotted.
Taxi-2 is allotted 

(Note: Since Taxi-1 would have completed its journey when second booking is done, so Taxi-2 from nearest point A which is free is allocated)

Input 3:
Customer ID: 3
Pickup Point: B
Drop Point: C
Pickup Time: 12

Output 1:
Taxi can be allotted.
Taxi-1 is allotted 


2) Display the Taxi details

Taxi No: Total Earnings:
BookingID CustomerID From To PickupTime DropTime Amount

Output:
Taxi-1 Total Earnings: Rs. 400

1 1 A B 9 10 200
3 3 B C 12 13 200

Taxi-2 Total Earnings: Rs. 350
2 2 B D 9 11 350

Problem approach

Tip 1: Before you jump into the solution always clarify all the assumptions you’re making at the beginning of the interview. Ask questions to identify the scope of the system. This will clear the initial doubt, and you will get to know what are the specific detail interviewer wants to consider in this service.
Tip 2: Design your structure and functions according to the requirements and try to convey your thoughts properly to the interviewer so that you do not mess up while implementing the idea .

04
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration30 minutes
Interview date22 May 2015
Coding problem1

HR round where the interviewer asked questions to know more about me.

1. Basic HR Questions

1. Asked about my family
2. Situation based questions : If I am given the power to change 3 things in India, what all will I change?
3. Why Zoho?

Problem approach

Tip 1 : The cross questioning can go intense some time, think before you speak.
Tip 2 : Be open minded and answer whatever you are thinking, in these rounds I feel it is important to have opinion.
Tip 3 : Context of questions can be switched, pay attention to the details. It is okay to ask questions in these round, like what are the projects currently the company is investing, which team you are mentoring. How all is the work environment etc.

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

What is recursion?

Choose another skill to practice
Similar interview experiences
company logo
SDE - Intern
4 rounds | 3 problems
Interviewed by Zoho Corporation
2340 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - Intern
3 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by Zoho Corporation
0 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
Software Developer
2 rounds | 2 problems
Interviewed by Zoho Corporation
0 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
Software Developer
3 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by Zoho Corporation
2007 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
Companies with similar interview experiences
company logo
SDE - Intern
3 rounds | 6 problems
Interviewed by Amazon
15480 views
4 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - Intern
4 rounds | 7 problems
Interviewed by Microsoft
15338 views
1 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - Intern
2 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by Amazon
10142 views
2 comments
0 upvotes