OLA Interview Experience | For Experienced -SDE-2
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It was a weekend drive. They asked me to bring my own laptop.
Round 1 Coding Round (90 mins) via Hacker RankQ1) Given a binary String which represents the target state. Mi...
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It was a weekend drive. They asked me to bring my own laptop.
Round 1 Coding Round (90 mins) via Hacker Rank Q1) Given a binary String which represents the target state. Minimum number of flips needed to convert a same size Binary String (with all 0's) to target state. A flip also causes all the right bits to be flipped. e.g.
Input : 00101 (Represents Target)
Output : 3 Explanation : 00000 -> 00111 -> 00100 -> 00101 Q2 ) You have been given a special and normal status of alphabets. e.g. "01111001111111111011111111" represents "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz". Here 0 represents normal character and 1 represents special character. Given an Input String S and a number k, find the maximum continuous sub array with maximum k number of number elements. There is no constraint on special character. e.g. S = "giraffe", K = 1, "011110011111111110111111"
Output : 3 How ? normal characters : a, g, f one of the possible solution : gir (as this has only one normal character) Q3) There are cards and each card has an identity. e.g. HC1 has ID 1, this ID also represents the cost of the card. Your sister already have some cards and you want to gift her cards which she do not have already. Program is to return the max number of cards you can buy for her.
Constraint : You have amount d, and want to buy as many distinct card as you can. e.g. Sister Cards = [2, 3, 5], D : 7 Card you buy : 1, 4 Output : 2 I was able to solve all above with all test cases
passed.
Round 2 (1 hour) It was a face to face round. Q1) Given a sorted dictionary of an alien language having N words and k starting alphabets of standard dictionary the task is to complete the function which returns a string denoting the order of characters in the language. ( here ) I was not able to think in manner of a graph and my solution was not optimal. Q2) Given a matrix mat[][] of size M*N . Traverse and print the matrix in spiral form. ( here ) Due to first question approach they were not sure and told me if needed they will reach out to me next week.
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a ola cabs interview for a swe role during the phone screen round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Strings, Arrays, Graph, Graphs, Hash Table, Matrix .
More Ola Cabs Interview Questions
About Ola Cabs Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Ola Cabs. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Ola Cabs are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Ola Cabs interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Ola Cabs reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Ola Cabs Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Ola Cabs reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.