Zoho, Juspay and Groww Fresher Interview Process in India: Build-It-Live Rounds, Not Just an OA

For anyone who has an off-campus link from a product company that isn't a TCS or Infosys style batch drive. If a service-company test lands in the same week, multiple placement drives covers how to split your time.

TL;DR: I read two Zoho candidate posts (2024 and April 2025), one Zoho on-campus intern post, two Juspay posts whose drives date to about 2021, and one Groww campus post from 2023. The common thread: these companies don't stop at a multiple-choice screen. They put you in front of a laptop and ask you to build something, and then talk to you about how you built it. Everything below is dated, because the formats have moved between drives.

Atlassian also hires in India. I have a separate write-up of its general software engineer process, and the India LeetCode posts I found for it were from 2022, so I left it out here.

Zoho: the funnel is steep and the late rounds are practical

Zoho's careers page says it hires "beyond credentialism". That's the only official statement I found, and it gives no round details. Everything else is from candidates, and two of them describe different drives.

The 2024 off-campus drive (Chennai)

• Hiring was in person at the Chennai office.
• Written test: over 3,000 applicants. 15 aptitude questions plus 10 C pseudo-code fill-in-the-blank questions, with no options to pick from. 60 went through.
• Coding round: six questions on HackerRank, running from 1:30 to 4:15 pm.
• Advanced Programming round: only 11 people. You build an app on a laptop in your own IDE. One attempt's task was an in-memory transaction store with Set, Get, Unset, Count, Update, Begin, Commit and Rollback. On the writer's retry the task was an LFU cache.
• The writer was rejected the first time, they say, for building silently and not talking to the interviewers. HR then offered a re-run from the coding round, and the retry ended with technical and HR interviews.

The April 2025 off-campus drive

• About 1,500 candidates, and the writer says 10 to 12 were shortlisted at the end.
• Round 1: 10 aptitude and 10 Java snippet questions in 75 minutes. Only 90 to 100 passed.
• Round 2: seven medium DSA questions, with problems like Validate BST and first missing positive. 40 to 50 passed.
• Round 3: a low-level design task, a "Task Manager" built in eight progressive steps with file persistence, followed by a face-to-face technical round. The writer was rejected here. They suspect regional bias; that's their opinion, not something I could verify.

The on-campus intern post

An intern drive post describes four rounds: aptitude plus Java/C fill-ups, three HackerRank coding problems, technical HR, general HR. The writer says no CGPA cut-off was stated, and that 5 of 300 were placed at their college.

Where the sources disagree

• Aptitude. A February 2026 prep guide says "no aptitude rounds". Both candidate posts and the intern post show aptitude as the first filter. I'd trust the candidates, and the prep guide names no candidates, so I'm not repeating its salary figure.
• Language. C pseudo-code in the 2024 post, Java snippets in 2025. It changes by drive.
• Funnel size. 3,000 to 60 in 2024, 1,500 to about 90 to 100 in 2025. Different drives, so quote them with dates.

Juspay: hackathon-style rounds

The detailed accounts are old, so read this as "what a Juspay drive has looked like", not "what yours will be".

• A GeeksforGeeks internship post (the drive is roughly 2021, the page was updated in 2025): a 1.5-hour coding test with three graph questions; then a three-hour locking challenge called "Tree of Space" on HackerEarth, where about 59 advanced; then another 1.5-hour coding test; then a day-long "Learnathon" over a Slack buddy channel with Postman API-testing challenges running to about 10 pm. After that, a 9 pm HR and technical round. The writer was selected.
• A June 2021 on-campus post: 300 applied and 30 were shortlisted for the SDE role. Puzzles came up, such as two eggs and 100 floors.
• A 2025 LeetCode post for a backend intern role says the writer cleared five rounds, but gives no round detail. Most of it is about a final interviewer who joined 1.5 hours late. It's one person's experience.

I found no first-hand fresher account newer than that. Juspay's careers page didn't describe the process either.

Groww: one short account

A single 2023 campus post describes two stages. The first was aptitude plus technical questions (bit manipulation, XOR, stacks). The second was a technical interview on projects, arrays and recursive permutations. It has no counts or timings, so I won't build a prep plan on it.

What these three have in common

• A live build, not a screen. Zoho's advanced programming and LLD rounds, and Juspay's Learnathon, are tasks where someone watches you work.
• Talking while you work is part of the grade. The Zoho 2024 writer's own explanation for the rejection was building without speaking.
• Steep early cuts. Zoho's first filters dropped thousands to dozens in both posts.

How to prepare

Build the small things from memory. The reported tasks were an in-memory key-value store with transactions, an LFU cache, and a file-backed task manager. Practise each in your own IDE, with no autocomplete helpers you won't have on their laptop.

Narrate. Say what you're about to write, why this structure, what you'll do if the input is bad. A friend or a mock interview where someone watches you code and asks questions is closer to the live rounds than another set of problems.

Do aptitude in timed sets. If your drive starts like the 2025 Zoho post, 20 questions in 75 minutes with a sharp cut leaves little room to learn the format on the day.

Read the proctoring rules in your own invite. Written tests on HackerRank or HackerEarth can be proctored. For online assessments where a tool is permitted, OA Copilot covers HackerRank and CodeSignal style tests, but it's your drive's rules that decide, and live in-person rounds like Zoho's laptop task are not that situation at all.

Related write-ups in the same format: Freshworks and Postman and Razorpay, PhonePe, Swiggy and CRED.

FAQ

Does Zoho ask aptitude questions for freshers?

In the two candidate posts, yes, as the first filter. One 2026 prep guide says otherwise but names no candidates. Trust your own drive notice.

How many rounds are there in the Zoho interview for freshers?

Four to five in the posts I read, but the order differs: written test, coding, advanced programming, then technical and HR (2024); aptitude, DSA, LLD, then face-to-face (2025).

Is Zoho off-campus hiring only in Chennai?

The 2024 drive was in person in Chennai. I found no official page listing all venues.

What is the Juspay hackathon round for freshers?

A three-hour locking challenge on HackerEarth and a day-long Postman API-testing "Learnathon" in a roughly 2021 post. It may have changed since.

Can I get into Zoho without a degree or CGPA cutoff?

The careers page says Zoho hires beyond credentialism, with no detail. One campus post says no cut-off was stated at that college.

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Author · Alex Chen. Career consultant and former tech recruiter. Spent 5 years on the hiring side before switching to help candidates instead. Writes about real interview dynamics, not textbook advice.