Zoho interview questions, from the C test to the advanced round.

Zoho does not publish its interview rounds. The ones below come from candidate reports from 2021 to 2025, for on-campus drives, off-campus drives and internships with conversion to full time, marked as reported. The written test and the first coding round are often held on the same day, sometimes offline at a Zoho office in Chennai, and the rest follow within a few days. Experienced hires report the same early rounds, with the advanced round run as an object-oriented design task.

The written test is reported as about 90 minutes and 20 to 30 questions. A June 2025 report gives 25 marks: 15 for aptitude and 10 for C output questions. Recent drives use fill-in-the-blank answers, so you cannot guess from options, and an experienced candidate in 2025 reported that a full score was needed to clear the round. Most drives test C, and some test Java instead. It is the biggest cut in the process.

• What does this loop print?: Reported as the most common C question type. Write a trace table with one row per iteration and one column per variable, and update it line by line. Watch for loops with no braces, a semicolon right after the for, and break or continue inside nested loops.
• Pointers and arrays: Expect pointer arithmetic on arrays, *p versus p[i], and pointers passed into functions. Remember that p + 1 moves by the size of the element type, and that an array name decays to a pointer to its first element.
• Recursion output: Draw the call tree, note what each call returns before it returns, and add the results on the way back up. Check whether printing happens before or after the recursive call, since that reverses the order.
• Static variables, scope and increments: A static variable keeps its value across calls. Know the difference between i++ and ++i in an expression, integer division and the % operator with negative numbers. If an expression changes the same variable twice in one statement, its result is undefined in C, so say so instead of guessing.
• Quantitative aptitude: Reported topics are percentages, ratios, profit and loss, speed, time and distance, averages, and work and wages. Practise the standard formulas until each question takes under two minutes.
• Logical reasoning: Series, arrangements and short puzzles. Write down every condition before you start, and test your answer against each one.

Calibrd cannot sit the written test with you. It can prepare you for the technical and HR interviews that follow.

In the advanced programming round, often called L3, you get a laptop and a problem statement and build a console application in your own IDE, in a language you choose. The statement comes in stages or modules, and each one adds features on top of the last. Reports describe two sections of four modules, or four to nine tasks, and the number of modules you finish working decides whether you move on: four modules in one 2024 report, two of four tasks in another. The time is two and a half to three hours. The applications below are the ones candidates report, and the same ones come back across years.

• Railway reservation system: Reported in a 2021 drive: AC and non-AC coaches, 60 seats per coach, 10 waiting list places, with booking, cancellation and status. Make a Ticket class and a Coach class that holds confirmed seats and a waiting list queue. On cancellation, move the first waiting passenger into the free seat. Print a clear status after every action so the interviewer can check it.
• Call taxi booking: Reported in several versions: points A to F in a line, 15 km apart, with fares by distance; or a ZULA cab app with driver, customer and admin logins and a 30% commission. Pick the free taxi nearest the pickup, break ties with the taxi that has earned least or done fewest trips, and reject the booking when none is free. Keep each taxi's position, free time and earnings, and update them when a ride is booked.
• Bus booking with seat rules: Reported in 2025 for an experienced hire (ZOBUS, nine tasks): signup and login, seat selection with a rule about who may sit next to whom, fares, cancellation and filtering buses. Model Bus, Seat, Booking and User, and put each rule in one method so a new rule changes one place.
• In-memory database with transactions: Reported in March 2024: set, get, unset, count, update, begin, commit and rollback. Keep a main map plus a stack of change logs, one per open transaction. Rollback undoes the top log; commit merges it. Keep a second map from value to count so count stays fast.
• LFU cache: Reported in April 2024 in place of an application. Use a map from key to node and a map from frequency to a list of keys, and track the lowest frequency so eviction is constant time. Say how you break ties between keys used equally often.
• Social network or shop: Reported in 2024: a social app with login, friends, followers and posts, and an e-commerce app with users, products and orders. Build login first, since every later module depends on it, then add one feature at a time and run it before moving on.
• Getting through the modules: Read the whole statement before writing code, so your classes fit the later modules. Finish and test each module before the next one, because a half-built feature counts for nothing. Use plain arrays, lists and maps, seed sample data at start-up, and keep a menu loop that never crashes on bad input.

Calibrd cannot watch you build the app, but it can rehearse the technical interview that follows, including questions about your design.

Zoho's careers page says it hires beyond credentials and looks for people with a willingness to learn. Candidate reports show what that means in the rounds.

• Code that compiles and runs, finished within the time
• C fundamentals you can trace by hand: pointers, loops, recursion and arrays
• Clean, modular object-oriented design that holds up as features are added
• Explaining your approach clearly while you code
• Wanting to stay and grow at Zoho, including outside Chennai

These are the questions and problem types candidates report from Zoho drives between 2021 and 2025, with practice prompts written in our own words where the exact problem is not public. Zoho changes the problems every drive, so learn the pattern behind each one.

Zoho does not publish fresher pay, and the figures on job and prep sites vary widely and are not confirmed by the company, so they are left out here. In October 2026 Zoho froze its annual pay rises for the year, citing AI and server costs. Ask the recruiter for the fixed and variable parts of any offer separately.

1. Do ten C output questions a day by hand, without a compiler, and check each with a trace table.
2. Practise the aptitude topics with a timer: percentages, ratios, profit and loss, speed and distance, and work and wages.
3. Solve five or six array, string, matrix and grid problems in a three-hour sitting, and explain each one aloud afterwards.
4. Build a railway reservation system and a call taxi app from scratch in under three hours each, one module at a time.
5. Learn to set up classes, a menu loop and sample data in your chosen language in the first fifteen minutes.
6. Revise OOP, SQL queries, paging, thrashing and threads, and prepare a two-minute walkthrough of each project on your CV.
7. Decide before the HR round which offices you can work from and how long you plan to stay, and say it plainly.

This guide covers software developer, intern and QA hiring at Zoho Corporation in India, from Chennai, Tenkasi and its other Tamil Nadu offices. Zoho Schools of Learning has its own entrance process for school leavers, which this guide does not cover. For management and leadership roles the loop is similar but the bar shifts to people, delivery and strategy, so pair it with the leadership interview prep hub. The bar for your exact role comes from the role-by-role guides, and the prep that actually transfers is spoken, so run a mock interview before the real one.

Also interviewing at TCS or Infosys? Their guides follow the same format, from the first screen to the offer.

• 01Zoho, careershiring beyond credentialism, a willingness to learn, and the Chennai and Tenkasi offices (read 16 October 2026).
• 02Zoho Corporation, careers feedthe open role families, and software and QA roles in Chennai, Salem, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Madurai (read 16 October 2026).
• 03Zoho Corporation, software developer application formgraduation up to 2026 and 0 to 2 years of experience (read 16 October 2026).
• 04Zoho Schools of Learningages 17 to 20, two years, a stipend of ₹10,000 then ₹15,000 a month, graduates join Zoho, 15% of the workforce, college graduates not eligible (read 16 October 2026).
• 05WION, Zoho does not need degrees for any job (4 December 2025)no college degree for any job, and HR asking managers to remove degree requirements.
• 06Entrepreneur India, Sridhar Vembu steps down as CEO (January 2025)Vembu becomes chief scientist and Shailesh Kumar Davey group CEO, 27 January 2025 (seen in search snippets).
• 07The Wire, Zoho freezes annual salary hikes (13 October 2026)the pay rise freeze, fourfold server costs, 19,000 people in 28 countries, and FY25 operating revenue of ₹12,313 crore.
• 08Channel IAM, Zoho freezes salary hikes (14 October 2026)no headcount growth for 18 months and the aim to avoid mass layoffs.
• 09GeeksforGeeks, Zoho software developer intern to full time (June 2025)the 90-minute, 25-mark written test, the string decoder, spiral Fibonacci matrix and topological sort problems, module implementation, the project deep dive and HR questions on retention and pay.
• 10GeeksforGeeks, Zoho software developer off campus (March and April 2024)3,000+ at the written test, about 60 to the coding round on HackerRank, 11 to the advanced round, the transactions task and the LFU cache.
• 11GeeksforGeeks, Zoho pooled off-campus drive (December 2024)30 fill-in-the-blank questions in C, five problems with three needed, the e-commerce app with two of four tasks needed, OS questions, the gold bar puzzle.
• 12GeeksforGeeks, Zoho software developer on campus (2024)a C-output-focused test, five problems in any language, the social network app in two sections of four modules, and the HR questions on family and location.
• 13GeeksforGeeks, Zoho off campus (2021 drive)a Java 8 heavy written test, email masking and wave array problems, and the railway reservation system with 60 seats and 10 waiting list places.
• 14GeeksforGeeks, Zoho off campus with 2+ years of experience (July 2025)a full score needed in L1, a DSA round, and the three-hour ZOBUS object-oriented design round.
• 15GeeksforGeeks, Zoho advanced round, ZULA cab booking (updated August 2021)driver, customer and admin logins, nearest-cab allocation, a 30% commission and Rs. 10 per km.
• 16GeeksforGeeks, Zoho off campus, call taxi booking (undated)points A to F 15 km apart, allocation by availability, location and earnings, and 9 of 19 candidates passing the round.

Interview processes change. This reflects widely-reported and sourced conditions as of 2026 — confirm specifics with your recruiter, and treat it as a map rather than a guarantee.