HR Analytics at GoKart:

GoKart is an e-commerce company based in Hyderabad, India. Founded in 2008 by two IIM
alumnus - Shivam Bansal and Ashok Ramani, the company initially focused on selling books and
later expanded into other markets such as consumer electronics, fashion, and lifestyle products.
Over the years, the company acquired new heights and currently is the second largest e-commerce
firm in terms of market share. GoKart is presently valued at $22 billion, with over 30,000
employees employed in various roles. The corporate headquarters has a total of 600 employees
and are managed by the company’s human resources department.
Mr. Ramesh Khanna, a fresh MBA graduate from IIM Rohtak, has been hired by the company to
manage their corporate workforce as an HR manager. Mr. Khanna reports to Mr. Prakash Sharma,
who is the HR director of the company since its inception in 2008. One day Mr. Sharma called the
newly recruited Mr. Khanna and expressed his concerns over the increasing attrition rates at the
company headquarters. The HR director was mainly concerned with the attrition rates being
significantly higher than the industry average. In addition to this, he was asked to present his plan
to reduce attrition in the review meeting with the CEO, which is to be held after two days of this
meeting.
Mr. Khanna was aware that although a healthy level of churn is desirable in the organization,
employee attrition can be a severe problem if not managed properly. Leaving employees often take
significant value with them in the form of professional knowledge, specific business practices,
relations with clients, and so on. Also, attrition can also be a financial burden on the company in
terms of lost training and development costs.
The previous HR manager had captured data through year-end employee satisfaction surveys,
which were conducted after the appraisal which was available with Mr. Khanna. The data
(parameters) for an employee who is currently employed and didn’t attrite has been captured from
recent employee satisfaction survey. The data for the employees that have got attrite has been
captured by the last survey that has been filled by the attrite employee while the attrition details
have been captured from the HR employee’s database.
Mr. Khanna wanted his turn-around plan to be based on sophisticated data analysis to enhance his
credibility. However, before making his turn-around strategy, he wanted to understand the
underlying factors responsible for such high attrition. And, since the review meeting was scheduled
at a short notice, Mr. Khanna decided to visualize the existing data in place of conducting an
exploratory study followed by conclusive research. His initial thoughts revolved around already
captured factors such as gender, job satisfaction ratings, performance ratings obtained from the
supervisors, previous salary hikes, age, their years of employment at GoKart, and so on. As the
deadline was approaching for the review meeting, Mr. Khanna was tensed as his career as an HR
manager at GoKart was significantly dependent on his presentation at the review meeting.

Prof. Shivendra Kumar Pandey and Shivan Sanjay Patel, IIM Rohtak prepared this case for
classroom discussion and its circulation is restricted.