XAT 2025 Question Paper

Read the following sentences carefully.
A. The dean asked for additional funding.
B. The boss discussed about the new project with his team.
C. Radhika is good in data interpretation.
D. Neil is transitioning into a new phase of life.
E. Rajat emphasized on the need for consistency in XAT preparation.
F. This car is superior to the previous one in terms of efficiency.
Which of the following options contains only grammatically CORRECT sentences?

Read the following sentences carefully.
A. There are less cars on the road today.
B. She is nicer than her sister.
C. I have been here from Monday.
D. I know how to swim.
E. She is the girl that won the case competition.
F. The media are divided on the issue.
Which of the following options contains only grammatically CORRECT sentences?

Read the following excerpt carefully.

When each_________________ generation grows up, it looks down on the next as if we all forget what it feels like to be______________. When most____________ think about their own youthful indiscretions, they do so with a wink and a laugh. But when the same people think about those in today’s generation doing something similar, they _________________sound the alarm about a decline in morality in next generation. 

From the options below, choose the one that meaningfully fills up the blanks.

Read the following statements and answer the question that follows.

A. Whatever that might be on Europa—far from the Sun, and beneath kilometers of ice
—it will not be sunlight.
B. The final ingredient for a habitable world is a source of energy for life to exploit.
C. On Earth almost every living thing ultimately depends on photosynthesis for its
energy, including the rich ecosystems in the ocean depths, discovered in the 1980s and
which helped the idea of life on Europa gain a foothold.
D. Their inhabitants do not benefit from sunlight directly, but their metabolisms are
powered by chemicals created in the photosynthesizing, oxygen-rich surface oceans
far above.
E. That is a bit of a problem.

Which of the following sequences is the MOST logically ordered?

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.

Which of the following options can be BEST concluded from the passage?

Read the following statements and answer the question that follows.

A. The treaty tests of a budget deficit no bigger than 3% of the GDP and a public debt converging towards a ceiling of 60% of a GDP seemed impossible for Italy to pass by 1999.

B. That Belgium also had a public debt above 100 percent of GDP helped, as did a special euro tax Mr. Prodi introduced. 

C. Into the uncompromising environment came the first of a series of external shocks. One of the earliest was entry into the European single currency, the euro, in 1999. 

D. But when it became clear in 1997 that Spain was determined to join from the start, Romano Prodi, then Italian prime minister, decided that Italy, as a founder member of the bloc, must be there too.

E. Germany had more or less designed the 1992 Maastricht treaty’s convergence criteria to keep out a profligate, chronically indebted Italy.

Which of the following sequences is the MOST logically ordered?

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

The lovely thing about the unsayable is that it is unsaid. As soon as it is said, it is sayable and loses all its mystery and ambiguity. Art exists so that the unsayable can be said without having to actually say it. We cloud it in secrecy and obfuscation. The mind is free to roam and all things can be imagined, under the cover of darkness. How nice that is. The unsayable. How tired we are of having things explained to us. Having things said. How nice it is when people just shut … up."

Which of the following options can be BEST inferred from the passage?

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

Employees complaining about mundane tasks are often ignored. There is a listlessness that settles around them. A bored employee may continue to produce good results, but that can also be because the tasks are repetitive, and the outcomes are expected.

Which of the following options can be BEST inferred from the passage?

Observe the cartoon below carefully and answer the question that follows.

(Cartoon by Tom Toro, originally published in The New Yorker on November 18, 2024. Used for educational purposes)

Which of the following options BEST explains the underlying message depicted in the cartoon?

What does the author BEST mean when they say, “it seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled?”

Based on the passage, which of the following statements CANNOT be inferred?

Based on the passage, which of the following statements will the author BEST agree with?

Which of the following views would the author BEST agree with?

Which of the following can be BEST inferred from the passage?

Based on the passage, why would character skills help entrepreneurs more than cognitive skills?

Based on the passage, how are rodents and humans similar to each other?

What does the author BEST mean when they say, “This fluidity and situational dependence is uniquely human?”

What does the author BEST mean when they refer to the Battle of Stalingrad and Pearl Harbour?

Which of the following statements CANNOT be inferred from the passage?

Which of the following about greedy work is CORRECT, as per the passage?

Based on the passage, which of the following options BEST summarizes the author’s views?

Which of the following statements BEST conveys the theme of the poem?

What does the author BEST mean, when she says, “You walk into this room with your hot ideas and the ceiling fan has to work harder to cool down the room for us?”

Based on the passage, which of the following inferences CANNOT be drawn?

Which of the following can be BEST concluded from the passage?

Based on the passage, which of the following will the defenders of affirmative action identify as the main problem in the implementation of the meritocratic system?

Which of the following CAN be true?

If Ravi scored 4 marks in the first test, how many marks did Sumana score in the third test?

If Ravi scored 1 mark in the second test, what is the maximum possible value of Sumana’s total marks in all the eight tests together?

In which city did the gender gap, in terms of 2025 prices, change the least, from 2005 to 2015, in terms of percentage?

Which of the following statements, about the average monthly incomes of the 10 cities, as represented in the plots, is DEFINITELY FALSE?

Rs.100 in 2025 is worth Rs. 60 in 2015 prices, and Rs. 25 in 2005 prices. Based on the given plots, which of the following statements, about the unscaled incomes, i.e., the incomes before scaling to 2025 prices, CANNOT be correct? (All statements refer to people represented in the given plots.)

Tyrion Lannister drove from Meereen to Oldtown, then from Oldtown to Lannisport, and finally from Lannisport to Winterfell, always taking the shortest paths. He always drove at a speed
10 km/hr below the maximum speed limits for the stretches he took.
What was his total driving time closest to?

Missandei starts from Gulltown towards Oldtown by the shortest path, driving at the maximum permissible speed. From Oldtown, she drives at a speed of 10 km/hr towards Lannisport. When Missandei starts from Gulltown, Varys starts at the same time from Lannisport to Oldtown along the shortest path, always driving at the maximum permissible speed.
If they don’t stop anywhere, at what point will they meet?

The capital city, King’s Landing, located 40 km to the south of Gulltown on the road connecting Gulltown to Winterfell, did not have a straight road, connecting to Meereen. Now, a new expressway is being built to connect these two towns by a straight road.

What should be the maximum speed limit allowed on this expressway so that it cuts down the travel time, from Meeren to King’s Landing, from the fastest possible route through the road network shown in the diagram, by 20 minutes?

What rating provided by Reviewer R1 to Gadget A can help determining the remaining ratings uniquely?

In how many different ways could Reviewer R2 have rated Gadget B so that the ratings lead to the same averages for the gadgets and the reviewers as shown in the table?

How many different valid combinations of the missing ratings are possible?

There are 25 rooms in a hotel. Each room can accommodate at the most three people. For each room, the single occupancy charge is Rs. 2000 per day, the double occupancy charge is Rs. 3000 per day, and the triple occupancy charge is Rs. 3500 per day.
If there are 55 people staying in the hotel today, what is the maximum possible revenue from room occupancy charges today?

The market value of beams, made of a rare metal, has a unique property: the market value of any such beam is proportional to the square of its length. Due to an accident, one such beam got broken into two pieces having lengths in the ratio 4:9. Considering each broken piece as a separate beam, how much gain or loss, with respect to the market value of the original beam before the accident, is incurred?

ABCD is a rectangle, where the coordinates of C and D are (- 2,0) and (2,0), respectively.
If the area of the rectangle is 24, which of the following is a possible equation representing the line $\overleftrightarrow{AB}$?

Adu and Amu have bought two pieces of land on the Moon from an e-store. Both the pieces of land have the same perimeters, but Adu’s piece of land is in the shape of a square, while Amu’s piece of land is in the shape of a circle.
The ratio of the areas of Adu’s piece of land to Amu’s piece of land is:

Ramesh bought a mobile from a local store. He paid 1/6 of the price via UPI and 1/3 of the price via cash. He agreed to pay the balance amount a year later. While paying back the balance amount, Ramesh paid 10% interest on the balance amount.
If the interest paid was Rs. 6000, what was the original price of the mobile?

A straight line $L_1$ has the equation $y = k(x - 1)$, where k is some real number. The straight line $L_1$ intersects another straight line $L_2$ at the point (5, 8).
If $L_2$ has a slope of 1, which of the following is definitely FALSE?

In a computer game, each move requires pressing a button. When the button is pressed for the first time, as a move, the computer randomly chooses a cell from a 4x4 grid of sixteen cells and puts an “X” mark on that cell. When the button is pressed subsequently, the computer randomly chooses a cell from the remaining unmarked cells and puts an “X” mark on that cell. This goes on till the end of the game. The game ends when either all the cells in any one row, or all the cells in any one column, are marked with “X”.
What is the maximum possible number of times a player has to press the button to finish the game?

If a, b, and c are all positive integers, with 4a > b, then which of the following conditions is BOTH NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT for the expression $\sqrt[3]{(3)^a(21)^{(3a - b)}(49)^{(2b + c)}}$ to be a positive integer?

A soild trophy, consisting of two parts, has been designed in the following manner: the bottom part is a frustum of a cone with the bottom radius 30 cm, the top radius 20 cm, and height 40 cm, while the top part is a hemisphere with radius 20 cm. Moreover, the flat surface of the hemisphere is the same as the top surface of the frustum.
If the entire trophy is to be gold-plated at the cost of Rs. 40 per square cm, what would the cost for gold-plating be closest to?

An industrial robot manufacturing company is tasked to design humanoid robots to be used in warehouses where the robots need to pick items from a stack of shelves. The height of the topmost shelf from the ground is 7 feet. To operate, the robot has to move on a track, running parallel to the stack of shelves. The track is fixed 1 foot away from the base of the stack of shelves. Further, the robot cannot raise its arms by more than 60° from the horizontal plane.
If the robot’s arms are attached to its shoulder, what should be the minimum height of the robot from the ground to the shoulder for its arms to reach the topmost shelf?

There are five dustbins along a circular path at different places. Ramesh takes multiple rounds of the path every morning, always at the same speed. He noticed that it took him a different number of steps to walk between any two consecutive dustbins. Ramesh also noticed that starting from any of the dustbins, it took a minimum 800 steps to reach every second dustbin. On the other hand, starting from any of the dustbins, it took a maximum 1260 steps to reach every third dustbin.
If Ramesh’s one step is 0.77 metre, and the width of the path is negligible, which the following can be the radius of the circular path?

For how many distinct real values of $x$ does the equation below hold true? (Consider $a$ > 0.)
$\dfrac{x^2 \log_a(16)}{\log_a(32)} - \dfrac{\log_a(64)}{\log_a(32)} - x = 0$

A farmer has a quadrilateral parcel of land with a perimeter of 700 feet. Two opposite angles of that parcel of land are right angles, while the remaining two are not. The farmer wants to do organic farming on that parcel of land. The cost of organic farming is Rs. 400 per square foot.
Consider the following two additional pieces of information:
I. The length of one of the sides of that parcel of land is 110 feet.
II. The distance between the two corner points where the non-perpendicular sides of that parcel of land intersect is 255 feet.
To determine the amount of money the farmer needs to spend to do organic farming on the entire parcel of land, which of the above additional pieces of information is/are MINIMALLY SUFFICIENT?

Consider the quadratic function $f(x) = ax^2 + bx + a$ having two irrational roots, with a and b being two positive integers, such that $a, b \leq 9$.
If all such permissible pairs (a, b) are equally likely, what is the probability that a + b is greater than 9?

Eight employees of an organization have been rated on a scale of 1 to 50 for their performance. All ratings are integers. The overall average rating of the eight employees is 30. While the five employees with the highest ratings average 38, the five employees with the lowest ratings average 25.
Which of the following, about the ratings obtained by the eight employees, is DEFINITELY FALSE?

Arun selected an integer $x$ between 2 and 40, both inclusive. He noticed that the greatest common divisor of the selected integer $x$ and any other integer between 2 and 40, both inclusive, is 1.
How many different choices for such an $x$ are possible?

Which award is given to outstanding coaches in sports and games in India?

Match the following renowned Indian personalities with their respective awards.

Which term is commonly used to describe the strategy employed by firms where they
reduce the product size or quality while maintaining the same price?

Samantha Harvey won the 2024 Booker Prize for her space novel, based on the events
on a single day, of lives of six astronauts in the international space station as they
revolve around the Earth, wondering about what is happening at the Earth.

In which state is Dhimsa recognized as the official folk dance?

Who was the world’s first female to be elected as the prime minister of a country?

Who did Gukesh Dommmaraju defeat in the finals of the World Chess Championship
2024?

Match the following authors with their respective works.

What is the name of the AI-based app recently launched by the central government of
India to provide study materials in regional languages?

Where is the world’s only floating national park located?

Which two players made history by winning India's first ever medal at the Asian Table
Tennis Championships?

Who qualifies for a free e-visa under the "Chalo India" initiative?

In which country is Mount Marapi Volcano, which recently erupted, located?

Who holds the position of Supreme Commander-in-chief of India’s armed forces?

Who won the SVERIGES RIKSBANK PRIZE in ECONOMIC Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel 2024 for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity?

As of December 31 2024, which of the following countries is not a NATO member?

Who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024?

Match the following Airlines with the countries where they are headquartered?

Which company recently acquired MGM Studios to enhance its streaming service content?

Which shipyard built INS Tushil, a stealth guided missile-frigate, commissioned on Dec 9, 2024?

The CEO of Aarya’s IT firm tied up with a premier business school to reserve thirty seats in an online management certificate program, aimed at grooming working professionals. The CEO, however, declared that the employees participating in this program will have to sign a three-year bond with the firm. Further, the CEO added that though good performance was a criterion for selection, he would hold authority to take a final call.

Aarya, well aware of her academic limitations, was unsure about the time available to prepare for the MBA entrance exams. She contemplated going for the management certificate program, instead of preparing for the MBA entrance exams.

Which of the following considerations will BEST help Aarya decide whether to apply for the online management certificate program?

After working hard on MBA entrance exam preparations for one year, Aarya received an admission offer from the two-year agribusiness program of a premier business school. While she aspired to be a part of that premier business school, she had no interest in agribusiness. While deliberating, she received an offer from a brand new, but buzzworthy, global one-year executive MBA program in General Management, in a mid-tier business school. The program boasted excellent placement for its first batch of students. While the program was typically geared towards students with a considerable industry experience, being new, it also allowed some exceptions for “well-deserving students” with little or no experience.

Aarya was worried whether, being a candidate with a minimal experience, she would be a good fit in the executive MBA program. Which of the following considerations would BEST help Aarya in taking admission in the one-year executive MBA program?

After working hard on MBA entrance exam preparations for one year, Aarya received two admission offers: one from the two-year agribusiness program of a premier business school, and another one from a brand new, but buzzworthy, global one-year executive MBA program in General Management in a mid-tier business school. As she did not have much interest in agribusiness, Aarya opted to enrol in the one-year executive MBA program, and promptly submitted her first instalment of fees towards admission. She was very happy that she would soon embark on her MBA journey.

To her shock, a few days later, she received a call from the authorities of the mid-tier business school. They informed her that due to a technical glitch in their system, more admission offers were made than the available seats. Consequently, candidates lower on the merit list, including Aarya, were being offered a choice from the following options: a deferred admission next year to the same program, or a full refund of the fees. They also said, if interested, Aarya could right now join a similar program, starting in a newly launched campus of the same business school, where many seats were available. 

Aarya considered the whole episode a breach of trust, and wondered, if it would at all be worthwhile to be associated with this business school now or in the future. Which of the following considerations will BEST restore her faith in this business school?

When a new batch of lawyers joins in 2024, Lisa feels that it is her moral responsibility to reprieve the newcomers from the ensuing stress. However, Lisa, like the others who joined along with her, is on probation for two years. During the probation period, her skills and performance are under evaluation. Upon successful completion of this twoyear assessment, she will be eligible for confirmation. Since she is yet to be confirmed, she wants to be seen as fitting within the organization’s culture.

Which of the following options will BEST enable Lisa to save the newcomers from the socialization ritual, without being singled out for questioning the organization’s culture?

When a new batch of lawyers joins the organization in 2024, they receive an anonymous email, warning them about the socialization ritual, just as it is about to start. Though no newcomer paid heed to the mail, the founders are furious. They call a meeting, and announce that while employees are welcome to express their opinions, this cowardly act of sending an anonymous email shall not be tolerated.
The watercooler discussions murmur Lisa’s name. Lisa is pleased that someone shares her perspective on the socialization ritual and has acted. However, she did not write the aforementioned email. As her name continues to be mentioned, she feels overwhelmed and wonders if she needs to do something about it.

Which of the following actions by Lisa can BEST enable her to defuse the situation?

It is 2025: a new batch of lawyers has joined the firm.
Some lawyers from the 2024 batch have approached the founders to express their appreciation for the intent behind the socialization ritual. They shared that the experience offered them a glimpse of the world they are about to enter. However, they feel that the ritual has become archaic in its execution, showing its age and necessitating some fresh thinking.

As they leave, Ned feels that the time has come to abandon the ritual due to changing times. However, Homer disagrees; he thinks that exposing the employees to what the profession has to offer, in the first week, is very critical. Moreover, it helps the organization know whether the newcomer is ready for such a profession. Further, he adds that the socialization ritual has been effectively helping them for decades in grooming the talents of their organization.

Which of the following actions should the founders BEST take, if they still want to welcome their newcomers by exposing them to the harsh reality of the profession, while being empathetic to the demands of the times?

Ramya is trying to decide whether to publish the article. While publishing the article may enhance the reputation of The Pluralist, there are possibilities of political and economic backlash for reporting on the powerful mining company. She has consulted the legal team of the newspaper, who have warned that the report, relying mostly on anonymous sources, is likely to be legally vulnerable. On the other hand, Aditya Swaroop is a senior journalist, well known and well respected for the quality of his investigative reporting. The topic of the report is time sensitive: if the report is not published within the next 2-3 days, the mining company would get an important government project in the same area.

Which of the following reasons will BEST enable Ramya to publish the article?

After the article is published next morning in The Pluralist, it goes viral. However, the mining company pushes back with a public declaration, contesting some of the findings of the article. While the potential inaccuracies do not entirely invalidate the article, they substantially undermine its message if proven true.

When Ramya asks Aditya Swaroop to bring in further proof to publish a rebuttal, he informs her that his sources, for a vital part of the article, were two employees recently fired by the mining company. And, they now admit that they were not completely honest in their initial interaction with him. Though some points raised in the article might still be valid, it is difficult to separate the inaccuracies given the unreliability of the sources. Ramya immediately brings it to the attention of Zubin, while admitting that she hastily permitted the publication of the article.

What is the MOST responsible action should Zubin take, keeping in view the recent developments due to the inaccuracies of the article?

After the article is published in The Pluralist, the mining company pushes back with a public declaration, contesting some of the findings of the article.
This has hit Aditya Swaroop’s reputation because he trusted unreliable sources. Nevertheless, he is confident about the illegal activities of the mining company; he wants to redeem himself. He approaches Zubin with a request to go back to the mining company project to find new sources and rewrite an article with reliable pieces of evidence. Though his fresh investigation will require time and money, it might also enhance the reputation of the newspaper.

Zubin respects Aditya Swaroop and wants his reputation to be restored. However, Zubin is confident that continuing to work on the mining company project will not yield any results.
Which of the following actions by Zubin will BEST enable Aditya Swaroop to enhance his diminishing reputation?

Dheeraj knows that his senior colleagues are very good at training, and, hence, they conduct most of the training programs. They keep the clients satisfied and, consequently, bring repeat business. However, as asked by the CEO, Dheeraj needs to do something to enable the young trainers get more opportunities and increase their training engagements.

Which of the following options should Dheeraj execute to BEST enable the young trainers to get more training opportunities, without affecting their relationships with the client companies?

Dheeraj decided to assign some of the repeat clients, at random, to their young trainers, to address the concerns of the CEO. Many young trainers appreciated him for giving them more opportunities.

Sudha Iyer, a senior trainer, popular for her training programs in “Deceptive Communication Methods,” was surprised to see that some of her long-standing clients were assigned to a young person. She was concerned that the clients would feel shortchanged. Moreover, she was chagrined that she was not even consulted. This led to the reduction in her number of training hours.

Since, Humane Dynamix incentivizes trainers who cross a mandated number of training hours every year, Sudha was also concerned about her possible revenue loss. Sudha wanted Dheeraj to stop assigning established clients to the young trainers. Which of the following actions would BEST help Sudha to stop Dheeraj from assigning her programs to the young trainers?

Dheeraj assigned a repeat client of Nandini Hegde, another very senior trainer, to Kirti Gowda, a promising young trainer.

A few days later, the client company reached out to Nandini, off the record, and informed her that they were very unhappy with Kirti’s training. They also shared that Dheeraj, when informed about this, had claimed that the client would appreciate Kirti with more exposure to her training programs.

What BEST can Nandini do to regain the client for herself, without appearing to be against the organization’s focus on providing the young trainers more opportunities?

Sukanta felt that the aspirational target can be achieved only if Zedius is replaced. However, he is not sure if he should make any major changes in his first year.

Which of the following reasons will BEST help Sukanta NOT to start making major changes immediately?

Just two weeks before the flagship event, Adil received a few emails from competing media agencies that accused Zedius of selling phony tickets in the “black” market. When Adil enquired with the security agency in charge of gatekeeping the events, they told him that they had no mechanism to check the authenticity of tickets.

Which of the following options will BEST help Adil to ignore the accusations from the competing media agencies, and maintain status quo?

The following year, Sukanta discussed with Adil that unless they got into the ticket selling process, they might not be able to improve the ticket numbers. However, this would mean moving away from Zedius, and the transition could cause short-term pains since TrueColor would be entering into unchartered territory. Further, Sukanta added that TrueColor would achieve self-sufficiency over couple of years. Adil was concerned about the risk of taking over an activity that the organization was not competent at, but understood Sukanta’s point. In the interest of building long-term competencies, he authorized Sukanta to take it forward. Sukanta did not renew Zedius’s contract in the following year; instead, he recruited a skeletal team of three freshers from a premier business school as his support staff.

As the event approached, the team dedicated themselves to executing their plan. However, by the time the ticket sales window closed, they managed to sell only 40,000 tickets. This shift in strategy provoked considerable dissent within the company, challenging Sukanta's decision.

Disturbed by the situation, witnessing the internal turmoil, Adil must now navigate the company's immediate reaction.

Which of the following should now be Adil’s BEST course of action?

KindCare feels that it needs to be better prepared before a similar situation like COVID-19 chances upon the city again. The hospital decides to invest immediately in improving their infrastructure. However, this would mean that, temporarily, it should either reduce, or shut down the operations of a few departments.
It is considering the following options:
A) Reduce their outpatient capacity to half
B) Shut down the cafeteria for the period of renovation
C) Ask their administrative staff to work remotely
D) Strip the pharmacy operations down to emergency and critical medications
E) Shut down the medical lab, and arrange medical tests from a local lab
Which of the following combinations will LEAST affect the functioning of the hospital?

KindCare needs to maintain a large inventory of medicines and other auxiliary supplies in their storage unit. The storage unit ensures adequate and timely supply to Intensive Care Unit and the emergency services, and always runs to capacity. The renovation team suggests that the storage unit be shut down for seven days for urgent renovation. However, the hospital building being old, in the past, renovation work had stretched beyond estimated time.
Which of the following actions BEST ensures KindCare operates efficiently during the renovation of the storage unit?

KindCare Hospital has to renovate its storage unit, given the complexity of the medicines and the need to store other critical supplies. The renovation is supposed to take seven days. However, as the work starts, the team entrusted with the work realizes that the work will take more than 15 days. KindCare feels that even this revised estimate is modest. Already the outpatient services are affected, and people visiting the hospital are being turned away. Stretching it further will attract a strong public resentment.

Which of the following actions offers the MOST sustainable solution for KindCare to reduce the number of patients being turned away?

While reviewing his monthly accounts, Sundaram realized that he was barely breaking even, primarily due to the substantial rent he was paying to the residents’ association. He realized that while his sales were stagnated, the rental costs were contractually scheduled to increase every three years. He was determined to do something to increase his profits.

Which of the following will be the MOST sustainable way to increase Sundaram’s profits?

To increase his profits, Sundaram diversified into selling vegetables. Earlier, a vegetable vendor used to visit the gated community once every week. The vendor, after seeing dismal sales ever since Sundaram started selling vegetables, stopped visiting the gated community. The residents’ association did not like losing the rent they were receiving from the vendor. Additionally, the maintenance staff of the gated community benefitted from receiving vegetables either for free or at extremely low prices, as the vendor, reluctant to take back the unsold stock, chose to distribute them at little to no cost. This enabled the residents’ association to retain maintenance staff whose attrition rate was increasing with more gated communities coming up in the nearby area.

Which of the following options will BEST address the concerns of the residents’ association arising out of Sundaram getting into selling vegetables?

Sundaram is a happy man now. He has managed to get contracts with two more nearby gated communities. He feels like the grocery king of the suburb.

However, his happiness is short-lived as Rush’em, a new startup, begins making waves among gated communities. This app-based startup promises to deliver any grocery item within 15 minutes, leveraging its own large warehouses. Earlier, Rush’em was confined to the main town, but now, the startup has expanded its delivery services to the suburbs, including gated communities where Sundaram operates. Of course, for the suburbs, Rush’em promises delivery within 60 minutes, given the distance.

Though not an official slogan, the rumour in the market is that Rush’em’s founder inspired her employees by shouting “Rush’em or Crash’em, but Push’em through that door!” Sundaram started losing business to Rush’em. He felt rushed, pushed, and was wondering if his business would come crashing.

What should Sundaram BEST do to ensure that his revenues do not come down due to Rush’em?