About ANVIL Case Partners
Who we are and why we built this
Why ANVIL exists
The people who miss out are almost never the people who could not have done the job.
I have sat on both sides of this. I prepared for these interviews with no real idea what was being measured, and years later I ran them, deciding who moved forward and who got the polite email. The second chair changed how I understand the first. A rejection is rarely a verdict on whether somebody can think. It is usually a verdict on how they prepared, and preparation is a solvable problem.
Consulting recruitment publishes almost nothing about how it judges people. If you happen to sit near it, through a target school, a family friend, a colleague who used to be a consultant, you absorb the standard by proximity and you never have to name it. If you do not sit near it, you guess. Two candidates of the same ability walk into the same room and only one of them already knows what that room rewards. That is the part I find hard to accept.
So people improvise. A framework from one book, a casebook from another, an hour from an alum who is generous and never sees you again. Five people give five verdicts and nobody watches the same candidate twice. Free help is real help. It is still not preparation, and you are left holding fragments with no way to tell which of them are wrong.
The cost of guessing has gone up. Firms are running smaller classes and screening harder, and most of them make you wait a year or more before you can try again. What earned an offer three years ago now earns a courteous rejection. For most people this is one attempt per firm per cycle, decided in a few hours, by strangers.
None of that is fair. All of it is learnable. The bar is knowable, the structure is teachable, and positioning, story and case mechanics can be built in a deliberate order rather than collected at random. What that takes is one person who sees every session, remembers what you did in the last one, holds you to a single standard, and is accountable for whether you actually got better.
That is why ANVIL exists: to give candidates without an inside track the same clarity the insiders start with, early enough to act on it. It stays small on purpose. Attention is the whole product, and attention does not survive scale.
What separates the people who get in from the people who do not should be preparation, not proximity.
Rishikesh Kulkarni (RK)
At every step, we follow the ANVIL Method
A structured framework that covers every dimension of consulting recruitment.
Know exactly where you're aiming.
- Role (Strategy consulting / Internal consulting)
- Firm type (MBB / Tier 2 / Boutique / Corporate strategy)
- Geography
- Timeline
Build a narrative that sets you apart.
- Why consulting
- Why now
- Why this country/region
- Why this firm
- Why this practice
- Why you
Communicate your value in the language firms understand.
- Craft your CV & cover letter
- Networking strategy
- Fit interviews
- Case interviews
Show up in the room with clarity, confidence, and structured thinking.
- Clear communication
- Logical flow
- Prioritization of thoughts
- Controlled pacing
- Coachability
Amplify everything that makes you, you.
- Develop signature strengths
- Address performance gaps
- Build a distinctive profile
- Avoid generic positioning
- Own your individuality
Your dedicated mentor
Rishikesh Kulkarni (RK), Founder
Professional background
- Now
- Founder of Kularion, a boutique consulting firm in the UAE, and of Holm, which holds and operates a portfolio of digital products
- Before that
- Management consultant at Kearney in Dubai. Eight years across consulting firms and advisory roles.
- Focus areas
- Industries
- Markets
Education and certification
- Education
- MBA, IESE Business School (Spain)
Bachelor of Technology, Manipal Institute of Technology (India) - Certifications
Mentorship track record
- Experience
- Three years getting people into consulting and strategy roles, across first-time candidates, career switchers, and experienced hires. Works with the consulting clubs at leading European MBA programs.
- Placed at
- Placed across
See how the mentorship works
Every session, what it covers and what it costs sits on the two mentorship pages. Start with the format that matches how you want to prepare, on your own or with a group you bring.