Estimation question

Estimate the number of travelers in India per day.

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Tests structured market-sizing with reasonable population and behavior assumptions, all clearly labeled.

Clarify scope: travelers means people making an intercity trip on a given day, not local daily commuters.
Assume India's population is roughly 1.4B, and that around 5% travel intercity on any given day, accounting for work travel, family visits, tourism and holiday spikes.
Calculate: 1.4B times 5% equals roughly 70M travelers per day.
Sanity-check by mode: railways alone carry roughly 20-25M passengers a day, plus buses, likely the largest mode, plus a smaller share by flight or car.
State the final estimate as roughly 50-80M travelers per day, order of magnitude, with assumptions clearly flagged.

Cross-checks the top-down population estimate against a bottom-up, mode-by-mode sanity check using rail passenger figures.
States the definition of traveler used before calculating, avoiding ambiguity.
Presents a clear range instead of a single false-precision number.

Giving only a single top-down guess without a sanity check from another angle, like mode-level data.
Not stating the definition of traveler being used.

How would this estimate change during a major festival period like Diwali?
How would you validate this against real Indian Railways or NHAI data if given access?