Lateral offers surge at IIMs

IIMs have received over 170 lateral offers ranging between Rs 30 lakh to Rs 60 lakh in the first two weeks of their placement season this year.

It's raining offers for the experienced students at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). The first two weeks into lateral placements at the IIMs have seen more than 170 offers being made at the campuses.

Most of the IIMs have received offers ranging from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 60 lakh, with many more companies slotted to visit the campuses by the second week of February.

Over 50 offers have already been made at IIM-Calcutta, which had kicked off its lateral placements last week. Close to 100 students would be eligible for lateral placements from the institute.

ArcelorMittal, Wipro, Microsoft and Verizon have been the early visitors, some of whom have visited other IIMs as well.

The first week has seen students bagging foreign offers in the Middle East, Europe and the US. Companies have offered middle-management roles as well as top management roles. Senior management roles have also been offered in corporate finance and capital markets division.

At IIM-Indore, around 20 companies have come to the campus so far and close to 48 offers have been made. The higher offers have crossed the Rs 40 lakh-mark.

Placement officials say infrastructure companies are expected to come in droves this year. IIM-Lucknow has had 15 companies so far who have made 30 offers.

Ten companies have come to IIM-Bangalore which include Wipro, IBM, Verizon and other IT companies. Five to seven companies have come to IIM-Ahmedabad.

Lateral placements are open to students with a minimum of 10 to 20 months work experience and this year could see the number of lateral offers take a steep rise considering most of the Post Graduate Programme (PGP) batches across all IIMs have a work experience of over 45 months.

At IIM-Bangalore, over 100 students will be eligible for lateral placements out of the total batch of 260, whereas 120 students from the PGP batch at IIM-Lucknow have the required work experience.

Also, while most of the IIM officials are confident of the sub-prime crisis not being an issue during placements this year, a student from one of the IIMs confirmed that there was some degree of concern as to whether the number of students hired by investment banks could see some decline this year, although that would only be known by March, since the Investment Banks prefer to hire from the final placement week.

At IIM-Ahmedabad, the final placement week is to be held from 6 March to 11 March, from March 7 to 11 at IIM-Bangalore, from February 27 to the 2nd of March at IIM-Indore, and during the first week of March at IIM-Lucknow.

This year, recruiters at various IIMs include ArcelorMittal, Trident, Pepsi, ICICI Bank, Tesco, Feedback Ventures, Tata group companies, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Dr Reddy's, Pfizer, Ranbaxy among others.

Railways, municipal corporations may come to IIM-A

For the first time, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) is seeing recruiters from diverse entities such as the Indian Railways, municipal corporations and other public sector companies for lateral placements that are on in all the IIMs.

Sources at IIM-A have confirmed that close to 100 public and private sector units have been in touch with the institute, which include PSUs like Gujarat State Fertiliser Corporation (GSFC), Gujarat Power Corporation Ltd (GPCL), Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd (GACL), municipal corporations and other government departments.

Twenty-two students would be available for placements from the batch of PGP-PMP which caters to civil servants, managers of government, NGOs and executives of private sector firms engaged in public management.