Summer bounty for IIM-A students

It's not just the post graduate students (PGPs) who opt for summer placements in consultancy firms.

This year, 21 per cent of students at the Post Graduate Programme in Agri Business Management (PGP-ABM) at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) opted for consulting companies for the summers. The batch has preferred working with agri and food retail sectors in the past.

This year, consultancy major PricewaterhouseCoopers and knowledge banking and agri-consulting firm YES Bank came to IIM-A to offer consulting positions. A total of 17 companies participated in the summer placement process of ABM programme for a batch of 25 students.

Other new entrants this season were global agribusiness giant Louis Dreyfus, Miebach Logistics, Glaxo Smith Kline, Aditya Birla Group for their retail venture, Britannia, Nandan Biomatrix and Claris Lifesciences.

Regular recruiters like RPG, Godrej, Marico, ITC, ICICI Bank and ICICI Prudential continued their association this year as well with the ABM students who undergo common academic module with the PGP programme for the first year of study.

Around 27 per cent of the students preferred retail companies, 21 per cent of the students opted for consulting, 21 per cent for supply chain, 13 per cent for finance while 4 per cent opted for market research.

"With RPG's growth story and the retail expansion, we find very valuable talent for the future leadership positions from the students of IIM Ahmedabad Agri-Business Management," said Arvind N Agrawal, president, Corporate Development and HR , RPG Group.

Lately, IIM-A agri-business managers have interested companies in the food retail sector. Projects offered to the students included positions in supply-chain management, retailing, agri and food consulting, finance, market research and strategy formulation. The students had, on an average, about 2 offers to choose from.

Piyush Kumar Sinha, chairperson, Placement Committee of IIM-A, said that a larger number of companies expressed their keenness to offer summer projects, and there was a hike in average stipend; but what delighted students was an opportunity to work on high profile live projects.