Summer stipends jump 50%

Summer placements at Indian Institutes of Managements (IIMs) this year have seen a 50-60 per cent increase in stipend levels with investment banking and consultancy firms increasingly choosing to recruit from IIMs.

IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C) retained the higest stipend package of £13,000 per month (a little over Rs 11 lakh) for international placement and Rs 1 lakh a month for domestic placements. Slot zero in IIM-C saw 93 offers being made compared to 53 last year while 200 offers were made in Slot 1 as compared to 100 last year.

Consultancy firms and banks recruited the maximum number of IIM-C students. This included global giants like Mc Kinsey, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, ABN Amro, and JP Morgan.

IIM-Lucknow (IIM-L) also saw a dominance from banking and consulting firms. This time, around 80 companies participated in the recruitment process "� out of which 30 were new companies.

Some of the international recruiters that came to IIM-L included JP Morgan-London, Citigroup-Hong Kong, Baring Private Equity, Deutsche Bank, etc. International positions were offered in the US, Europe, Middle East, Hong Kong and Singapore.

"Last year, summer placements were good but this year it is booming. This is in line with the growth in the economy IIM-L is beginning to attract consultancy and investment banking firms," Pankaj, Chairman, Placement Committee, IIM-L, said.

The highest stipend offered in IIM-L was £ 6000 per month (around Rs 5 lakh) for overseas placement and Rs 50,000 per month for domestic placements. Interestingly, around 10 students from IIM-L opted to intern in NGOs and in the social sector. IIM-L had a total of 312 offers against 245 offers made last year. International recruiters made 19 offers.

Summer placements in IIM-Bangalore (IIM-B) saw an entire batch of 253 students being placed. A total of 83 companies took part in the placement process this year.

Day Zero consisted of global investment banking firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Mc Kinsey, HSBC and Barclays Capital.

Day 1 and Day 2 saw recruitment from companies like Cognizant Technologies, Wipro, IBM, Covansys, HLL, Proctor & Gamble, Coca Cola and Tata Motors.

Sourav Mukherji, placement chairperson, IIM-B, said 101 offers were for international placements while 152 were for domestic. He, however, declined to divulge the stipend levels offered at IIM-B.

(Inputs by Kalpana Pathak, Aravinda Gowda & Vishal Dutta)

Start-ups join the queue

B-schools have seen two broad trends in terms of summer internships.

IIM-A Students made a beeline to join start-up companies. "Six start-up companies have come to the campus for summer placement. To date, 40 students have met the representatives of start-up companies, " said a spokesperson.

There are 250 students in the first year's batch at IIM-A. The final list will be out on November 20. Last year', a total of 86 companies had visited the campus and 249 students joined companies from various sectors including finance, marketing, systems and consulting.

IIM-B For the first time in the history of the institute, international consulting companies came for recruitment during summer internships. Also, a huge number of investment bankers have made their presence felt on the campus and have shown interest in recruting large number of students.

IIM-B has also created a record of sorts by completing the summer placement process (internship programme) for the first year students within five days. As many as 127 candidates were placed during the first two days of placement.

The proportion of students choosing to join investment banking is highest this year followed by consulting. Nearly 68 per cent opted for investment banking while 15 per cent chose consulting.

IIM-C recorded the highest number of companies making offers for summer placements 2007 at the end of 'slot zero' which saw 33 companies making offers as compared to 12 last year.

"There has been an increasing number of banking and finance companies coming to IIM-C every year. This year, some of them have even offered assiciate positions to students bring recruited for the summer, something that has not happened before," claimed recruitment co-ordinators at IIMC.

Students have been offered positions in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Tokyo and Singapore.

IIM-L is beginning to attract consultancy and investment banking firms, according to IIM-L Pankaj, Chairman, Placement Committee.

IIM-K Finance companies and investment banking firms ruled the campus. It received 18 finance companies on its campus as compared to five finance companies last year.

The number of international offers too went up to 11 companies as compared to none last year. The stipend at IIM-K saw an increase of 35 per cent as compared to last year.

IIM-I saw a good mix of corporate turnout this year with financial services companies scoring over the others in terms of recruitment. The institute also got two foreign firms "� Olam International and Macquire Bank "� on its campus for the first time to recruit for summer internships.

The highest domestic salary offered was Rs 35,000 and the campus managed to place a batch of 180 students in four days with a total of 170 offers as against 130 offers last year. IIM-I had increased its batch size by 33 per cent this year from 120 students to 180 students.