At IIM-A, $1,85,000 offers top the chart, Rs 12 lakh at IIM-L

Five hundred and ten offers later, two six-month-old pre-placement offers (PPO) of $1,85,000 by London-based investment bank Barclays occupied the top slot at the placements for Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, graduates which concluded today.

As for IIM-Lucknow, 491 offers in all were made to 249 students, including 24 international ones, with consultancy firm McKinsey & Co making the biggest offer of Rs 12 lakh per annum.

"The average international salary is $92,500, a jump of 16 per cent, while the average for entry level domestic salary is Rs 9.72 lakh, a 23 per cent increase. The highest domestic salary of Rs 34 lakh has been offered by R P Enterprises, a significant jump from last year's Rs 14.5 lakh," Bakul Dholakia, director IIMA, announced at a press meet today.

While these two PPOs, bagged by Siddharth Mehla and Mayank Navlakha, have been finalised, a fresh offer for the same job profile and package for Barclays' New York office has been bagged by Manan Ahuja and will be finalised soon. The highest domestic offer went to Surya Prasad, who will join RPG as the country head.

A total of 510 job offers were made to 235 students available for placement. Of these, 72 (30 per cent) students were placed overseas and 163 placed domestically.

Six students opted out of the placement process to venture out on their own. 18 students rejected overseas offers. There are 30 new recruiters including travel service firms and product development IT companies like Adobe and SAP.

Dholakia raised his voice against service tax being imposed over companies visiting the campus to recruit graduates. He maintained that $ 5,000 was charged from foreign companies, while it was Rs 75,000 for slot 1 and Rs 40,000 for slot 2 for domestic ones.

At IIM-Lucknow too, big names in the corporate world vied with each other for hiring this year's graduates. Deepak Garg and Mridul Arora bagged the biggest offer from consultancy firm McKinsey & Co, with an annual package of Rs 12 lakh.

The other top recruiters this year were Baring Private Equity Partners, Goldman Sachs, Atos Origin, Bank of America, Lehaman Brothers, Accenture, JP Morgan Chase, Hindustan Lever Limited, P&G, Reliance Industries Ltd, BRICS Securities, Olam International, HSBC and Deloitte Consulting.

The salary offered by these organisations ranged between Rs 9 and 16 lakh.

The sector-wise break-up of recruitment reveals that 28% students this year opted for the finance sector against 22% in 2005, 25% chose sales and marketing, 23% chose consulting, 6% operations, 3% general management and 1% human resources.

An official of the IIM-L recruitment cell said placements witnessed two key trends this year "" first an increase in the number of coveted consulting and banking jobs and second an increase in the number of students opting to start a venture of their own. Nine students including the batch topper signed out of the placement process to start their own ventures.