The cheer seems to have returned to the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) campus with the institute's average domestic salary shooting up by around 22.76 per cent this year as part of its placement process for the 2008-10 graduating batch of the Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP), which came to a close on Wednesday.
The institute has received an average domestic salary of Rs 14,94,000 with a total 110 firms participating in the laterals and final placement process, excluding firms that only extended pre-placement offers (PPOs).
The year 2009, which was gripped in one of the worst global economic downturns, saw average domestic salary at the institute plunge by 25 per cent to Rs 12.17 lakh. This was a setback after 2008, when the institute saw average domestic salary at Rs 17.85 lakh, higher by 30 per cent as against the Rs 13.7 lakh in 2007.
The average international salary stood at USD 1,10,750 with Goldman Sachs offering multiple roles in London while banks like Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank offering roles across Asia Pacific. "In a marked development that probably is an indicator of conditions improving dramatically for IT firms, Cybage and Syntel Inc. made offers for their US operations. P&G, with four acceptances, continued with its trend of extending a majority of its offers for Singapore operations," a release from the institute stated.
Banking and consulting firms were the flavours of the season this time around with most top recruiters coming from these firms. While about 20 firms offering roles in the consulting space recruited 29 per cent of the batch, the Banking and Financial services sector saw 27 per cent of the batch joining the workforce. However, 15 per cent of the batch took up roles with marketing majors such as P&G, HUL, Nestle, Airtel, J&J, Nokia, Philips, Titan, Cadbury etc. Similarly, 13 per cent of the batch took up roles with firms operating in the Systems domain with some of the star recruiters being Google, Inc. which offered Sales, Marketing, Account Management and Business Development roles, Microsoft, Amazon, Cognizant, Wipro, Mindtree and Rediff. General Management roles were offered by TAS, the Aditya Birla Group, Mahindra, Essar, Lodha Group and Philips amongst others.
With the cohort-based system in place for the first time, the institute saw more than 40 offers extended by Global Strategy Consulting firms, Global Niche Consulting firms, Global Investment Banks and Global Private Equity firms, the four cohorts that constituted the first cluster. While Mckinsey & Co and Boston Consulting Group witnessing eight acceptances including pre-placement offers, Monitor Group saw five acceptances. Other companies that visited during this cluster were Bain and Company, Booz and Company, AT Kearney and Oliver Wyman.
As compared to last year that saw almost no presence of Investment Banks for final placements, this year saw I-Banks extending offers both through PPOs and final placements. While Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup were among the major recruiters to extend offers through the PPO route, we saw JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, HSBC and Nomura participate in the finals process.
A number of firms participated in the process in several cohorts namely global and Indian Investment Banks, niche and strategy consulting, corporate leadership program, global FMCG operations, public sector enterprises and IT services. Yes Bank (13 offers including laterals) and ICICI Bank (13 offers) were the top recruiters on campus this year. This was closely followed by Deloitte that made 10 offers (including laterals) for its consulting arm serving the US offices. One of the top global consulting firms, the Boston Consulting Group and leading steel maker, Ispat Industries made eight offers each for consulting and general management roles respectively. The elite Tata Administrative Services and niche consulting firm, Feedback Ventures re-affirmed their commitment to IIMA with six offers each. Public sector enterprises like Union Bank of India (2 offers), Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (4 offers) and National Thermal Power Corporation (1 offer) also participated in the process, the release stated.
This year, five students opted out of the placement process to become entrepreneurs. In an example of an institution backing its alumni in their ventures, three students who had opted out of placements to try their hand at their own ventures in earlier batches (2 were from the batch of 2009 and 1 was from the batch of 2008) came back and used the IIMA placement service to get better offers.
According to the institute, a big push came from the laterals placement process this time. With 53 per cent of the batch eligible,firms like Deloitte Consulting, A&M, Yes Bank, TSMG, Cognizant, Aditya Birla Group, Amazon and Philips were some of the major recruiters during the process. More than 40 firms participated in the laterals process and extended more than 100 offers, an increase of four times over last year.
“Despite a recessionary year, a larger batch, a new, untested placement process, all students of the batch were placed in the firms of their choice. With this process stretching almost one month, we have reiterated our conviction that time taken to place the batch is not an indicator of placement efficiency," said Saral Mukherjee, chairperson of placements.
