IIM Bangalore might have been “The Employers’ choice” in Asia in recently conducted QA Global B-School ranking survey, however back home when it comes to placements, IIM Calcutta seems to be the choice of Indian and International recruiters.

IIM Calcutta has emerged as the numero uno business school in India as far as placements are concerned as per the latest CoolAvenues.com Placements 2009 report,

The ongoing global financial meltdown which impacted Placements 2009 at Indian B-Schools severally saw IIM Calcutta weathering the storm in much better way compared to other institutes. IIM Calcutta which earlier used to suffer due to its comparatively bigger batch size, is now at par with other IIMs as far as the batch strength goes and hence used its past experience of placing large batches in a better way in these uncertain times.

Overall IIM Calcutta emerged as clear winner on following counts :

Placements Salary: Recruiters paid highest average salary to IIM Calcutta graduates among all B-Schools as average salary paid at IIMC was at INR 12.7 lakh in comparison to INR 12.17 lakh at IIMA and INR 12.12 lakh  at XLRI, Jamshedpur. At the same time the highest salary paid to IIM Calcutta graduate was INR 60 lakh in comparison to INR 24 lakh paid to a IIM Kozhikode student.

In Overseas placements, IIM Calcutta again emerged as No. 1 institute with highest salary at USD 130,000 p.a. and average salary at USD 86.875 p.a while IIM Ahmedabad graduates were placed at an average salary of USD 83,000. IIM Ahmedabad chose not to release highest international salary.

Overseas Placements : 27 students at IIM Calcutta (10.2% of the batch ) bagged international offer compared to 23 international offers made at IIM Kozikode (12.4% of the batch), 15 offers at IIM Lucknow (5.6% of batch), 12 offers at IIM Indore ( 6.9% of the batch). Out of 27 job offers at IIM Calcutta, 17 offers were made in finance and 10 in consulting at locations like New York, London and Hongkong.

Interestingly IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore chose to remain silent on International placements with IIM Bangalore issuing cryptic press release talking about offers from “ UAE Exchange (middle east) and Enzen”. The press release from IIM Bangalore reads “The international offers continued to pour in on Slot One with companies like UAE Exchange, Enzen and others recruiting IIMB students for foreign postings.”

Overall IIM Calcutta emerged as clear winner in terms of no of offers made, quality of locations and overall job profiles given for international postings.

Pre-Placement Offers: Placements 2009 saw a significant drop in no of PPOs made in comparison to 2008 when it was literally raining PPOs at each campus. However despite such a overall doom and gllom scenario, IIM Calcutta graduates emerged on top with as many as 56 PPOs ( 21% of the batch) were given to IIMC graduates. IIMA and IIMB didn’t provide any figure on PPOs this year while 11% of batch (21 PPOs) at IIM Kozhikode, 9% of the batch at IIM Lucknow and 7% of the batch at IIM Indore got PPOs. The only institutes which came ahead of IIMC in term of PPOs was XIMB where 27% of the batch was given PPOs by recruiters.

Executive One Year MBA Program : The one year full time executive MBA  program which was emerging as most preferred MBA program for experienced professionals faced its toughest year with almost every institute yet to finish its placement program except IIM Calcutta. At the time of going to press, all leading executive MBA programs i.e ISB, Hyderabad, Great Lakes, IIMA PGPX, IIML IPMX etc are yet complete their placement process and had extended the process indefinitely. However IIM Calcutta PGPEX program emerged as clear winner where all 34 students who are part of placement process (Batch strength ~ 37) were placed with an average salary of INR 18 lak and highest salary of INR 22 lakh.

Overall Placements 2009 established position of IIM Calcutta as number one Management destination as far as placements are concerned which is one of the most important parameter used by MBA aspirants to select an institute. (c)

The placement process, that was spread over 26th and 27th August, ended with participants being offered projects with reputed companies across sectors like Consultancy, Banking, IT, Investment Banking, FMCG, Private Equity, Manufacturing, Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals, Telecom and Media. More than 60 companies visited the campus over the two days of the ‘autumns’ process including Tata Administrative Services (TAS), Microsoft, Citibank GSK, ING,
Tata Capital, Reckitt Benckiser, P&G, HUL, L’Oreal , Marico, Nestle, Intel, J&J Consumer, Wipro, SAP, GE, Edelweiss, SBI Capital, Axis Bank, HT Media, Dabur, Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait, , Barclays, HSBC, Development Bank of Singapore, Frost & Sullivan among many others. There were more than 200 offers made to the batch of 175.

In contrast to other business schools sending the management students for Summer Internships, SPJIMR pioneered the concept of ‘Autumns’ wherein the two year full time PGDM participants go for their compulsory corporate internship during the months of September & October in the 2nd year of the program. The summers at SPJIMR are marked with social projects with NGOs.

Autumns 2009 at a Glance….

Total Number of Offers Made: 200+
Number of Offers Accepted: 175
Average Offers per Student: 1.14*
Participating Companies: 60*+

Final Placements 2009 saw the participation of around 80 companies, offering a plethora of roles across various domains – namely Supply Chain, Marketing, Finance, Consulting and IT/Systems. The placement process this time involved 30 first time recruiters, while opening up new roles in the field of Micro Finance, Telecom, Human Resources etc. The highest salary of Rs 15 lakhs per annum was offered by Hindustan Unilever Ltd, while a number of companies demonstrated their confidence in the talent pool by making a total of 23 pre-placement offers (PPO’s).

Recruiters from consulting sector included major players like Ernst and Young, KPMG, TSMG, Cognizant Business Consulting and Global e-Procure. Students with prior industry experience were roped in by these multi-national corporations, with almost 18% of the batch choosing this sector. Cognizant was a major recruiter in this sector.

Equally encouraging was the Banking and Financial Services sector (BFSI) represented by Citibank, Standard Chartered, ICICI Bank, ICICI Prudential, Futures First, Axis Bank, FINO, etc. FINO participated in the placement process for the first time, while Futures First made a maximum of 8 offers. Around 20% of the students embraced this sector, endorsing NITIE’s standing in BFSI domain.

NITIE has displayed its exuberance in the FMCG sector since its inception and the trend continued this year with 27% of the batch grabbing jobs in this sector. Some of the majors who participated in the placement exercise were Procter and Gamble, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, Asian Paints, Nestle, Cadbury, Johnson & Johnson Consumer, Reckitt Benckiser, Cargill Foods, Kellogg, HCCB, PepsiCo, Perfetti, etc. The profiles offered in the FMCG sector were those of Sales, Marketing, IT and Supply Chain. Proctor & Gamble was the major recruiter in this sector.

The  IT & Systems Sector was represented by Tata Consultancy Services, Intel, ITC Infotech, Genpact, Zensar etc. to name a few. Manufacturing companies like Mahindra and Mahindra, Larsen and Toubro, Vedanta, Anand Group, etc. made their presence felt to the students by offering roles in Operations, Logistics and Marketing.

Placement ’09 saw the participation of PSU’s like BHEL, ONGC and IFFCO for the first time; recruiting students for profiles ranging across Strategy, Materials and HR. Telecom majors like Airtel and TTSL also offered interesting profiles while niche sectors like Shipping and Hospitality opened up new avenues for students. A speciality of the Placements this year was the sheer diversity of industries and profiles on offer for the students.

Sector-wise Analysis of Placements

Profile-wise Analysis of Placements

A poor economic outlook in the past year led to the department shifting from its Placement week process to a rolling process. This placement season saw participation of companies from a wide spectrum of industries ranging from the traditional Banking and Consulting to fast growing industries like Infrastructure and Analytics. An indicative list of the companies participating for the first time include BHEL, Frost and Sullivan Consulting, Tata Power, Feedback Consulting, First Global, Ion Exchange, IDBI, Andhra Bank, SIDBI and CES India. The offers to the students started even before the Placement Week with Pre-Placement offers to students from companies like SBI Capital Markets, Idea Cellular, Apollo Health and Lifestyle Ltd. and The McGraw Hill Company offering profiles such as Project advisory, Operations Management and Business Development.

Corporate Banks driven this year by major Public sector banks like IDBI, Bank of Baroda, Oriental Bank of Commerce, SIDBI and Andhra Bank offered exciting profiles in both Finance and Marketing. Marketing Profiles were offered by Bajaj Auto Ltd., Apollo Health and Lifestyle Ltd., CES India, in addition to the banks. BHEL and Bajaj Auto Ltd. offered both domestic and International Marketing profiles to the students. The IT space was represented by TCS and Ambujex Technologies which offered profiles like SAP consulting, Business Analyst and Business Development. First Global offered a plum profile in Equity Research. Consulting profiles were offered by the companies like Frost & Sullivan, Feedback Consulting, TCS etc. The high end Analytics space was

represented by marketRX, a Cognizant company and Empower Research. Operations profiles included offers from BHEL, Idea Cellular, TATA Power and Ion Exchange.

This year saw a number of new profiles offered to our students reinforcing the belief in our quality and skill set. The new profiles that were offered included International Operations, International Marketing and Corporate Strategy. Companies like marketRX,Bajaj Auto, TCS reposed their faith in the capabilities of the students with their continued relationship.

The interest shown by the recruiters in times of recession enhances the fast growing reputation of the Department as a place which nurtures the brightest brains in the country to produce management professional ready to take on the challenges and make most of the opportunities presented by the corporate world. Feedback from a few of the recruiters after the process is highly encouraging and reinforces our status as a premier B-School in India and the belief that placements in DoMS, IIT Roorkee will get bigger and better in the coming years when the world economies get back on the growth track. DoMS, IIT Roorkee has taken its steps this year to prepare for a record setting long jump in the coming years. The fact that the Department has matured within a short span of ten years, since its inception, is validated by the fact that a few of the students were bold enough to leave aside the offers and prepare for opportunities that they had personal interests in. The Department is also helping these students in terms of the infrastructure and resources to achieve their objectives.

Some of the highlights of the Placements 2009 have been shown below:

Participation from 22 companies

Highest Salary: 9.5 LPA

Average Salary: 6.48 LPA

The recently concluded summer placement season at DOMS, IIT Ro0rkee for the Batch of 2010 witnessed 100%  placement. The Summer Placement Process was completed to the utmost satisfaction of one and all in the batch with all 63 students being offered the widest possible range of profiles across the sectors. Students chose from a diverse set of profiles from a range of recruiters. The prominent feature of the Summer Placements this year was that most of the students landed with multiple offers and were guided by their interests and career aspirations. The students also had International offers for their internship programme. Overall the batch size of 63 had 95 offers in hand.

In recent turbulent times, when very few companies opened up for recruitments, DoMS, IIT Roorkee stood out for its diversity of recruiters across the sectors, and the variety of profiles being offered. The placement process witnessed participation from the top companies across diverse sectors like manufacturing, telecommunication, trade, IT, pharmaceuticals, healthcare & infrastructure. Total of 40 companies made offers to the

students that includes industry leaders like PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM, BPCL, Deloitte, ONGC, Ranbaxy, RBI, National Stock Exchange, Planning Commission,

Ernst & Young. These recruited students for diverse profiles in marketing, sales, corporate finance, consulting & strategy, operations, logistics, and information technology.

The consulting domain saw an impressive array of profiles being offered to the students. Some of the companies which recruited, among others, include PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst and Young, Deloitte, Feedback Ventures, Stowarzyszenie, IBM Global Services, and Milagrow. Business Consulting, Infrastructure Advisory, Strategy & Change, Government Advisory, Operations and SCM Consulting were some of the profiles offered.

Profiles such as Private Equity, Investment Banking, Credit Risk, Consumer and Wholesale (Corporate) Banking and Corporate Finance were offered by companies such as NSE, Ranbaxy, RBI, etc. The no. of offers in the area of Finance have been increasing over the years. Operation profiles were offered by companies like DSCL, HPCL, BPCL etc.

With batch strength of 102 students, 7 students were invited for pre-placement interviews and made pre-placement offers (PPOs). Even in these conditions, most of our regular recruiters showed faith in the students from our institute and ensured that they were a part of the recruitment process. Some of our regular recruiters were Vodafone, Godrej & Boyce, Tata Communications, Darashaw, CRISIL, IMRB International, TCS, HSBC, ICICI Bank , Berger Paints, Citi Bank and ABPS Infra. More than 60 companies participated in the placement process this year, which saw them offering profiles across specializations including Investment Banking, Equity Research, Product Development, Market Research, Sales, Banking, Business Development and many more.

However, this year also saw a surge of SMEs and first time recruiters participating in the process. Companies like Aviva Life Insurance, CAPFoundation, Ennar Capital, Garden Vareli, HDFC Ergo, IDBI Bank, Infomedia 18, MF Global, Monarch Innovative, Tresvista Financial Services, Ugam Solutions, Vijaya Bank, Web 18 were some of the first time recruiters who picked up students from across various specializations.

Some of the other companies which showed keen interest in the students from SIMSREE were Accenture, Aircel, Birla SunLife, Eureka Forbes, Ispat, KPIT Cummins, Maersk India, Paper Products Ltd., Research International and Thomson Reuters amongst others.

There has been an increasing trend in B Schools across India, wherein quite a few students tread an offbeaten path -opt out of placements to pursue entrepreneurial dreams . This year 8 students from SIMSREE , have opted out of campus recruitment either to start their own venture or to join their Family Businesses.

The average domestic salary on offer is Rs. 7.05 lakhs p.a, with median salary being Rs. 6.73 lakhs. The highest package offered on campus is Rs. 11 lakhs while the lowest package on offer on campus is Rs. 3.5 lakhs.

Placements at various IIMS in their executive program remained subdued due to ongoing economic downturn. In this unprecedented and sudden economic downturn, IIMA has almost concluded its Placement for class of 2009 with a success rate of 93%.

 IIMA despite its strong alumni base, numero uno position of its brand, struggled for 5 months to place a batch of 77 students with a 93% success rate tell a lot about challenges faced by MBA program in turbulent times. 

For the first time in the history of IIMs in India, IIMA has become first IIM to announce a placement figure which is not 100% and must be commended for the courage for accepting a non 100% figure. In India, MBA especially at IIMs has become synonymous with a 100% figure and thus create an environment which makes MBA aspirants taking much bigger risk than anticipated as 100% placement is not a reality anywhere in the world including India and poses considerable challenges.

 Executive MBA Placements have faced strong head winds this year (read CoolAvenues survey report : Executive MBA : in Middle of no-where) and only a handful of them have reported their placement statistics. ISB, Hyderabad, with batch strength of 442 students (biggest in India) is yet to conclude its placement process, though new batch of 540 students is already at campus.

 At IIM, Ahmedabad, its third batch of PGPX (2008-09) programme placement season started in January for 70 students who opted for placements. 4 students of the class decided to start their own venture in a variety of fields such as manufacturing, services and clean energy. The average salary offered at campus was INR 20.16 lakh while fee of this one year programme in INR 17.5 lakh.

  
 Placements 2009, despite a overall economic downturn saw recruiters from MNCs, SMEs and Start-up sectors showing a great deal of interest in PGPX batch profiles including several first-time recruiters who have offered good positions. Students have taken up jobs and designations that align with their career choices while accepting roles they were offered. Students joined reputed firms with senior roles like GM, VP, AVP, CEO, COO, Head of IT etc. 5 students who are yet to be placed have niche skills and are looking for positions in specific sectors of their choice.

 
 Companies that participated in PGPX placements include Aditya Birla Group, Arthur D Little Inc, AES Ltd., Arshiya International, Adani Group, Alcatel Lucent, Amazon, Big FM, Booz & Co., Cinepolis, Corporate Executive Board, Copal Partners, Deloitte, Directi, Dorf Ketal Chemicals Pvt. Ltd., Deutsche Bank, E-infochips, Eli Lilly, Elecon, Emergent Ventures, Ericsson, Fin IQ, Geometric, Google, Hero Honda, Intas, i-Runway, IBM India Pvt. Ltd., ICRA, Infosys, Infrasoft Technologies, IRL Research Pvt. Ltd., John Deere, KPIT Cummins, Marg Group, Mastek Ltd., McKinsey & Company, Media Contacts, Microsoft, NISG, NMCE, Nokia Siemens Network, Prime Focus, Polaris Software Lab Ltd., PRTM Management Consultants, RPG, Sankhya Infotech, Siemens Information Systems Ltd., Sundaram BNP, Teach for India, Tech Mahindra, VBHDC India Pvt. Ltd., Wipro.

Key Facts

* As of May 31st, 2009 

Break-up by Industry

Functional Break-up

Placement season for the final year students at Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur concluded with 65 companies participating in the final placement process. The average compensation stood at Rs 8.93 lakhs per annum, a drop of 22% as compared to the last year. The highest domestic compensation was Rs 14.7 lakhs per annum with 32 new recruiters visiting the campus this year.

This year again witnessed the participation of Big 4 consulting firms Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Ernst and Young, KPMG and Deloitte.24% of the batch chose consulting as their preferred career with profiles ranging from Government Reforms and Infrastructure Advisory, Carbon Trading Advisory, to Process Innovation and Risk Advisory. Wipro Consulting Services (WCS), Deloitte US (Hyderabad), Emergent Ventures, Renoir Consulting and Frost &Sullivan were other companies which offered consulting profiles.

 Notwithstanding the global recessionary trends being faced by the financial world, VGSoM saw participation by the top finance companies with finance accounting for 21% of the batch. Citibank, Deutsche Bank, SBI Caps, Irevna, Union Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, SIDBI, Andhra Bank, Care Ratings and Vistasoft offered finance profiles with Union Bank of India being the largest recruiter on campus. The profiles that were on offer by the companies varied from Corporate Finance, Treasury, Project Finance and Risk Management to Process Improvement and Banking Operations.

 Louis Dreyfus Commodities Middle East Ltd. offered international postings to the candidates interested in the field of Finance.

 In spite of the recession VGSoM was a preferred destination for a number of IT companies including the regular recruiters like IBM, Infosys BPO and the first time recruiters like HP, TCS, Iviz, Metalogic Systems, Couth IT, Kalinga Soft and Pagalguy.This year saw the top analytics companies like HSBC Analytics, Market Rx, Genpact, First Source, Latent View Analytics and Decidyn Systems making a beeline for students. The profiles that were on offer ranged from financial analytics, marketing analytics, IT analytics and the niche pharmaceutical market analytics. On the whole the IT and the Analytics sector recruited a sizeable 21% of the batch.

 Leading marketing companies like Cadburys, Cavinkare, Vodafone, Tata Communications, IMRB International, Dabur Pharma and Novartis offered profiles that ranged from Sales and Marketing, Market Research, Branding, Business Development to Business Analytics. Marketing profiles were accepted by 20% of the batch. Operations profile accounted for 9% of the batch offered by companies like RPG Group, Maersk Logistics, Vedanta, Tata Telcon, Tata Steel, Bajaj Auto,Voltas, Schindler India, LMJ Group, M N Dastur and Visa Steel.

 An important trend that was noted this year was the participation of the Navaratna PSU’s like BHEL and other major PSU`s like Andrew Yule. Overall, in spite the downturn , students were offered a variety of profiles like Corporate Finance, Treasury, Project Finance, Management and IT Consulting, Strategy and Execution, EA to CXO’s, Carbon Trading Advisory and Government reforms and infrastructure advisory.

One year Executive MBA program which has come into prominence in India due to success seen by ISB flagship one year MBA program faced its first real test after dotcom bust in year 2009.

ISB which was launched in year 2001 faced a quite uphill task during its initial years but slowly overcame all troubles to emerge as one of top global destination for one year executive MBA program. ISB one year program gave much needed opportunity to executives with significant work experience and in middle management to tap the opportunities offered by elite “MBA” tag without sacrificing significant time in the campus with almost mint fresh students. ISB model became so successful that very soon all leading B-School in India including IIMs launched their own version of one year executive MBA program aimed at candidates with significant prior work experience.

However Placements 2009 saw significant stress level faced by one year executive MBA programs as one year became too short to change career track or build network in alumni groups or building an opportunity to lap PPO from corporates.

At this point of time, barring IIM Calcutta and SPJIMR, majority of one year executive programs were yet to conclude their placement process. Even ISB Hyderbad, leader in the one year MBA program faced difficult task of placing a mammoth batch of 442 students and had to extend its placement process indefinitely though as per its website, placement process was to conclude on or before 22^nd march 2009. Similarly one year executive MBA programs at IIM, Ahmedabad, Lucknow etc have been extended and are yet to conclude as per informal reports available to CoolAvenues.com. Further majority of B-School are still displaying placements data of 2008 or admission details of 2010 indicating issues with Placements. As per informal data available to CoolAvenues.com, majority of students at one of leading B-School in India have gone back to their parent organization at much lower salaries or have joined at just par salary.

One year Executive MBA program tasted early success with companies queued premier B-schools during boom periods as getting qualified professionals have become a bigger challenge on account of higher salaries and even higher attrition rate and in those days of boom, one year executive MBAs filled the gap effectively however things turned other way round in 2009 as professionals with significant work experience were available at much lower cost with every company in downsizing mode and this shrunk the demand for executive MBA students as majority of them were using this program to either change their career track e.g. from Manufacturing to Finance or IT to Sales & Mktg etc or grow significantly in their career path.  As per industry experts and HR professionals one year MBA program may continue to face pressure for some more time until unless there is significant demand from industry which seems unlikely for in near future given the freeze in recruitment at every level.

 Hence will one year executive MBA be able to recover and leap frog or will suffer for more time is anybody’s guess! 

2009 seems to be year of PSUs as far as placements are concerned and TISS turned out to be no exception with almost 18% of the batch heading towards PSU.

 The final placements of the Human Resources Management and Labour Relations (erstwhile PM&IR) batch of the TATA Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai for the batch of 2007-09 saw a batch of 60 students, walking away with preferred jobs in diverse industries and roles. Despite the global economic slowdown, recruitment was robust and this vindicates the institute’s position as being a top ranked school for Human Resource Management.

Like most other campuses this year, at TISS too, the placement season got extended and ended in the last week of February. The entire placement season, including the rolling process, witnessed 40 companies participating, with 18 new recruiters visiting the campus. The highlight was the sharp spike in the number of offers from Public Sector Undertakings (PSU’s) like IOCL, BPCL, GAIL, National Housing Bank, which accounted for recruiting 18% of the batch. The average salary package offered on campus was INR 10.12 lakh per annum and the median salary was Rs. 10.31 lakh per annum. Companies made 12 Pre-Placement Offers this year.

Each sector was fairly represented with recruiters from sectors like Manufacturing, IT/ITeS, FMCG, Consulting, BFSI, Pharmaceuticals, Energy etc. 

In keeping with tradition, major conglomerates visited TISS for recruitment in their management cadres. The Tatas (Tata Steel and Tata HRDP), RPG, Bharti and Essar continued its relationship with the institute.  The BFSI sector was well represented by Deutsche Bank, Axis Bank, Bharti Axa and Franklin Templeton. The presence of HR Consulting thought leaders like Ernst & Young, Hewitt, Dale Carnegie and DDI underline the ever-increasing stature of TISS in the HR Consulting space. Auto sector made its presence felt through Hero Honda and Mahindra and Mahindra. BPO space had well known names like Mphasis and Firstsource. The other recruiters like Asian Paints, Cadbury, Cairn Energy, Coca-Cola, Dr. Reddy’s, Astra Zeneca, Hindustan Coca-Cola Bottling Ltd., Hindustan Unilever, L&T, Marico, Nestle, Nokia, Procter & Gamble and Wipro also vied for the best HR talent in the country.