Consulting, fin services, e-comm firms make beeline for IIM grads

Over 150 firms made over 450 offers across more than 200 profiles; 134 pre-placement offers made

The final placement season for the PGP class of 2013-15 of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) saw participation by top recruiters from across sectors and the process saw 398 students participate, while five of them opted out.

Over 150 companies participated and made over 450 offers across more than 200 profiles. As many as 134 pre-placement offers were extended to the students before the start of the final placements based on their performance during the summer internship.

The lateral placement for candidates with over 22 months of experience saw 156 offers being made. About 25 students were offered international placements by various firms.

IIMB played host to global banking majors such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Citibank on the first day of the final placements. The process also saw the participation of Avendus Capital and American Express. Private equity / venture capital roles by Catamaran Ventures and Brand Capital were offered to students. Germany-based Incubator Rocket Internet continued to hire exclusively from IIM Bangalore, for the second time offering international roles.

A host of Indian banks and financial institutions such as Kotak Investment Bank, ICICI Securities, ICICI Prudential, Yes Bank, Axis Bank, and Edelweiss also made offers during the placement process.

In the consulting domain, The Boston Consulting Group made 16 offers, McKinsey & Co. and Accenture Management Consulting with 11 offers were the top recruiters this year. Around 30 per cent of the entire batch received offers in the consulting sector which also included reputed names like Bain & Company, A T Kearney, Roland Berger, and Alvarez & Marsal. Arthur D Little and PRTM Consulting also hired from IIM Bangalore this time. Other prominent recruiters in this space were EXL, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Conglomerates such as Aditya Birla Group, Tata Administrative Services (TAS), Reliance Industries Ltd, Mahindra Group, CK Birla, L&T, Siemens and GE recruited in significant numbers for leadership and general management roles.

Many students also chose to go to sales and marketing functions, and were extended offers by major consumer goods and services firms. Major recruiters in this category were P&G, Hindustan Unilever, ITC, Mondelez International, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Reck- itt Benckiser, Johnson & Johnson, Marico and Asian Paints. Telecom majors Vodafone and Bharti Airtel also made a number of offers in this domain.

Prominent recruiters in the technology space included Microsoft, Google, Samsung and Infosys. In the IT consulting domain, all prominent recruiters like IBM and Capgemini visited the campus.

The e-commerce space saw heightened interest, with Amazon and Snapdeal making 17 offers each, which incidentally were the highest offers by any individual firm. Other prominent e-commerce recruiters included Flipkart, Urban Ladder, AskmeBazaar, Hopscotch, CarTrade, Proptiger, Quickr, Commonfloor and Ola Cabs.

Commenting on the occasion, Sankarshan Basu, Chairperson, Career Development Services, IIM Bangalore, said: "The 2015 final placements were extremely well received and supported by all participating organisations. The entire process was smooth and organised given the large number of companies participating each day."

Ankur Agrawal, placement representative, said: "While the consulting firms continued to recruit in large numbers, the students were also very upbeat about joining various e-commerce firms."

• Over 150 firms participated and made over 450 offers across more than 200 profiles
• 134 pre-placement offers were extended to students before the final placements
• Lateral placement season for candidates saw 156 offers