The summer placement season for the PGP class of 2016-18 at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B) witnessed the participation of top recruiters across all sectors with renewed vigour. The process was completed on November 10.
IIM-B is also simultaneously hosting the summer recruitment process for IIM Vishakhapatnam PGP class of 2016-18 with 60 per cent of applicants already placed. Like last year, the IIM-B Placement Committee mentored IIM Vishakhapatnam students in the run up to the placement process.
This year, the process witnessed the participation of 402 eligible students and more than 150 companies who came to hire students for multiple roles such as management consulting, investment banking, markets, corporate banking, sales and marketing, business leadership, product management, operations, category management, and general management.
Another striking feature of the process was that more than 30 firms visited IIM-B for the first time. Some of these included Arthur D Little, BayCurrent Consulting, Auctus Advisors, Gates Foundation, United Breweries, Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages, NRI Consulting, Danaher, RPG Group, MasterCard Advisors, Visa, Mytrah Energy, Renew Power, Biocon, Next Education, Medtronics, GroupM, Wadi.com, Treebo Hotels, PharmEasy, CATKing, Rakshak Foundation and Zimmer.
IIM-B played host to most big international banks such as Barclays, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Development Bank of Singapore and Standard Chartered on the first day. Private equity/venture capital roles by Blackstone, Temasek Holdings, IDG Ventures and Brand Capital were also offered to the students. BNY Mellon and Arpwood Capital were among the first-time recruiters in this domain. A host of Indian banks and financial institutions such as Avendus Capital, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and AVIVA also made offers.
Management consulting
In the management consulting space, Accenture Strategy was the largest recruiter with 20 offers. Boston Consulting Group with 15 offers, AT Kearney with 13 offers, McKinsey & Co with 10 offers, Bain & Company with 8 offers and Strategy& with seven offers were the other major recruiters this year.
More than 30 per cent of the entire batch received offers in the management consulting sector, which also included reputed names like Deloitte, Roland Berger, Alvarez & Marsal, PWC Diamond Consulting, GEP, Hay Group, Synergy Consulting and Feedback Infra Consulting.
Conglomerates such as Aditya Birla Group, Tata Administrative Services, CK Birla, Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro Global, Reliance Industries Limited and General Electric recruited in significant numbers for leadership and general management roles. Aditya Birla Group, with nine offers, was the highest recruiter in this space.
Sales and marketing
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 Procter and Gamble with 11 offers, Hindustan Unilever Limited (seven), Johnson & Johnson (seven), Mondelez (six) and Asian Paints (five). The other recruiters in this space included Phillips, Coca Cola, ITC, Times Group and Wipro Consumer Care. Telecom majors Bharti Airtel made 11 offers and Vodafone made three offers. The major retail firm from the Middle-East — MH Alshaya — also recruited this year.
Technology
Prominent recruiters in the technology space was led by Microsoft with seven offers. The other recruiters included Microland, Sutherland Global, Infoedge, Zynga, Visa, Play Games and Directi. In the IT consulting domain, prominent recruiters like Cognizant Business Consulting, IBM and Capgemini visited the campus.
The e-commerce space also saw interest with Amazon making 20 offers. The other recruiters included Cloudtail (two) and Shopclues (one).
Commenting on the occasion, Professor Ganesh Prabhu, Chairperson, Career Development Services, IIM-B said, “The absence of major e-commerce recruiters did not have an impact on the summer placement process due to the renewed interest from FMCG companies.”
Krishna M, Placement Representative, said, “IIM-B has continued to be the preferred campus for management consulting firms with most of them making unprecedented number of offers. Recruitment by PE/VC and social sector firms added to the quality and variety of offers rolled out to the students.”