Consulting emerged this year as the top recruiting sector with offers rolled out to 36 per cent of the batch of 233 participants at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s SPJIMR. This built on a trend of increased offers from management and technology consulting companies seen last year, says a press release from the B-school.
Conducted entirely online, the placements for the class of 2021, according to the B-school, was completed in a record time of two days with enthusiastic corporate participation, signing off a season of unprecedented challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Consulting companies rolled out offers to 84 students, the highest ever reported by SPJIMR for a batch. The participant companies included Accenture Strategy, Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte USI, EY, GEP, KPMG and PwC US Advisory among others.
Salary packages
The average annual salary (cost-to-company) this year stands at ₹25.86 lakh per annum. This is similar to the levels reported last year. The median annual salary came in at ₹25 lakh per annum, with over 26 per cent of the batch securing offers in excess of ₹30 lakh per annum, and over 80 percent in excess of ₹20 lakh per annum.
The FMCG sector continued to be a major recruiter, making offers to close to 18 per cent of the batch. Top recruiters in this sector included Asian Paints, Colgate-Palmolive, Hindustan Unilever, L'Oréal, Marico, Mondelez, Procter & Gamble and RB.
This was closely followed by offers in the BFSI and E-commerce sectors that saw companies like Amazon, American Express, Axis Capital, Barclays, Citibank, Flipkart, Nomura, PayTM and Grofers (among others) participating in the process.
General Management roles were offered by leading recruiters like Capgemini ELITE, Mahindra GMC, RPG and Tata Administrative Services. The boom in the e-commerce industry brought in close to 30 offers for the batch, made by industry leaders like Amazon, Cloudtail, Flipkart, Go-MMT, Grofers and Prione.
Many new recruiters
In addition to the regular recruiters from SPJIMR, close to 75 new companies from diverse sectors added to the breadth of the process this year. As a result, the total number of companies in the process this year stood at 131, up from 122 last year.
Despite the challenges brought by the pandemic, around 50 per cent of the batch bagged PPO/PPI opportunities through the autumns internship and corporate competitions with leading corporates like Amazon, Boston Consulting Group, Colgate Palmolive, Hindustan Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Tata Administrative Services among others.
The large number of offers in a year marked by dramatic changes in the business environment indicated high levels of trust in the SPJIMR model of autumns internship. Under this, participants take to autumns internships typically in September to October after the completion of their specialisation courses, making them more business ready.
‘Stellar performance despite pandemic’
Said Prof Renuka Kamath, Associate Dean - Academic Services & External Relations, “The strongest institutions are those in which the community comes together in difficult times. Our corporate partners, alumni, faculty and staff have come together to ensure the best possible outcomes for our students. Our students have demonstrated resilience and character. The entire SPJIMR community deserves credit.”
Prof Sajeev A George, Chairperson PGDM, said, “It is hugely satisfying to see a stellar placement performance during these difficult times. We shall stay focused to further enhance the rigour and relevance of our curriculum, as per the needs of the changing times.”
Prof Abbasali Gabula, Associate Director – External Relations said: “What looked like a particularly difficult season harking back to the times of the global financial crisis has ended on a high. Despite the extremely challenging environment, we have maintained compensation at the levels achieved last year. The response indicates that corporate India is well on its way to getting back to business in full swing.”