One of the youngest IIMs, the Indian Institute of Management Udaipur (IIMU) has launched a programme called 'Project Maverick' to provide students an avenue to explore the world of start-ups while being part of it.
Running parallel to the placements, the programme opens a window for students desirous to join start-ups, thereby providing them a hands-on experience of the start-up ecosystem.
At a time, when the institute has completed its summer placements for the flagship two-year MBA batch of 2020-2022, it has set high hopes from Project Maverick to unlock start-up opportunities for students.
"Unlike other institutes, our approach is different. We carefully select the start-ups and do ground work with them to identify their needs. They have different requirements from the large companies, but they provide better learning opportunity to the students. We are very excited about Project Maverick," Janat Shah, Director, IIMU told BusinessLine on Campus .
Virtual placements
The institute has roped in ten start-ups from digital space and about 24 students have joined them rather than participating in the placements. "The results will be seen after the completion of the summers," Shah said.
The institute had placed largest batch in its ten-year history for summer placements. As many as 322 students got offers with highest stipend touching ₹3 lakh, up 20 per cent from previous year. Of over 100 companies, 60 were new recruiters, which included Accenture Strategy, Adani Group, AliveCor India, Asian Paints, Casio, Cisco Systems, Del Monte, Magicbricks, Puma, Samsung R&D among others.
The number of offers from e-commerce players jumped by more than 100 per cent over last year, the institute informed. Shah also stated that given the pandemic situation during the year 2020, it was a challenging situation to retain the quality of the students.
"Initially, there were much apprehension about the economic situation and the industry's perception of the students as teaching was online due to Covid-19. There were concerns about different treatment by the industry due to online study," Shah said.
He, however, expressed satisfaction over the placements and the stipends given to the students saying, "The reason why we are happy is because the students and our faculties had put in a lot of efforts to maintain the quality of academics. So, there were no issues from the industry side," he added.
The institute, being relatively new, had roped in its alumni to provide mentoring to the students to get ready for the industry.