The Summer Placement process for the Class of 2021 of the Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in Management at IIM Ahmedabad has been successfully completed within three clusters. The students were placed across some 20 sectors, in roles of their choice.
Placement process
Firms were grouped into cohorts based on the profile offered, and groups of cohorts were invited to campus across different clusters. As in previous years, students were provided the flexibility of making “dream” applications to firms of their choice in a subsequent cluster, even with a previous offer in hand.
Close to 100 students made over 300 dream applications this year. This gave students the flexibility to build careers in sectors of their choice. They also had the opportunity to work under the mentorship of Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad, on their entrepreneurial ideas.
Sectoral overview
Recruiters in the management consulting cohort included AT Kearney, Accenture Strategy, Alvarez & Marsal, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte USI, GEP Consulting, KPMG, McKinsey &Company, Roland Berger and Strategy&, among others.
Prominent recruiters in the investment banking and markets space included Arpwood Capital, Avendus Capital, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (India and Hong-Kong), Citibank, Credit Suisse (Singapore and India), Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, HSBC, Moelis, Morgan Stanley and Nomura (Singapore and India).
There was increased participation in the PE and VC domain this year with Arga Investment Management, Brookfield, Edelweiss, Eight Roads, Kois Invest, MIRA Infra Fund (Macquarie Group), Morgan Stanley Infra Fund, Omidyar Network, NIIF, Temasek, Venture Highway and White Oak participating. Among the banking, financial services and insurance recruiters, American Express and FinIQ participated in the process.
Sales and marketing roles were offered by regular recruiters like AB InBev, Coca-Cola, General Mills, HUL, ITC, Kimberly Clark, Mondelez, Nestle, P&G, Reckitt Benckiser, Saint Gobain and Wipro Consumer Care, and also by new recruiters such as Colgate Palmolive and Dabur, among others.
The General Management and Leadership cohort saw participation from recruiters like Aditya Birla Group, CK Birla Group, Mahindra Group, Reliance India, RPG Group and TAS. In the retail B2B & B2C space, there were firms like Amazon, Cloudtail, Flipkart and Udaan. The consumer tech cohort comprised firms such as Adobe, Microsoft, Ola Cabs, OLX and Uber. Enterprise tech consisted of such companies as Intel and Sprinklr.
Top recruiters
Boston Consulting Group was the top recruiter for the Summers 2019 process with 23 offers. Among the global banks, HSBC made eight offers. FinIQ was the top recruiter in the BFSI cohort having made six offers. HUL recruited 14 students, making it the top recruiter in the consumer goods cohort while the Aditya Birla Group was top recruiter in the general management cohort, with seven offers. Amazon was the highest recruiter in the Retail B2B& B2C space, having made nine offers, while Microsoft was the leading recruiter in the Consumer Tech cohort, with eight offers.
The quality of the placement process at IIM Ahmedabad was once again appreciated by the recruiters, who continue to hire in large numbers. Laxmikant Dalem, Assistant Manager–Campus Relations at Ola Cabs, which made six offers, said, “The whole process was well designed and the communication from the placement team was clear and concise. The process was executed very well, there were no hiccups and our hiring was completed smoothly.”
Cluster Cohort system
Prof Amit Karna, Chairperson of the Placement Committee, said: “Summer internship is a critical component of the academic structure of our two-year MBA programme. The students get an opportunity to apply their classroom learnings to real-life situations during their internship projects at the organisation of their choice, across various sectors. We are grateful to all the recruiters who visited our campus for their continued support in providing our students with summer internship opportunities at their organisations. We constantly strive to improve our programmes and our students’ ability to add value to their organisations. We wish the students and recruiters the very best for a productive summer internship.”
Shreyas Srivastava, Recruitment Secretary at IIMA, said: “Placements at IIMA have successfully delivered the mandate of ensuring student-career fit, year on year. The ClusterCohort system we follow allows students to pursue sectors of their choice, and the Dream opportunity provides the opportunity to students to explore and upgrade their offers. Cognizant of the students’ preferences for sectors of their choice, this year we succeeded in increasing the participation of firms from the PE/VC and investment banking / markets cohorts to over 45.
Additionally, this year, Dream applications saw a significant upswing, with about 100 dreams played on Cluster 2 and around 200 dreams on Cluster 3 companies. The year-on-year increase in dream applications clearly demonstrates that students are keen to explore for the best-fit, and place their faith in the placement system to provide this opportunity. This is proof of the maturity and success of the Cluster-Cohort and Dream system, as it provides a win-win for both students and recruiters. We hope that more B-Schools in the country migrate to this system in the interest of both students and recruiters.”
Further details about the placement process will be released in an audited report, as per the Indian Placement Reporting Standards (IPRS), introduced by IIM-A in an effort to bring about greater transparency in B-school placements across the country. The IPRS report for ‘Summer Placements 2019-20’ will be released six months from the date of completion of the process, and the link to the report will be shared with all stakeholders.