Newer IIMs seek professional help to get their students placed

The younger IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) are seeking professional help to get their students placed and create better linkages with industry to deal with a muted job market and bigger batch sizes. Final placements at IIM-Ahmedabad, considered the B-school benchmark, have had a muted start (ET, February 11). The younger IIMs too may have a poor run in final placements, necessitating dedicated effort on their part. Institutes such as IIM-Kashipur, IIM-Ranchi, IIM-Rohtak and IIM-Shillong have hired – in most cases, on contract – advisors in corporate relations and placement to reach out to companies with information on the work they are doing and the quality of students.

The professionals, mostly from HR or sales and marketing backgrounds, are filling in for the already-stretched faculty at IIMs. Traditionally, at the premier institutes, faculty members take up additional charge of facilitating the placements process. Advisors are charging a fee ranging from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1,00,000 for four days a month. Placements – whether summer internships or the finals – have been a challenge at the new IIMs, more so with increased batch sizes. “It’s the toughest year yet in terms of placement,” says P. Rameshan, Director, IIM-Rohtak. The institute is trying to place 122 students, as against last year’s 47.

The advisors have been given the mandate of building relationships with top management in companies, sourcing talent for corporates, organising and initiating chairs and endowments, getting corporate sponsorships for events, handling various stakeholders and marketing the institutes’ brands. “It’s like a start-up challenge. We need time to establish and promote the institute. There are companies who don’t even know where new IIMs are. Also, the market realities of placements can’t be wished away,” says Gautam Sinha, Director, IIM-Kashipur.

It’s all about professionalising the process, says IIM-Ranchi Director MJ Xavier. The institute’s summers process, which started in September, is almost complete while the finals process, which started in January, is expected to wrap up in first week of March. It had a batch of 160 students to place in the summers while the finals process has 66 students, up from last year’s 44.

The institute has roped in Arijit Majumdar as advisor, external relations, to help with the process. Majumdar has a good 30 years of experience at various levels of management across FMCG, publishing, media and entertainment industries. He has also served as chief of corporate relations and external affairs at IIM-Shillong in the first two years of its existence. IIM-R is also looking at making a proposal to the board to get a headhunting firm to do the job, with a team working full-time on placements and external relations.

IIM-Kashipur has roped in Partha Dasgupta, who has 34 years of experience of working in the corporate sector. Dasgupta, a post graduate in personnel management and industrial relations from Xavier Institute of Social Service, Ranchi, is on an annual contract to help enhance the institute’s brand, and match students’ profiles and skills with jobs available at various companies.

Till date, 50 companies have come for the summers and finals and the figure is expected to touch around 80 in a week. The batch size for summers and finals is around 40 students each. “A major challenge for companies is the logistics as Kashipur is a non-metro.

While the feedback on the quality of students is good, the salary bands are not that high,” says Dasgupta.
IIM-Shillong, which has had professional help from its inception, says it is showing results. “We are more comfortable this year. We have had to struggle due to our location,” says Keya Sengupta, Director of the institute, which is trying to place a batch of 105 students. The institutes are hoping that every step in this direction will soon make them names to reckon with.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), February 15, 2013

Slowdown skips IIMs: Pre-Placement Offers remain buoyant

Joel Xavier, Manager, Student Affairs and Placements, at Indian Institute of Management-Udaipur (IIM-U), is upbeat. “Twenty-five companies had come for summer placements last year in October-November 2011 and they placed 57 students. These students successfully completed their summer internships in April-June 2012,” he said.

Its older peer, IIM-Bangalore, is no less bullish, as it has already received over 40 pre-placement offers (PPOs) compared to a total of 93 at the end of last year. Such offers at the institute keep trickling in till December which is when lateral placements begin.

Almost all IIMs said a muted economy notwithstanding, the final tally for PPOs will beat last year’s records, with some of the biggest names ranging from Hindustan Unilever, McKinsey and the financial sector giants turning up for placements this year. PPOs are placement offers to final year students who are, or were trainees, in the company during their internships. The IIM PPO process begins every July and goes on till final placements conclude in March-April of next year.

IIM-Raipur, which has around two PPOs in hand, is focusing on having international placements on campus and is also inviting more number of consultancy firms. “A lot of consulting firms largely restrict themselves to older IIMs. This year we have approached them to recruit from our campuses too and so far the response is positive,” said Sanjeev Parashar, Placement Chairperson, IIM-Raipur. IIM-Raipur has a batch size of 48 students to place this year.

Devi Singh, Director of IIM-Lucknow said the institute has got a positive response from its recruiters as well as students who have returned from summer internship. Lucknow saw about 419 strong batch participating in summer internships this year. Godwin Tennyson, Placement Chairperson at IIM-Trichy, says “market is volatile for sure, but demand will certainly be there.” PPOs at IIM-Trichy will keep flowing in till February 2013.

Recruiters are equally bullish. Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which emerged among the topmost recruiters from the IIMs last year has this year extended 27 PPO offers to students who interned with BCG in the summer of 2012. “These candidates will join BCG in 2013. Of this 26 are from the IIMs while one is from Harvard Business School,” said Ravi Srivastava, Partner & Director, BCG. “BCG business continues to grow at a rapid pace, and we will continue recruiting in large numbers this year as well,” Srivastava added. At Mumbai-based RPG group, 35 students interned during the summer from 10 B-schools this year and the company says it looks forward to an aggressive recruitment season.

Technically all students who intern are eligible to receive PPOs. However different firms have different policies — some do not offer PPOs, some do not have plans to offer full time employment and also some firms offer PPI (Pre Placement Interviews). These firms put the candidates through one more final round of interview before the final placement process and then offer them a job if they qualify. All students are eligible to go through final placements. Every year all our students get one or more job offer through the campus placement process.

Source: Business Standard, August 29, 2012

MBA loses shine as number of CAT aspirants falls to 200,000

The glamour of sporting an MBA badge seems to be losing its sheen as aspirations change among India’s youth amid an economic slowdown and some difficulty in getting jobs. A leading indicator of this is the waning number of aspirants writing the Common Admission Test (CAT) to qualify for postgraduate programmes at the country’s top business schools.

A panel of faculty members of the elite Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) that conducts CAT says this year some 200,000 people will appear for the examination, considered one of India’s toughest. In contrast, 276,000 wrote the test in 2008. And this at a time when the number of IIMs has risen to 13 from seven.

“Let’s respect the Gen Next’s career choice,” said S.S.S. Kumar, Convenor of CAT 2012 and a professor at IIM-Kozhikode. The turnout of CAT aspirants should not be treated like “companies’ quarterly results or like selling shampoo”, Kumar said. The trend does to an extent reflect the current state of India’s economy, he admitted. India’s central bank has lowered its growth projection for the economy to 6.5% from 7.3% in the financial year to March 2013. The economy grew at 8-9% every year between 2003 and 2008.

“The euphoria for management education that we saw between 2002 and 2008 is no more,” said H. Chaturvedi, Director of the Birla Institute of Management and Technology in Greater Noida on the outskirts of Delhi. Chaturvedi said the impact of the slowdown, growth in other career choices such as banking, and a mushrooming of management institutes in smaller cities without enough industry links have impacted the market.

“Many public sector banks have started hiring for the last three years and students now are going for it,” he said. “It’s a good career move at a time when management graduates are not finding many takers.” Chaturvedi also pointed to the fact that the supply of MBAs had gone up 300% between 2006 and 2011. India has at least 4,000 business schools catering to around 500,000 students, government data shows.

The drop in aspirants is not just restricted to CAT. Applications to most of the top-tier business schools are dropping. While the Xavier Aptitude Test, conducted by XLRI, Jamshedpur, received 102,329 applications in 2009, the number dropped to just 60,316 in 2011, according to research by MBAUniverse, a website that tracks management education.

That management education is losing its charm can be gauged from the fact that in the last academic year alone, 60 business schools applied for closure due to poor admission and placement response, Mint reported in March. “The regulator (government) needs to understand these symptoms and act accordingly,” Chaturvedi said. “From the institute side, they need to focus on quality faculty, content and value creation. An MBA college is not like a normal college. Industry linkage is key for placement, hence location of the institute, too, matters.”

While experts say there is enough evidence that management education is facing a shakeout, CAT convenor Kumar said that while the trend needs to be analysed further, the number for CAT aspirants seems to have stabilized around 200,000. “We are halfway through and hope to reach around that number,” he said.

CAT 2012 will be conducted between 11 October and 6 November. Registration began on 30 July and will end on 19 September. The examination will take place in 36 cities across India.

Source: Mint, August 27, 2012

Startups Score Over Top Brands in Internships

Students from a bevy of prestigious colleges in India and overseas are lining up in increasing numbers to intern at startup firms this summer. They are using internships as a springboard for future career moves by gaining a foothold in a thriving entrepreneurial sector when a dull economic environment is leading to paucity in the job market.

Where once internships at top brands were the preferred choice to make resumes look impressive at the time of placements, students are now realising that time spent at a startup can prove to be more worthwhile to long-term career prospects. “During placement season, companies appreciate the fact that a student has interned at a startup because it reflects risk appetite in the individual,” says Atanu Ghosh, who teaches strategy and leadership at IIT-Bombay’s School of Management.

While there is no conclusive data on how many students from top schools choose to intern with startups, colleges confirm that there has been a definite increase. At the Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Bangalore, the number of students interning at startups has almost doubled in the last couple of years, says Sapna Agarwal, who heads career advancement services at the institute. At IIT-Bombay, the number has risen by up to 30 per cent in the last three years, according to estimates by college officials. Founders at startup firms are confirming that they are deluged by a flood of eager aspirants seeking summer internships.

“We need only one intern at a time but I get around 30 good applications from most IITs, IIMs and National Institutes of Technology (NITs),” says Gagan Goyal, co-founder and CEO of ThinkLABS, a six-year-old venture that provides robotic educational kits and solutions to schools and colleges. Goyal and his peers are quickly learning to put this sudden largesse to good use.

More Exposure
ThinkLABS, which had been stuck for nine months on a project to create a robotic kit for the retail market, put an intern from the Pune University College of Engineering on the job and found the project ready in one month. Students are finding that it pays to intern at startups. “In large, structured organisations, these students will have only narrow exposure in the particular section they are assigned to. In a startup, they are exposed to all areas of a company’s operations and are paid reasonably well,” says Krishna Tanuku, Executive Director of the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. Typically interns are paid between Rs. 4,000 and Rs. 25,000 a month at startup companies.

Students who get to work on critical projects are also using these internships to test out entrepreneurial waters. “I hope to start my own venture after my MBA and that was one of the reasons for choosing to intern at ThinkLABS,” says Ruchi Jain, a Harvard Business School student. She spent her summer interning at ThinkLABS and worked to develop a business model for their consumer plan. Goyal, who so far has explored only the business sales segment, will soon roll out Jain’s proposal.

Tanuku is of the opinion that more such students seeking to become entrepreneurs will opt for internships at startup firms. Suhas Pawar, a trained doctor who is in his second year at IIM-Lucknow, opted to intern at Jeevanti Healthcare, which plans to set up hospitals in smaller towns and cities. Jeevanti’s co-founder and CEO, Arun Diaz, entrusted Pawar with the task of recommending new specialisations that their hospital in Ambernath could offer. “We prefer giving specific projects that have an impact on the company and also the intern,” says Diaz.

Pawar, after spending time in the field, suggested setting up an antenatal programme, where healthcare professionals would visit the homes of expectant mothers. The suggestion is currently being implemented by the company. “I had a holistic view of running of a company. For the project, I had to study the operational, financial and marketing aspects, something I would not have been able to do in a large organisation,” says Pawar.

For product startups too, interns are coming handy. CSN Murthy, co-founder and CEO of cloud telephony startup Ozonetel, says at a startup the team is concentrating on the product that is bringing in the revenues. “But we need people to work on our wishlist projects that can be taken to market later. Interns work on such projects and take it to prototype stage,” adds Murthy, who has two interns working for him. Janardhan Reddy, an IIT-Madras student, is doing a remote internship at Ozonetel and is building plugins that will run on top of Ozontel’s KooKoo platform.

Even students from tier-II colleges are taking to this trend. Mallika C, a student of RV College in Bangalore, is building a software application for Ozonetel. “Here I am working on a live project and I can see exactly how an idea gets converted into a product. I will not get this exposure in a large organisation,” says Mallika.

Murthy points out that students who want product experience have to depend on startups as India’s large technology companies are focused on IT services. Students are also interning at startups despite there being no guarantees of a permanent job at that venture.

Source: The Economic Times, August 7, 2012

E-tailers go on a hiring spree

Slowdown or not, Internet penetration in India has paved the way for online retailers’ growth. To supplement this growth, the industry is looking for the best talent too. According to Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham), India’s e-retail industry is likely to touch Rs. 70 billion by 2015, up from Rs. 20 billion currently. Going forward, the industry expects the e-commerce market to grow at 50 to 100 per cent.

“E-commerce is a booming space as the Internet audience is likely to double in the next two to three years. This industry will require talent from various sectors such as technology, product, analytics, sourcing, general management talent, merchandising and marketing,” said Ms Pearl Uppal, Co-founder and Chief executive Officer (CEO) of Fashionandyou.com. Ms Uppal said her company is expecting to triple in size this year. The company, which has staff strength of 800 people, plans to hire more than 400 people this fiscal year and will be seeking out candidates from Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

Yebhi.com is likely to add 2,000 people to its staff strength. Last year the online retailer added 1,000 people. Further, the company, which posted revenues of Rs. 1.25 billion last fiscal, is looking at 300-400 per cent growth in this year. “To support this growth we need much larger teams and, therefore, the team size will also grow by about 200 per cent. We are also looking to expand our back-end capability significantly,” said Mr Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of bigshoebazaar.com, the brand owner of Yebhi.com. The company plans to add a new fulfilment centre spread over 500,000 sq ft this fiscal, scaling up from 100,000 sq ft currently. It says it is likely to invest about $100 million over the next five years.

Mr Gaurav Gupta, Director, Deloitte India, said, “E-commerce is one of the booming sectors. Some of these players have private equity investments. Their focus is on building up their infrastructure back-end, customer acquisition, product acquisition, supply chain and others. The growth in this segment is phenomenal because of a small base and they are hiring in large numbers.”

Ms Anupama Beri, Head of human resources at Snapdeal.com, said the company is aiming at a growth of 300-400 per cent. “Immediate requirement is between 150-200 people in the next month to month-and-a-half,” she said. The company, which was launched in February 2010, has grown from 100-people strong company in October 2010 to 1,500 currently.

Source: The Hindu Business Line, June 6, 2012

Graduates from top B-schools, IITs make a beeline for e-tailing companies

Raj Kuruhuri, 24, has been working for e-commerce start-up BuyThePrice.com for over a month now. Kuruhuri, who graduated from Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Indore this year, opted to join the online deals site that started only in late 2010, rejecting offers from major technology players. The meteoric rise of the e-commerce segment in the last one year is driving sharp minds from the country’s premier B-schools and engineering colleges to be a part of the sunrise industry.

This year, Snapdeal made over 20 offers across IIMs and 75 at IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), e-tailer of books and electronics Flipkart hired 120 graduates from IITs and 23 from IIMs and other top B-schools. Online fashion store Myntra hired seven IIT graduates, five from Indian School of Business (ISB), and two from the IIMs this year. Naaptol, which was among the first-timers at the IIM campuses this year, made 15 offers across leading management schools, including Narsee Moonjee and ISB, all of which were accepted.

Industry experts point out that it is the prospect of bigger responsibilities and faster growth that are driving the graduates to look for opportunities in the e-commerce space. “I was looking at various sunrise sectors, but I was particularly interested in e-commerce because of the pace at which it is growing. What worried me about joining an established firm, is that I feared getting lost amongst 150,000 other employees, without ever knowing what my work was actually amounting to,” says Kuruhuri. In his one-month stint with BuyThePrice, Kuruhuri has laid his hands across departments, including sales, operations, promotions and category development. “This in a big firm would be unimaginable. Also, the people you work with drive a lot of passion into you, because their lives are built around their organisations,” he says.

This year, of the total 423 offers at IIM-Bangalore, 4% were from the e-commerce firms. The first-timers among the e-commerce companies this year at IIM campuses include RedBus, Valyoo Technologies, Via, and Naaptol. “We went to the IIMs for the first time this year. A total of 15 offers were made across the top-tier B-schools, all of which were accepted. Average salaries for IIM grads was R12 lakh, others were R6-9 lakh. We hired 10 IIT graduates with a package of about Rs. 600,000-900,000 as well,” says Naaptol.com e-commerce head Sachin Singhal. The company has a staff strength of 1,500 and is adding 70 people every month.

According to an IIM-B report, the e-commerce sector this year was represented by Flipkart, InfoEdge, Snapdeal and Amazon. Flipkart recruited six students offering senior manager profile in sales and marketing, and supply chain. Companies feel that there aren’t many experienced people in the e-commerce space yet, and supply and demand are not proportionate. “The obvious place to look for is these colleges, where they may not be experienced in the field, but are definitely bright enough to work in it,” adds Sachin.

Recruiters point out that the age profile of the candidates from top B-schools are between 25-30 years and they look for jobs that offer areas to explore. They have a huge appetite for learning and start-ups give them that opportunity. Notwithstanding the global recessionary trends, 2011 witnessed a resurgence of the e-commerce sector. The largest investments in the space till date came last year when Snapdeal.com raised $40 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Fashionandyou.com raised $40 million from a group of investors led by Norwest Venture Partners and Intel Capital. In all, in 2011, this space saw 32 investments.

“In the last one year, the sector was successful in attracting a lot of funding from major VC/PE players that equipped the e-commerce players to pay heavy cheques to get talents from top management and engineering institutes. Money, and at the same time chance to do something new and exciting attracts these candidates,” said Sangeeta Lala, Senior Vice-President (Sourcing), of staffing company TeamLease Services.

Average salary offered by an e-commerce company to an IIM graduate varies between Rs. 1.2-1.5 million. While at IITs it is between Rs.700,000-1 million. “Salaries for tech and management freshers have been in the range of Rs. 1.2-1.5 million annually plus ESOPs and other benefits. For laterals, compensation was adjusted accordingly. At ISB it was in the range of Rs. 2-2.5 million because of lateral hires,” says Myntra.

“This year, we have made about 20 offers across IIMs and 75 in IITs. We have hired from top-tier schools for functions across marketing, sales, operations, product management, and vendor management. This year for the first time we visited IIM campuses,” said head of marketing at Snapdeal.com Sandeep Komaravelley. Snapdeal, which currently has 1,200 people, started its operations in February 2010.

However, some are of the opinion that it is not always that start-ups can match the offers of other big players but try to match them with benefits like ESOPs. “Start-ups can’t always match salaries quoted by the biggies, but we do tend to make up with perks like ESOPs. This has more to do than providing a monetary value. It instills a sense of entitlement, and ownership, and in many ways makes people want to do better,” says Buytheprice.com founder and CEO Ranjith Boyanapalli. The firm made two offers in IIM, Indore and Ahmedabad this year and both were accepted. Operational for two years now, the company currently has about 70 employees.

Source: The Financial Express, April 24, 2012

To fight Maoist, IIT & IIM passouts to assist local admin

A bunch of 20-somethings are raring to swap the security of bluechip firms for the grave hazards lurking beyond the invisible yet palpable thick red line that marks out Maoist-affected areas across the country. Armed with little more than developmental zeal, these professionals are readying to venture into some of the most dangerous areas in central and eastern India. This is where, for instance, a state government recently agreed to free 27 prisoners to secure the release of an abducted MLA and a foreign national.

The first batch of 156 candidates selected for the Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellows Scheme will spend the next two years assisting district collectors in implementing welfare programmes across 78 worst-affected Maoist districts. Their deployment, as per the scheme conceptualised by Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh last September, will be part of the governments measures to answer critics who have long maintained that Maoism cannot be contained by force alone.

Even as the government grapples with the security threat that the insurgents pose in these districts, the fellows are not scared. “Security is not a big concern for me,” says Rajendra Kondepati, who did his BTech in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) before going in for a post-graduate degree in public policy from Singapore. “It is perceived to be very dangerous, and possibly is, but there is still the district administration,” says the 28-year-old, focusing on the opportunities more than the threats.

Unlike administrative services that are extremely rigid, the fellowship promises a range of possibilities. Even compared to the private sector, as far as general management experience is concerned, this will equip us with much better skills. District collectors, who handle everything from general administration and finance to security and development, feel that the fellows can help devise better ways to evaluate and monitor welfare schemes.

“Our job is too large and we have limited workforce available to us. These young boys and girls will have better perspectives and they will help us utilise modern technology to make implementation and monitoring of these schemes more efficient,” said a collector who did not wish to be named, adding, “Ensuring the security of these fellows will be our responsibility.”

Like Kondepati, most of the other fellows hail from premier institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). They have given up jobs with companies such as Infosys, Wipro and Patni to be a part of this one-of-a-kind programme in the country. The ministry received a whopping 8,560 applications in the introductory year for the fellowship scheme that will provide a monthly remuneration of Rs. 65,000.

“The aim was to get professional, out-of-the-box thinkers into the Naxal-affected districts so as to make development initiatives work,” Ramesh told ET. “In one sentence, these people will act as sherpas for the collectors,” the minister said, adding, “This is also the first large-scale entry of professionals into government activity.”

The fellowship awards will be officially announced and conferred by Ramesh and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in Hyderabad on April 7. The fellows will undergo training for two months before being posted in districts covered under the Integrated Action Plan — a joint project of the Planning Commission and Ministry of Home Affairs — introduced in 2009 to intensify development work in the 78 worst-affected Maoist districts such as Dantewada, Bastar, Koraput and Palamu.

Source: The Economic Times, April 6, 2012

E-commerce companies recruiting in big numbers at IIMs as recession weighs down traditional recruiters

In the past, they just ogled as big global banks, consulting firms and consumer goods MNCs strutted around India’s top business school campuses. But this placement season, e-commerce companies are recruiting in big numbers at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), signaling the chutzpah and coming of age of a sector that has cash propelling its ambitions and believers in its potential. Armed with interesting pitches and money raised from venture capital and private equity firms, these e-commerce firms, many of them barely a couple of years old, are taking the top slots at the IIMs, wading into the space vacated by the more traditional recruiters weighed down by a slowing economy and adverse markets.

First-timers at IIM campuses, e-commerce firms such as RedBus, Letsbuy, Via, Valyoo Technologies and Snapdeal have picked up freshers and candidates with experience at salaries ranging between Rs. 800,000 and Rs. 1.6 million. Some others, such as Myntra, which had in the past only visited IIM-Bangalore, have this year cast their net wider to include other IIMs. Bangalore-based online bus ticketing company RedBus, which until now only had summer interns from the IIMs, has this year made two job offers at IIM-Indore and will be heading to Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Kolkata in the coming weeks. “The pre-placement talks have generated interest and we expect slots to be confirmed soon.

The newer IIMs have been after us, but we do not want to go there,” said Shankar Prasad, COO of RedBus. The company plans to initially hire the IIM graduates as management trainees and move them into middle-management roles in due course. The opportunism being displayed by e-commerce firms this year is reminiscent of the 2009 placement season, when state-run banks and other PSUs were big hirers on campuses as their private and foreign counterparts stayed away because of the global economic meltdown. While the economic picture this time around is not as bad as in 2008-09, the placement scene is tepid and IIMs have been tempering hopes of students.

E-commerce Industry Alluring
The IIMs have been prodding students to look beyond traditional recruiters offering high salaries. The e-commerce industry is alluring to many, with examples such as Facebook’s $100-billion planned IPO and stories of 20-something dollar millionaires at the company dominating the discourse. These companies are finding that their stories and unique business models have takers despite them not being the best paymasters.

The past several months have seen intense news flow in the sector, bringing it high into the public consciousness. A report from Dublin-based research firm Research and Markets earlier this month forecast the Indian e-commerce sector growing at a compounded annual rate of 40% to $34.2 billion in 2015 from around $5.9 billion in 2010. The sector is still in a nascent stage, and set to grow exponentially as Internet penetration increases rapidly.

Gurgaon-based group-buying firm Snapdeal’s first tryst with the IIMs has seen it make pre-placement offers. The firm has made offers to three students from IIM-Calcutta, two from IIM-Bangalore and three from IIM-Lucknow. The company, which raised $40 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and IndoUS Venture Partners last year, has also picked up an executive MBA from one of the IIMs. “The recruitment has been done to bolster Snapdeal’s product, technology and analytics teams. The response was good as the students were aware of e-commerce,” said Anupama Beri, Snapdeal’s human resources head.

Online consumer electronics retailer Letsbuy, in the news recently for its marriage with Flipkart, plans to hire up to four students from IIM-Lucknow. “This is our first time at IIMs and we prefer to go to the older IIMs,” said Hitesh Dhingra, founder & CEO of Letsbuy.com. Delhi-based Valyoo Technologies, which received $4 million in venture funding from IDG Ventures in late 2011, got the first-day slot at IIM-Indore and the second day in Lucknow. It has hired 12 students in all. “We have taken candidates for functions across marketing, operations, logistics and supply chain,” said Peyush Bansal, co-founder and CEO of the two-year-old Valyoo, which operates online retail sites Lenskart.com, Bagskart.com, Watchkart.com and Jewelskart.com.

The students, who have been offered annual salaries between Rs. 1.2 and Rs. 1.6 million, will handle separate verticals such as warehousing and product procurement. Valyoo has hired only laterals with experience of 1-4 years. “We have identified critical areas in the business and will hand it over to an IIM graduate,” said Bansal, who is himself an IIM-Bangalore graduate. The company, which is a first-timer at the IIMs, is going to one more IIM in the coming weeks as it wants to hire 3-4 more people.

Bangalore-based online ticketing company Via is awaiting its slot confirmation at IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Indore, and plans to hire up to six students, preferably with prior work experience. It plans to offer salaries between Rs. 1.2 and Rs. 1.5 million and hire people for its strategy, finance and corporate functions. Myntra, on its second trip to the IIM campuses, has made nine offers this year at IIM-Lucknow and the Indian School of Business. The online fashion retailer, which recently raised $21 million from a slew of venture investors, is offering freshers Rs. 1.3-1.5 million along with stock options and other benefits. The next stop is IIM-Ahmedabad, said Pooja Gupta, VP (HR) of the company.

While most e-commerce firms are opting for a mix of freshers and people with prior experience, online travel agency MakeMyTrip, a veteran of many campus placements, is hiring only laterals from IIMs and other top B-schools such as the ISB. “This provides a better return on investment, both from a fit and compensation cost perspective, as well as retention. Experienced candidates have clear career goals, have shorter learning curves, and do not necessarily shop around,” said Purva Misra, senior vice-president, HR. The Nasdaq-listed company plans to hire up to 15 students from campuses this year, mostly for product management and online marketing roles.

Source: The Economic Times, February 20, 2012

Over 100 companies offer summer placements at IIM-Kozhikode

The summer placements process at the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIM-K), saw more than 100 companies offering internships across various verticals to all the 343 students of the 15th batch of the flagship Post Graduate Programme.

The placements were the highest in the sales and marketing vertical with around 30% of the students opting for it, followed by finance (25%), consulting (20%), general management (15%) operations (5%) and IT and HR (5%). More than 35 companies were participating in the process at the institute for the first time, according to the IIM-K Media Cell.

First timers like TAS, CLSA, Societe Generale, Amazon, Avalon Consulting, Macquarie Capital, Yahoo, Dabur, RPG Group, Mentor Graphics, Dawn Consulting, Ittiam Systems, UAE Exchange and Herbz offered senior roles at foreign locations Hong Kong, London and Dubai.

In the sales and marketing vertical, the FMCG sector attracted the largest number of students with companies such as HUL, ITC, Marico, Reckitt Benckiser, PepsiCo, Asian Paints, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, Heinz, Perfetti, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, Dabur and Brittania making good offers. Besides, Bharti Airtel in the telecommunications sector; GSK Pharma and Medtronics from the pharmaceuticals sector; and Titan and Wilderaft from fashion and lifestyle also offered roles in the marketing vertical.

In the finance vertical, investment banks and other financial institutions made a higher number of offers than last year despite concerns over recessionary trends felt in the European markets. The offers, covering asset management, equity markets and investment banking, came from entities such as Deutche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Nomura, Macquarie Capital, American Express, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and Edelweiss. Also Indian banking majors such as ICICI Bank and Axis Bank offered commercial banking opportunities to the students.

Strategy and business consulting, one of the most sought-after verticals in recent times, was another area where a large number of students accepted offers from recruiters such as Deloitte Consulting, Cognizant Business Consulting, Nodwin, Wipro Consulting and MindTree. This apart, business development and IT consulting roles were also in demand with companies such as Infosys, TCS, Aricent, Genpact and Wipro making offers in the segment.

Source: The Hindu Business Line, November 8, 2011

B-School’s plan to make summer internships optional falls flat

The scheme permitting students with some work experience to opt out of the summer internships has found few takers at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B). The institute recently announced that students with work experience of over 34 months have an option to work on other projects in campus or outside, or pursue other plans during April-May, the period when students usually take up summer internships “but very small number has opted out of internships so far”, Ms. Sapna Agarwal, Head, Career Development Centre at IIM-B, told Business Line. “Students with prior work experience still want to do summer internships,” she said.

This is the first year this option has been given to them and we have given them time to decide, and we might have a few more opting out, but “there aren’t too many,” she said. Those who opt out do so because they have other plans like ideate a start-up, or work on a project, and those who have been associated with start-ups might go back there to contribute, Ms. Agarwal said. About 25 per cent of the 375 students in the current batch have work experience of over 34 months.

Summer internships, for eight weeks during April-May, are otherwise compulsory for all first-year students pursuing the post-graduate programme at IIM-B. They form an important part of the postgraduate programme as several students are made pre-placement offers by the companies they have interned in.

The summer placement for the students of the first year of the post graduate programme begins on November 9. This year, IIM-B has seen more companies – about 150 – registering for the summer placements, with about a 100 having already completed the pre-placement-talks. Also, this year, companies from the online marketing sector and several start-ups have come to campus for placements along with companies in the management consulting, finance, healthcare and retail sectors.

Source: The Hindu Business Line, November 3, 2011