100 percent placements at IRMA

Vadodara: Despite the meltdown, the Institute of Rural Management-Anand (IRMA) saw almost 100 per cent placements on Tuesday. Even as highest pay packages offered to the students were low in comparison with last year, IRMA placement process witnessed more variety with even Government of Gujarat (GoG) and Government of Bihar offering jobs.

Professor Saswata Biswas, placement coordinator at IRMA, said: "Ninety-eight students have already been recruited, while two are awaiting recruiters from Bank of Baroda and Development Support Agency of Gujarat next week."

International agencies like Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Winrock Foundation and International Food Policy Research Institute have recruited four students, while another four were recruited by Indian Immunologicals Limited.

Biswas added that the average pay package (Rs 5 lakh) had been maintained. "The highest pay package -- Rs 7 lakh per annum – was offered by Hyderabad-based Nandi Foundation. Last year, the highest pay package was Rs 11 lakh," he said. Prof Biswas added: "Over 40 per cent of the students were recruited before the placement, which started on February 9."

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IIM Shillong 100% placements despite meltdown

The impact of global meltdown seems not to have affected the country's youngest IIM here, with the maiden batch of the institute's students registering cent per cent placement in its winter internships.

The 64-strong batch of the IIM, the country's seventh, were offered multiple internships by 35 companies, silencing critics who have fuelled apprehensions of job-cuts owing to global meltdown. Revealing the secret behind the success, a delighted Director of the new IIM Prof Ashoke K Dutta said, "When we approached the companies, initially they were hesitant. The challenge was to convince them as to how the products would be of help to them." "We used the downturn to our advantage. The companies do need some extra hands for certain projects. "We positioned our students as those who could do studies and recommend how to overcome this cycle of economic activity," he said.

This gave them the advantage, Prof Dutta elaborated. Significantly, the Shillong IIM achieved the feat in its winter project and that too when the students had completed just two terms instead of three unlike in other IIMs. "We used the winter to our advantage because most of the companies are used to only summer projects. Even though our students are yet to complete a year, yet they had immense entrepreneurial exposure being the first batch," Prof Dutta said.

They had first-hand knowledge of the institution and have seen how starter needs to be grown and nourished. We were able to convince the companies that the students would be productive from the word go, the delighted director said. "Of course, the companies have reduced the stipends, but we are happy that we could get the concept across," Prof Dutta added.

Top contenders to pick up students from the IIM included HDFC, PwC, Deloitte and Siemens even as a number of students opted for media and advertising firms like Ogilvy & Mather, Viacom, Warner Brothers and Euro RSCG, among others.

On the marketing front, recruiters included AC Nielsen, Cadbury and ITC. The students are undergoing a two-month internship in January-February. While students showed a reluctance to join traditional i-banking biggies, core banking and asset management companies including Citigroup, HDFC, Standard Chartered, Axis Bank, Tata AIG, SBI Cap, Kotak Mahindra Bank, SREI-BNP Paribas were among those who turned up for the process.

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B-Schools encourage setting up of start-ups

Entrepreneurship is the flavour of the season. Premier institutes, including the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), are organising conferences, seminars and lectures on entrepreneurship.

Recently, the entrepreneurship cell of IIM-Lucknow, Abhiyan, organised its annual annual entrepreneurship summit, Nirvaan.

The event was attended by representatives from venture capital firms as well as teams of investors. “Each year, three students choose to start their own ventures. This year, already four students have informed us that they plan to start their ventures right after college,” said a spokersperson from IIM-Lucknow.

Recently, IIM-Ahmedabad’s venture capital and private equity club organised Leverage, a conference for budding entrepreneurs.

Kanwal Rekhi, the co-founder, Inventus Capital, said that recession is the best time to be an entrepreneur. “In the current environment, jobs are scarce, resources are cheap. Money may be difficult to get, but money is not everything. And as it is, it is a misconception that funding is impossible in the current scenario,” Rekhi added at the conference. A business plan contest was the highlight of Leverage. There was also a session on the top 10 mistakes an entrepreneur should be wary of.

Xavier Labour Relations Institute also organised its first national conference on social entrepreneurship at Jamshedpur. The two-day conference included a Blind Opera performance and competitions for students interested in social entrepreneurship.

“At Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, we have an entrepreneurship cell (Ecell) under the faculty. Guest lecturers are also organised on campus by eminent entrepreneurs like Mahesh Murthy. The institute wants to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship through networking with mentors, experts, consultants and advisors.,” said Swapnil Pinjarkar, committee member, Ecell.

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IIM Shillong 100% Placement Internships

Within just 5 months of having been established, IIM Shillong has reported 100% placements for internships for its maiden batch, with students bagging multiple internship offers. The critics whose apprehensions had been further fuelled owing to the economic slowdown were vehemently silenced by the record number of companies that made internship offers to the first batch of IIM Shillong.

Notwithstanding the current downturn, top contenders to pick up the bright young managers from IIM Shillong included the Big 4 - Deloitte, E&Y, KPMG and PwC.
In tune with the trend in the other IIMs, quite a few students at IIM Shillong opted for Media & Advertising firms - the likes of which included, Ogivy & Mather, Viacom, Warner Brothers, Euro RSCG, Wikimedia and ESPN Star, among others. The traditional favorites for Marketing profiles - AC Nielsen, Cadbury and ITC - picked up interns from IIM Shillong as well.

The most spoken about financial sector - reeling under the global melt-down - saw students showing reluctance in joining the traditional I-banking behemoths. This time around the flavor of the day for most finance pundits on campus has been core banking and asset management companies including Citigroup, HDFC, Standard Chartered, Axis Bank, Tata AIG, SBI Cap, Kotak Mahindra Bank, SREI, BNP Paribas, among a plethora of other leading Indian and multinational corporations.

Other leading companies that showed keen interest in the placement process at the institute included Barclay's, Deutsche Bank, HUL, TATA Capital, Ford, Eicher Motors, E&Y, Starcom and GE India.

Technology consulting drew keen interest as well, with Siemens, Bosch, Headstrong and Wikimedia competing for the top slots over the duration of the placement process. Manufacturing & Supply Chain companies like Ford, Honda, Lafarge, Hero Group, Cargo Partners made their presence felt on campus as well. The spectrum of PSUs, who did not want to be left behind, spanned from ONGC, NTPC, and UTI AMC to Power Finance Corporation.

Start-ups have been able to attract quite a few students with companies like Advaita Capital, Lotus Investments, etc., making their strong presence felt on the campus. Students received a variety of projects like business re-structuring, government policy reforms, power sector reforms and investment analysis, finding investment opportunity, deciding the business model and the marketing opportunity in unexplored territories for multinational corporations, and are being offered handsome stipend. Around 10% of the students have been recruited for internships overseas.

Being the most tech-savvy management institute of the country, coupled with its presence in the idyllic environs of the Scotland of the East, IIM Shillong's arrival on the management stage has widely been spoken of by recruiters and MBA aspirants alike.

"Despite the slowdown in the markets, there is always the continuous need for good talent to run business as usual; thus, leading to a high demand for tapping the high quality talent that institutes like the IIMs produce. We are pleased with what we have accomplished in the first few months of our operation, but there is always scope to do more," opined Prof. A. Dash, the Faculty-in-Charge of Placements at IIM Shillong.

"Overall, IIM Shillong's internship has been well received by the corporate sector and the momentum generated for the winter internships in a not-so-favorable market situation has reinforced the confidence and optimism of both students and faculty with regard to the final placements which will be in the spotlight, a year from now," expressed Prof. Deepak Gandhi, the Dean and Senior Advisor to Placement Committee.

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MBA important degree in recession

LUCKNOW: Education Times in association with the Institute of Public Enterprise (IPE) and Triumphant Institute of Management Education (TIME) organised 'The Magic of MBA' seminar at CMS Gomtinagar on Sunday, February 1. The event provided a platform to the students to have an interface with known faces in the industry and gain a deeper insight into the world of MBA as well as the opportunities before MBA aspirants in the current economic scenario.

The panel of experts who spoke at the seminar included NF Aibara, COO, Idea, UP East, Najaf Rizvi, Branch Head, HSBC, Lucknow, Jayant Krishna, principal consultant, TCS, Nishant Priyadarshi, director, TIME, Lucknow and SK Mathur, professor, IPE. The talk of each expert was followed by a Q & A session, allowing the students to interact and seek advice from professionals who have made it big and know what really works in the corporate world. The focus of the presentation of all the experts was the career dilemmas faced by the MBAs when the global economy is facing recession. NF Rizvi said that, companies were always seeking skilled, competent managers who could handle challenges and give effective business solutions for the benefit of the company. "Therefore irrespective of recession, MBA is an important qualification because you pursue it to acquire benefits throughout your life and not just in the current year," he said.

Jayant Krishna averred, "These are challenging times, but there are tremendous opportunities before MBAs, especially in sectors that haven't been effected by the economic slowdown, like telecom and healthcare." Encouraging the MBA aspirants, NF Aibara said, "This phase just poses short term hardships before you. You all have a long career in front of you and you must keep going ahead with a positive attitude." The event rounded up with expert comments from SK Mathur and Nishant Priyadarshi, who emphasised on the need for having sound management executives for the development of the nation.

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Placements encouraging at B-schools

The final campus placements at some of the leading city-based B-schools have started on an encouraging note this year despite the prevailing economic recession which had sparked off fears of a possible slump in placements.

About 20 companies have visited the campus of Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB) so far in the final campus recruitment process which kicked off on January 15 this year. The management institute has so far been able to secure placements for 80-90 students of its current batch of Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in courses other than rural management, consisting 120 students. "There are companies who are keeping their fingers crossed over the impending third quarter results of 2008-09. These companies are expected to visit the XIMB campus later this month as the process of campus recruitment is set to continue till the end of January ", said an official of XIMB's placements committee.

"14 companies have visited our campus and 29 students have already been recruited in this year's placements. However, the placement process has been slow this year as nearly 65-70 per cent of our regular MBA students were placed by the end of January last year", Prabir Pal, director, Regional College of Management (RCM) told Business Standard.

LK Vaswani, director, KIIT School of Management, said, Around 20 companies have visited our campus till now in this year's placements but the intake by these companies has been less this year compared to the previous year. The campus placement for KIIT School of Rural Management is scheduled to begin on February 2 this year.

The final campus placement programme has also started at the Asian School of Business Management (ASBM) and 15 companies have visited the B-school campus so far for recruiting students of the conventional MBA programme. "All the students of ASBM's logistics and supply chain management programme have already been recruited by Gati Limited. Moreover, the 60 students of our other sector specific management programme are set to be absorbed in Pantaloon Retail with whom we have a tie-up", said Biswajeet Pattanayak, director, ASBM.

Institute of Management and Information Science (IMIS) has so far witnessed the participation of 15 companies in its final campus placements this year. The companies which have visited the IMIS campus this year include SBI, ICICI Prudential, Axis bank, HDFC bank and Asian Paints to name a few. Around 52 full-time MBA students of IMIS have been placed till now in this year's placements and SBI has offered the highest package at Rs 6.5 lakh per annum, said a placement official of the institute.