The Summer Placement process for the MBA Class of 2023 of the Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in Management at IIM Ahmedabad was successfully completed in an online mode. Firms from multiple domains participated virtually across the three clusters in Summer Placements, with all students being placed across more than 20 cohorts.
Cluster-Cohort Placement System
161 firms participated with 219 different roles in the summer placement process in 2021. 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 an offer in hand. Around 120 students made over 220 dream applications this year. This gave students the flexibility and choice to build careers in sectors of their preference.
Cluster-wise details on the number of students placed:
Sectoral Overview
Firms from different sectors participated in the process at IIM Ahmedabad. Recruiters in the management consulting domain included Alvarez & Marsal, Arthur D Little, Auctus Advisors, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Kearney, LEK Consulting, McKinsey & Company and Strategy.
Prominent recruiters in the Investment Banking and Markets space included Avendus Capital, Bank of America, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Estee Advisors, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Nomura (Singapore and India). In the Private Equity and Venture Capital domain, we saw participation of firms like Blackstone, Gaja Capital, I Squared Capital, Iroha, Jupiter Capital, Macquarie, MYRA, Xander Group, True North, Venture Highway and White Oak.
Consumer goods and durables, consumer services and consumer electronics cohorts saw participation by regular recruiters like AB InBev, Asian Paints, Bharti Airtel, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Dabur, HUL, ITC, Kimberly Clark, Mondelez, Nestle, P&G, Reckitt, Samsung Electronics, Tata Sky and Wipro Consumer Care among others.
The conglomerates cohort saw participation from Adani, Aditya Birla Group, Bajaj Group, Bharti Enterprises, CK Birla Group, JSW, Mahindra Group, Piramal, Reliance, RPG Group and TAS among others. Retail B2B & B2C cohort consisted of firms like Amazon, CentralStar, eShakti, Purplle and Udaan.
In the Pharma & Healthcare cohort, firms like Apicore, Dr. Reddy’s, Pharmeasy and Stryker participated. The Consumer Tech cohort comprised firms like Electronic Arts, Gameskraft and Winzo. Enterprise Tech consisted of companies like Adobe, Atlassian Corporation, IkigaiLabs, Microsoft, Oracle and Sprinklr. The Renewable Energy and Green Tech cohort saw participation from ReNew Power.
Banking & Insurance sector saw participation from firms like Reserve Bank of India, ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank. Tata Consultancy Services participated in the IT Consulting & Analytics cohort and Ola Electric participated in the Core Manufacturing & Infrastructure cohort.
Sector-wise details on the number of students placed is as follows:
There were 53 new recruiters this year, including Electronic Arts, Himalaya, Iroha, Landmark Group, Mondelez, Pharmeasy, Jupiter Capital and Venture Highway.
Prof. Ankur Sinha, Chairperson of Placements at IIM Ahmedabad said, “This year, once again, we completed the summer placement process in virtual mode during which all the students were placed with offers across multiple sectors and industries.
This year saw a significant increase in the participation of firms and the variety in job roles as compared to the previous year. This clearly indicates that the demand for high quality talent continues to grow, and demonstrates the strength of relationships we have built with our recruiters over the decades.
At IIMA we strive to develop future leaders for enterprises, and will continue to supply the industry with the country’s most exceptional talent pool of future managers. With our consistent record of producing high achievers, we continued to attract regular as well as new recruiters further strengthening our recruiter pool.
We are grateful to the recruiters who have participated in our placement process and have helped our students realize their career aspirations. We are confident that the exceptional talent that IIMA produces through its rigorous and contemporary coursework will provide an enriching experience and significant value to the organizations.”
Top Recruiters
In the Management Consulting cohort, Boston Consulting Group was the top recruiter with 26 offers, followed by Kearney with 24 offers. In the Advisory Consulting domain, PwC made the maximum offers – 12 and in the Niche Consulting sector, GEP & Synergy made the highest offers – 5 offers each.
Nomura was the highest recruiter in Investment Banking and Markets cohort with 10 offers. Xander Group was the highest recruiter in the PE/VC and Asset Management cohort with 4 offers.
In the Consumer Goods, Consumer Electronics and Consumer Services domain, HUL extended the most offers – 14, followed by Samsung Electronics with 9 offers and Proctor & Gamble with 7 offers. With 7 offers, TAS was the largest recruiter in the Conglomerates cohort.
Amazon was the highest recruiter in the Retail B2B & B2C domain with 11 offers. In the IT Consulting cohort, Tata Consultancy Services was the largest recruiter with 12 offers. Ola Electric was the highest recruiter in the Core Manufacturing & Infrastructure cohort with 5 offers.
Recruiters were appreciative of the various changes made to move the summer placement process at IIMA to a virtual mode. Aditya Sharma, Partner at McKinsey said, “Attracting exceptional talent is core to our mission. We continue to scale up our recruitment significantly and the campus placement process is strategic in our efforts to source the right fitment of talent to the breadth of roles we have on offer. It is a long-standing collaboration we value deeply and are delighted to welcome the new batch of recruits to McKinsey this year.”
Finding the Student-Recruiter fit in Covid19 times
Sowmya Sreenidhi R, the Recruitment Secretary at IIM Ahmedabad said, “The core philosophy and the ethos of IIM Ahmedabad’s placement system is the right student-career fit. This is achieved by allowing multiple dream options to students until they secure an internship offer in their company of their choice.
The cluster-cohort placement process is designed to facilitate the same, in which students can secure an offer and upgrade to the company/cohort of their choice within a cluster and apply for dream companies/cohorts across clusters. Though the process was completely virtual like the previous year, significant efforts were made in reengineering several processes to provide a seamless experience to the recruiters.
Given the situation in which the institute and the market is attempting to return to normalcy, the Placement Committee had to plan ahead for contingencies in change of schedules which did help us in onboarding more recruiters that the students preferred, which is reflected in the significant applications that the new recruiters had.
On the operational front, we developed a new application for managing the entire process end-to-end on a single platform and also added new digital features to increase the convenience and transparency to the recruiters, which has been the corner stone of IIMA Placement system. Overall, adequate preparation and proper contingency planning worked out well, and we successfully completed the Summer Placements process well on time and maximised the student-recruiter fit objective with over 120 students exercising the “dream” option across clusters and over 20 on-the day upgrades in offers.
IPRS Report
Further details about the placement process will be released in an audited report, as per the Indian Placement Reporting Standards (IPRS), introduced by IIMA in an effort to bring about greater transparency in B-school placements across the country.
The IPRS report for ‘Summer Placements 2021-22’ will be released 6 months from the date of completion of the process, and the link to the report will be shared with all stakeholders, once released.