IIM Ahmedabad completes summer placement process for 2024 MBA class

The summer placement process for the MBA class of 2024 of the Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in Management at IIM Ahmedabad was successfully completed.

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 146 firms participated with 200 different roles in the summer placement process in 2022.

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. 101 students made over 265 dream applications this year. This gave students the flexibility and choice to build careers in sectors of their preference.

Recruiters in the management consulting domain included Alvarez & Marsal, Arthur D Little, Auctus Advisors, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, 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 and JP Morgan. In the private equity and venture capital domain, we saw participation of firms like Blackstone, Gaja Capital, Jupiter Capital, Multiples, Premji Invest and Venture Highway. Consumer goods and durables, consumer services and consumer electronics cohorts saw participation by regular recruiters like AB InBev, Asian Paints, Coca-Cola, Dabur, HUL, ITC, Kimberly Clark, Mondelez, Nestle, P&G, Reckitt, Samsung Electronics, Tata Play and Wipro Consumer Care among others. The conglomerates cohort saw participation from Adani, Aditya Birla Group, Bajaj Group, CK Birla Group, JSW Group, Piramal, Reliance, and TAS among others. Retail B2B & B2C cohort consisted of firms like Amazon and Flipkart. In the Pharma & Healthcare cohort, firms like Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Optum Global Solutions and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd participated.

The consumer tech cohort comprised firms like Audify, Justdial, Uber and Zomato. Enterprise tech consisted of companies like Adobe, Atlassian Corporation, Google and IkigaiLabs. The renewable energy and green tech cohort saw participation from ReNew Power. Banking & Insurance sector saw participation from firms like ICICI Bank and Universal Sompo General Insurance. Tata Consultancy Services participated in the IT Consulting and analytics cohort and Suzuki Motor Corporation and Vedanta participated in the core manufacturing and infrastructure cohort.

Prof Ankur Sinha, Chairperson of Placements at IIM Ahmedabad said: "This year we completed the summer placement process in hybrid mode during which all the students were placed with offers across multiple sectors and industries. This year once again saw an increase in the participation of firms and the variety in job roles as compared to the previous years. 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."

In the management consulting cohort, Boston Consulting Group was the top recruiter with 28 offers, followed by Bain and Company with 23 offers. In the advisory consulting domain, PwC made the maximum offers – 15 and in the niche consulting sector, GEP made the highest offers - 9 offers. Goldman Sachs was the highest recruiter in investment banking and markets cohort with 10 offers. I Squared Capital was the highest recruiter in the PE/VC and asset management cohort with three offers. In the consumer goods and durables, HUL extended the most offers – 9, followed by Proctor & Gamble with 8 offers. With 16 offers, Adani was the largest recruiter in the conglomerates cohort. Amazon was the highest recruiter in the retail B2B & B2C domain with 13 offers. In the IT consulting cohort, Tata Consultancy Services was the largest recruiter with 11 offers. Fin IQ Consulting was the highest recruiter in financial tech cohort with 5 offers. Aliens Group was the highest recruiter in the core manufacturing and infrastructure cohort with 4 offers. Entrepreneurship IIM Ahmedabad has always encouraged students to take up entrepreneurship as a career by opting for IIMAvericks fellowship. The IIMAvericks fellowship includes mentorship from CIIE.CO and financial support for a period of 2 years. At any time during the Fellowship, the student can return and sit for placements through the Institute's placement process. This year, 1 student opted out of the placement process to work on their own venture, under the IIMAvericks Fellowship.

Finding the student-recruiter fit Mihir Dharap, 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 the 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. This year we saw the Offline Mode of Summer Placement coming back after 3 years, while some companies chose to have a hybrid process. Significant efforts were made in reengineering several processes to provide a seamless experience to the recruiters. Given the ethos of the student-recruiter fit, the Placement Committee decided to increase the number of dream options a student has and thus had to plan ahead for onboarding more recruiters that the students preferred, which is reflected in the significant applications that the new recruiters had. On the operational front, we further optimised our 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 cornerstone of the 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 100 students exercising the "dream" option across clusters and several on-the-day upgrades in offers."

Saurabh Chhajer, Managing Director & Partner at BCG said: "IIM-A has always been a preferred campus for BCG. We were glad this year was no different and we continue to be recruiters of choice on campus as well. IIM-A placement committee ran an excellent process, managing both online & in-person interviews. The whole process was handled extremely professionally, and it was a joy to return to campus, post covid. I would like to congratulate the IIM-A team for another successful summers process and at the same time, excitedly look forward to welcoming the new joiners to BCG this summer."

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 2022-23' 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.