Ahmedabad : The Final Placement process for the MBA Class of 2021 of the Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in Management at IIM Ahmedabad was successfully completed. Firms from multiple domains participated across the three clusters in Final placements, with all students being placed across more than 20 cohorts.
Placement Process
The final placement process was conducted in two stages. The first was the Laterals process where firms interviewed students with prior work experience and offered them mid-level managerial positions. 30 firms hired from diverse sectors such as technology, banking, consulting, general management and analytics. In the second stage of the Final 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 an offer in hand. There were 86 dream applications this year. This gave students the flexibility and choice to build careers in sectors of their preference.
Prof. Amit Karna, Chairperson of the Placement Committee at IIM Ahmedabad said, “This year has been unusual for all of us, and the placement process at IIMA was no exception to this. We completed the placement process in a virtual mode with recruiters and students logging in from remote locations. The process achieved its stated objective of finding the right student-recruiter fit by providing students with options to upgrade and dream on the organisations of their choice. The 2021 placement process also demonstrated the preparedness of the Institute to adapt to the changing times. We are grateful for the continued trust from our recruiters who not only increased the variety and diversity of roles but also exceeded their commitments on all fronts. We were also able to attract more quality offers from marquee recruiters who continued to hire from the most exceptional pool of talent available in the country today. I have no doubt that our students will add tremendous value to these organisations looking to recover from the woes of the pandemic and build a better future. I wish the graduating class of 2021 a successful career ahead.”
Sectoral Overview
Firms from different sectors and geographies participated in the process at IIM Ahmedabad. Recruiters in the management consulting domain included Accenture Strategy, Analysys Mason, Arthur D. Little, Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group, GEP Consulting, Kearney, KPMG, Mastercard, McKinsey & Company, Monitor Deloitte, Oliver Wyman, Praxis and PWC among others. Prominent recruiters in the Investment Banking and Markets space included Avendus, Citi, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Nomura, & The Xander Group among others. Consumer goods, consumer services and consumer electronics cohorts saw participation by regular recruiters like Asian Paints, CavinKare, HUL, Indigo, ITC, Lenovo, Nestle, Reckitt Benckiser, Samsung Electronics, Tata Sky and Wipro Consumer Care among others. The General Management cohort saw participation from CK Birla Group, Reliance Industries Limited and RPG Group, while the Retail B2B & B2C cohort consisted of firms like eShakti, Grofers India Private Limited and Flipkart among others. The Banking, Financial Services & Insurance recruiters included firms like Angel Broking, and Bajaj Finserv among others. Firms which participated in the Laterals process included Amazon, BrowserStack, Capgemini, FinIQ, Flipkart, Microsoft, Paytm, among others. There were 41 new recruiters this year, including Eversana, Five Holdings, Intueri Consulting, Indxx Capital, Lifesight, and Navi Technologies. Roles were also opened across geographies including Singapore and Middle East.
Top Recruiters
131 firms participated with 170 different roles in the placement process in 2021. In the Final placements, firms which made the most offers on campus included McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Tata Consultancy Services. Boston Consulting Group made the most offers (including Pre-Placement Offers) at the end of the final placement process with 32 offers, followed by McKinsey with 30 offers. In the Niche Consulting cohort, GEP extended 8 offers. Among the investment banks, Nomura was the largest recruiter, making 7 offers, closely followed by Goldman Sachs and Bank of America – Merrill Lynch, each with 5 offers. This year, the Private Equity, Venture Capital and Asset Management cohort witnessed close to 40% increase in participating firms vis-à-vis last year. The consistent increase in firms participating in this cohort year after year (80% increase last year) reinforces the trust that diverse industries have in the quality of our PGP program. In the consumer goods, consumer electronics and general management domain, HUL, Samsung Electronics and CK Birla Group made the highest number of offers (including pre-placement offers) – 6, closely followed by Lenovo, with 5 offers. In the IT Consulting cohort, Tata Consultancy Services was the largest recruiter with 14 offers. In the Laterals process, Amazon made the highest number of offers (including pre-placement offers) – 16. PayTM (14 offers), Microsoft (11 offers) and FinIQ (9 offers) were the other top recruiters in the Laterals process.
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
Student-Recruiter fit
Udayabhaskar Singathurai, the Recruitment Secretary at IIM Ahmedabad said, “2021 Final Placements stood testimonial to IIMA’s core placement philosophy of achieving the best student-career fit. The focus of the IIMA placements system has never been just placing the batch, rather ensuring that our students land up in their dream careers. Multiple dream options including across & within clusters, options to hold & upgrade Pre-Placement offers and Lateral Placement offers were provided to the PGP 2021 batch to ensure the student-career fit. As in the past years, we saw a plenty of students opting for offer upgrades this year as well, resulting in record number of offers from top tier consulting firms, top tier finance companies and tech sector. Successful design and implementation of smooth virtual hiring process made the whole process a seamless experience for our recruiters to hire IIMA talent in good numbers.”
New recruiters applauded the conduct of placement process at IIMA. Akanksha Chaturvedi, Head of HR at Navi said, “At Navi, we have always believed in bringing in the fresh talent to contribute towards our growth journey. With a strong alumni presence, IIMA for us was one of the preferred campuses. The entire process was seamless and well managed. We look forward to a continued strategic alliance with IIMA.”
Regular recruiters were also impressed by the way the transition to a virtual process was managed. Mario Gonsalves, Managing Director and Partner, Boston Consulting Group said “IIMA has always been a preferred partner for talent needs at BCG and this year has taken this partnership to even greater heights. While recruitment processes at campus have been managed like clockwork historically, given Covid-related restrictions, running a virtual process seemed like an insurmountable challenge at the start of the season. However, it has been no different this time. The IIMA team and our internal teams have strived hard to ensure that we bring the best of IIMA to BCG, yet again. We are pleased to be the recruiter of choice on campus and eagerly await to welcome soon-to-be IIMA alums to BCG”.
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 ‘Final Placements 2021’ 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.
