New Delhi: Business schools in India have registered record placements this year despite the economy being affected badly due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Top management schools, both private and government, including the prestigious Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), have seen some of the biggest recruiters such as Deloitte, KPMG, McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group, hire their students — offering them an average annual salary of upto Rs 28 lakh.
Market experts said that increased placements are an indicator of an “aspirational market” and that companies are now “making up for all the hiring that they didn’t do in 2020”.
They also said the government’s big push for privatisation in the 2021 Budget allayed apprehensions of the private sector to a great extent.
Placements at IIMs
IIM-Kozhikode witnessed 100 per cent placements for all the 459 students who participated in the placements process. This is an increase of 4.6 per cent compared to last year, the institute said in a statement issued last week.
“2020-21 will go down as a year of true achievement in the 25-year history of IIM-Kozhikode,” said professor Debashis Chatterjee, director IIM-Kozhikode, in the statement.
The average salary offered to the students of the institute stood at Rs 22.5 lakh per annum. Nearly 50 per cent of the students bagged an average CTC of Rs 28.9 lakh per annum — an 8.1 per cent increase from last year.
Among the major recruiters at the institute were Accenture Strategy, Amazon, American Express, Asian Paints, Bain & Co., Bajaj Auto, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini, Cognizant Business Consulting, Citi Bank, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Everest Industries, EY, Flipkart, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Microsoft, Nomura, Pidilite, PwC, Reliance, RPG, Samsung, TAS, and TATA Sky.
At IIM-Bangalore, a total of 481 job offers were made over two days of interviews to the PGP (postgraduate programme in management) class of 2019-21.
All the 435 students, who appeared for the interviews, were successfully placed, the institute said in a statement issued earlier this week.
“Our students have done remarkably well. They have been recruited by reputed companies despite Covid-19 disruptions,” said professor U. Dinesh Kumar, chairperson, Career Development Services, IIM-Bangalore, in a statement.
Top recruiters at the institute included McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Kearney, PwC, Tata Consultancy Services, Alvarez & Marsal, Arthur D. Little, IBM Consulting, EY-Parthenon, KPMG, Ernst & Young, and Deloitte.
At IIM-Ahmedabad, the first cluster of the final placement process for the PGP class of 2021 was held Wednesday.
Top recruiters included Boston Consulting Group that made the highest number of offers (including pre-placement offers) — 32, closely followed by McKinsey at 30.
“IIM-A has always had an extremely rich mix of firms from diverse sectors. Consulting firms offering management consulting roles across geographies (including Middle East) continue to hire in large numbers. This reinforces the strength of the general management program at IIM-A,” read a statement from the institute issued Wednesday.
IIM-Calcutta also registered a record 100 per cent placement for its flagship MBA programme.
The placement season concluded on 3 March, a statement from the institute said Friday.
“467 students took part in the process receiving more than 520 offers in three clusters comprising various cohorts. The whole placement process was conducted virtually amid the pandemic. A total of 172 firms participated in the final placement process,” the statement added.
Also read: Indian startups step in with jobs for IIT grads who lost big offers after Covid
Placements at private B-schools
Among the private B-Schools, Xavier School of Management-XLRI achieved 100 per cent placement this year.
A spokesperson of the institute told ThePrint the average salary offered increased to Rs 25.08 lakh per annum from Rs 24.30 lakh per annum in 2020.
“We are delighted to announce that despite the pandemic and its adverse ripple effects on the global economy, XLRI has achieved the feat of 100 per cent placements in a record timeframe this year. We attribute the outstanding placements as an affirmation by the corporate world of the highly relevant management-centric education we strive to deliver to our students year after year,” said Fr P. Christie S.J., director, XLRI, in a statement.
Boston Consulting Group, Bain and Co., PwC, Accenture Strategy, Amazon, ITC, PayTM made the highest number of offers among the regular recruiters.
New recruiters included companies such as Mastercard, DE Shaw, Airbnb, DBS Bank, Nykaa, Freshworks, ZS Associates, Tata Electronics, ProgCap, Rebel Foods, and IDFC Bank.
SP Jain School of Global Management, which has branches both in India and abroad, also said that their placement rate was very good.
The highest offer for the Global MBA class stood at Rs 43.9 lakh, while the average annual salary was recorded at Rs 22 lakh. The programme is for professionals having over three years of experience.
Top recruiters for the institute included companies such as Aramex, Bayer, Cedar Consulting, Cognizant, Dabur, Danzas, E&Y, Emerson, Frost & Sullivan, and Genpact.
Also read: What slowdown? IIT placement drive kicks off with more job offers, fatter salaries over 2019
‘Industry looking at catching up with the lost business’
Kamal Karanth, founder of a Bengaluru-based specialist staffing company Xpheno, believes that the increased placements are an indicator of an “aspirational market”.
“Corporates believe that there is a pent-up demand that is going to come to play and they want to be prepared when it hits the market. Most of the demand for hiring is in the tech sector where the consumption has been high, but FMCG companies are experiencing a demand now and are anticipating better growth,” he told ThePrint.
“These companies are also now making up for all the hiring that they didn’t do in 2020. In fact, in the last two months, banking companies and NBFCs are also experiencing better demand,” he said.
Professor Amit Karna, chairperson for placements at IIM-Ahmedabad, however, said that placements at premium B-schools cannot be the barometer for all B-Schools across the country.
“Premium B-Schools across the country do not face problems in recruitments despite social or economic challenges. What is important to note is the recruiters’ mindset in such situations,” he said.
“If a big company which normally used to hire 20 students from premium colleges and 60 from mid-level B-schools, this year may change their behaviour due to the pandemic. They will eat less, but eat healthy, in the sense, they will hire a total of only 50 students, but only from the top institutes. This directly impacts the mid-level B-school placement numbers,” he said.
Karna said recruiters are also “skeptical regarding the quality of education due to hybrid learning and shift to the virtual mediums” on account of the pandemic.
“They will only go to places that assure them that investments have been made to assure quality education,” he added.
Both Karanth and Karna, however, agreed on how the push for privatisation in Budget 2021 allayed apprehension of the private companies.
“As soon as privatisation happens, large firms will need consultants to bring in the change in a former public undertaking. Hence, they are keen on hiring quality consultants right away,” Karna said.
Narayanan Ramaswamy, partner and sector head, Education and Skill Development, KPMG, said that good placement numbers are a sign of a recovering economy.
“The industry is looking at bouncing back and catching up with the lost business. It is good to see the demand for management resources, which says there will be increased recruitment across functions.”
Speaking on the push for privatisation in the Budget, Ramaswamy said, “Privatisation would take more time to come into effect. This recruitment cycle has more to cater to the surge in demand to make up for almost a year of freeze on spending and investment.”
Also read: How IIT alumni ensured a good start for the placement season in pandemic year