Unprecedented No. of PPOs & Incredibly High Pay Packets Mark Summers 2007 at IIM Calcutta

Unprecedented No. of PPOs & Incredibly High Pay Packets Mark Summers 2007 at IIM Calcutta

Summer of '07 is going to make crorepatis out of at least three students of the 2005-07 Batch at IIM Calcutta when they begin their banking careers this year. With placements still a week away, all records have already been relegated to history-books with the highest pre-placement offers (PPOs) being made for international, as well as domestic, locations to IIM Calcutta's students.

Records have already started tumbling at IIM Calcutta with more than a week to go for the final placements for the 2005-2007 PGP Batch. Two students from the batch passing out this year have secured pre-placement offers to the tune of USD 250,000 from a leading investment bank for their New York desk. Another student has bagged an offer of 120,000 Pounds from another leading investment bank for their London desk. Besides these being the highest salaries offered across all B-school campuses in the country, they are also 50% higher than the average salaries offered at top B-schools like Harvard, Stanford and Wharton. The median of the salaries offered by investment banks and international consulting companies to the other students with pre-placement offers stands at a staggering $ 120,000.

Incredible pay packets though are no stranger to this premier B-school, which has convincingly established itself as the destination of choice for top-notch recruiters. Hence, the biggest factor in the success stories this year is the nature of roles being offered. For the first time across business schools in India, all the three students have been offered the role of an Associate which brings Indian business graduates on par with graduates from US B-schools like Harvard not just on the parameter of salaries but also on the basis of roles offered. Joining as an associate, other than the huge pay packet that they will carry home, will give them at least a two year head-start over others.

This comes in the wake of the recently concluded phenomenal season for lateral placements at the institute. Firms from a wide range of operational areas hired students with work-experience for senior executive levels notably the offer of Country Head by an energy company and Assistant Vice-President by a financial services company. Other senior roles offered were in Middle management by the Aditya Birla Group and that of Engagement Manager (onsite) by IT majors Infosys and Cognizant. The end of the laterals season saw close to 120 offers being made making it the most successful laterals across B-schools in India this year.

The other significant change noticed in laterals this year has been the wide range of domains from which companies have recruited. Whereas laterals was earlier the exclusive hunting ground of the IT companies, this year saw companies, both domestic and international, recruiting from steel (Arcelor-Mittal), manufacturing (Trident), FMCG (Pepsi), retail (TESCO, M.H. Alshaya, Reliance), real estate (DLF, Unitech), consulting (KPMG, Feedback Ventures, PWC), general management (Aditya Birla Group, Reliance), energy (Acme), financial (Citi Financial, Standard Chartered), and pharmaceutical (Dr Reddy's and Ranbaxy).

All this is just the icing on the cake in a year that has seen PPOs raining in unprecedented numbers (close to 90 PPOs) at the institute with the largest batch strength across all IIMs. With the final placements yet to begin and firms like McKinsey and Co, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Bain, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, UBS, ABN Amro and Barclays among the more than 100 firms recruiting from the campus, it requires little imagination to guess where the biggest post-placement parties are going to be this March.

Concluded.

Contributed by -
Vijay Anand Menon & Sarfaraz Khimani,
External Relations Secretaries,
Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

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