Of Myths & Errors: NDTV Hypes Placement Data of IIMA Agri Business Management

On 24th February 2006, one of the leading TV channel, i.e., NDTV flashed a story where one IIMA graduate was offered an overseas job package, which purportedly surpassed all salary offers made at any of the IIMs ever. Given the expected boom in Placements 2006, it came as no surprise to the CoolAvenues team, as given the bumper economic condition, which the world economy has been facing, it is nothing but expected.

However, the tag of USD 65000 touted as highest job offer made ever across all campuses surprised us at CoolAvenues.com, as having collected placemnts data for last six years, we should know better and though USD 65K is a good offer, but certainly not a landmark salary offer.

To put the matter straight, USD 65000 is an average salary offer and nothing of a record. In year 2000, one leading investment banker was offered a salary of USD 150,000 at IIMA; in year 2004, highest salary offered across all campuses was at IIM Calcutta, where the top offer was of USD 120,000, while IIMA finished second with highest salary offer of USD 96,000. (For more details, please read http://www.coolavenues.com/placements/2004/salary_2004.php3). Hence, to quote Rs. 30 lakhs salary and saying USD 65000 is the highest salary across the campuses was nothing but a race for noise and some TRP. (Also read Of Mediocrity, Noise and Also Some News a.k.a. India's Media Industry)

Hence, there were no records broken and there was no need for hype, but probably given the media war, where there are more channels than some worthy news, more and more noise is coming up. The opening of sky in India has really led to a ongoing media boom where number of mainstream news channels has even surpassed USA and today probably has pushed India to the front row in terms of numbers of national news channels (though it is another matter that majority of them are either showing death prediction of a village astrologer or dial 100). Hence, given this scenarion, some newbie journo got hyper, and channels rushed and flshed a totally baseless headline as breaking news, and further hyped it by converting USD into INR, and then comparing with all IIMs, again more of a propaganda than any substance.

However, this has become a regular feature of placement coverage by mainstream media where some newbie journo in charge of placement coverage gets swayed by popping PPOs and raining job offers, and ends-up creating a big hype about placements by converting USD into INR, missing between back-office equity research job and real M&A job. Till they learn better, keep logged on to CoolAvenues.com to get stories straight from campuses with real news and analysis.

- by CoolAvenues Editorial Team

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