The Overview

Dotcoms were left singing "Yesterday Once More" and were also conspicuous by their absence. Despite last year predictions that dotcoms will seize the limelight at IIMs, nothing of that sorts happened there.

With dotcoms laying off workers in large numbers and shutting up shops, B2B and B2C were rechristined as Back-2-Banking and Back-2-Consulting. It was Consulting, Investment Banks, and traditional heavyweights in Marketing and Finance all the way. And that's what was expected this year as hype of yesterdays was absent. Only the big companies in dotcoms like Mphasis, Mindtree, Planetasia managed to get the people. And these are in the support services, not in hard core dotcoms like Yahoo!

Last year, three toppers from IIMA, and a few students from IIMB, IIMC chucked up their campus jobs and ventured on their own to start dotcoms. Nothing of sort happened this year.

IT firms like Compaq, HCL Technologies, HCL Infosystems, Polaris, Ramco comprised IT flavour this year. Unlike last year, when IT seemed to be the in-thing, as students chucked lucrative offers from traditional sectors, like banks and FMCG's, to jump on to the infotech bandwagon, things were rather subdued this year. Slowdown in IT was a major factor. Infosys reduced its offer to 3 at XLRI, a far cry from 11 offers it made last year. Wipro was absent from some leading campuses. So was Planetasia. HCL Technologies was the largest recruiter lapping up 17 offers at XLRI, equalling last year's offers. Overall number of offers decreased significantly this year. Ramco led the way at IIMK with 11 offers. Seranova, ebiz consulting made 10 offers at IIML and restored balance after Infosys dropped out at the last moment. Infosys was absent from all IIMs. Bangalore Labs picked 3 students from IIML. BristleCone, USA made 6 offers at IIMB. Cognizant Technology Solutions, listed on Nasdaq in 1998, was another star recruiter at IIMs with initial day rankings at every campus they visited. They took 7 students at IIML, 1 at IIMB and 3 at XLRI. HCL Technologies blazed a trail of glory with 78+ offers across 10 campuses with 16,2,5,17,10,7,17 and 4 offers at IIMC, IIMB, IIML, XLRI, FMS, Bajaj, SP Jain and IIMK respectively. iMaritime was the new star on the horizon with dollar salaries and 5 offers each at IIMB, MDI, and 2 at NITIE. iNautix, a Credit Suisse subsidiary (though acquisition of Donaldson Luftkin Jenerette) was another prominent recruiter with 9,5 and 3 offers at IIMC, IIMB and XLRI respectively. Xchange21 took 10 students from IIML for Singapore postings. Fatwire, a US IT firm, promoted by IIML alumni, made 14 offers.

In domestic IT firms, apart from HCL Technologies, Polaris took the limelight with 68+ offers, including a whoopping 30+ offers at XIMB, and 11 and 10 offers at IMT and NITIE. Ramco Systems led the way with 33+ offers, which included 5,5,5,5,9,2 and 2 offers at IIML, XLRI, SP Jain, MDI, IIMK, NITIE and IMT respectively. NIIT was other main recruiter with 18+ offers for both domestic and NIIT overseas (with dollar salary) including 5,4 and 4 offers at IIMB, IIML and FMS. Satyam Computers was a subdued lot with only 20+ offers. SAP, India picked 2 students from IIMK. Similarly, Wipro also recruited only a handful with 6 offers at SP Jain and IIMB (5 offers) among 15+ offers it made.

Overall, HCL Technologies, Ramco and Polaris saved the day for people looking for IT careers, what with sudden backing out of Infosys and low requirement of Satyam, Wipro depressed the IT placements. Overall percentage of people joining IT sector decreased at IIMA (12%) and IIMB (21%) as increased options in finance (investment banking/banking) led people there. Remaining IIMs (C, L, K, I) saw almost 40% of class opting for career in IT services. Possible reason could be the high engineering background of the students. NITIE saw 31% of class in IT (NITIE admits engineers only). SP Jain and XIMB led the way with 43% and 56% (courtsey Polaris) respectively. At a glance, IT sector recruited heavily outside top 4 IIMs and its share fell at IIMs on account of pressure from finance and low requirements of top IT firms.

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