Consulting saw a 30% jump in the number of graduates accepting roles in major firms during the final placement of the PGDM program at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan SPJIMR, while the annual average salary went up to Rs 22.24 lakh.
According to figures released by the SPJIMR placements office, 35% of the 238 students from the PGDM Class of 2018 were placed with top consulting firms, translating to a 30% increase in the sector over the previous batch.
The average salary of Rs 22.24 lakhs, was up from Rs 20.9 lakh the previous year. More than 92% of the students had received offers in excess of Rs 17 lakh. The median salary for the batch stood at Rs 21.25 lakh, an increase from the Rs 20 lakh reported last year. This placement season also saw a total of105 companies come to the campus for the placement process.
“The placements performance of the Class of 2018 has set new records. The huge jump in consulting offers is due to the selfless efforts of the faculty, staff, the alumni and in particular the members of the second-year Placements Committee,” SPJIMR Deputy Director – External Relations, Prof Abbasali Gabula said.
In Finance, the offers came from top league financial players that included Avendus Capital, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, DBS Bank, RBL Bank, Citibank, JM Financial, HSBC IB, Yes Bank and IIFL among others.
“More than 50% of the Class of 2018 received pre-placement offers and pre-placement interviews through their autumn internships at top companies, which included leading corporates like Boston Consulting Group, Tata Administrative Services, HUL, P&G, Amazon, Axis Bank, GE, AstraZeneca, among others.
“The large number of such offers served as an endorsement by the corporate world of SPJIMR’s unique initiative of autumns internships vs. summers during which students work with a non-profit in the rural areas,” Prof Gabula added.
This exposure of students to rural markets is followed by specialisation courses attended by the entire batch in leading global B-schools as part of the Global Fast Track (GFT) initiative, helping them to grow as professionals and present a more rounded appeal, he said.
The Finance and Marketing cohorts of the PGDM Class of 2018 travelled to the Johnson School of Management, Cornell University, New York. The IM specialisation travelled to the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, while the Operations and Supply Chain specialisation travelled to the Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University. The international exposure that the batch gains through this stint have been welcomed by the recruiters across industries.
“Employers find that our graduates start contributing very swiftly – they quickly get into the thick of things and truly practise the art of management. At SPJIMR, we attribute this phenomenon to our unique admissions process combined with differentiated curriculum content, structure and delivery,” Prof Malay Krishna, Associate PGDM Head, said.
This placement season saw the return of regular recruiters like TAS, BCG, Deloitte, HUL, P&G, PwC, SDC, Goldman Sachs, Airtel, DBS Bank, Amazon, Make My Trip, RB and TSMG among others.
A total of 47 new companies participated in the placements including the Aditya Birla Group, Accenture Tech, Alcon, AstraZeneca, Avendus Capital, Barclays, Flipkart, Google, HSBC IB, IBM, Intrigo, Metro Cash & Carry, Pidilite, Reliance Industries, Samsung India Electronics, Siemens Management Consulting, Tata Communications and Uber.
Consulting and FMCG continued to be the dominant sectors of hiring on campus. The consolidation seen in the e-commerce sector did not impact the number of offers in this space.
The sector-wise break up showed Consulting in the lead at 35% followed by FMCG/FMCD at 23%. The other key sectors were Banking & Investment Banking at 14% and e-commerce 12%.
Here is a snapshot of the placement season:
Participants in the batch – 238
Participants opting out of the placement process – 4
Number of participating companies – 105
Number of first-time recruiters – 47
Total number of pre-placement offers – 81
Total offers made – 263
Average Salary – Rs 22.24 lakh
Key highlights
92% of the batch received offers in excess of Rs 17 lakh
97% of the batch received offers in excess of Rs 16 lakh
Average of top 35% of the batch touched Rs 28 lakh
The median salary for the batch was Rs 21.35 lakh
In General Management, this year, conglomerates including Aditya Birla Group, Mahindra & Mahindra, General Electric, Reliance and Tata Administrative Services made nine offers in several middle management positions.
The roles pertain to the application of business understanding in all relevant domains and also entail close coordination with CXOs. The hires are groomed to be future leaders in their respective business subsidiaries.
In Consulting/ IT Consulting, the top firms included Boston Consulting Group, Siemens Management Consulting, Bristlecone, GEP, Deloitte, PwC India & SDC, KPMG, EY, IBM, Accenture Technologies, Intrigo, TSMG, Cedar Management Consulting and Capgemini among others.
The profiles offered included strategic consulting, management consulting, operations consulting, financial advisory and IT consulting.
The offers coming from e-commerce companies went up slightly as compared to the previous year. A total of 12% of the batch was placed in e-commerce firms which included Amazon, Cloudtail, Flipkart, Uber and Paytm among others.
The profiles offered included category management, product management, online and offline marketing, business process excellence, operations and business analytics.
In Finance, the offers came from top league financial players that included Avendus Capital, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, DBS Bank, RBL Bank, Citibank, JM Financial, HSBC IB, Yes Bank and IIFL among others.
Offers were received across a plethora of functions ranging from investment banking, corporate/retail banking, equity research and NBFC roles etc. Corporate finance/strategy roles were also offered by companies like Mondelez and Cloudtail among others. Some 14% of the batch got offers in the financial services, banking and investment banking sector, which was higher than the last year.
IT companies such as Microsoft, Media.net, IBM, Accenture Technologies, Flipkart, Value Labs and Capgemini offered sales and consulting roles on campus. IT majors made offers to 10% of the batch. Corporate IT roles were offered by companies such as General Electric, HUL, Pidilite and P&G.
SPJIMR maintained its niche in FMCG hiring. This year witnessed the top FMCG companies back on the campus to make offers to the marketing and operations batch. The FMCG sector made offers to 23% of the students.
Sales & marketing and supply chain roles were offered by FMCG/FMCD majors that included Asian Paints, Pidilite, L’Oréal, Colgate-Palmolive, GSK CH, GSK Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, HUL, P&G, Mondelez, Marico, Reckitt Benckiser, General Mills, Nestlé and Samsung India Electronics among others.
Telecom roles were offered to students by Bharti Airtel, Sterlite Technologies, Vodafone and Tata Communications.
