The Summer Placement process for the MBA Class of 2026 of the Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in Management at IIM Ahmedabad was completed successfully on 18th November 2024. Firms from multiple domains participated across the three clusters in Summer Placements, with all students being placed across more than 25 cohorts of firms that visited. Despite turbulent market conditions, the institute saw a rise in recruiting firms, and roles being offered. 51 new companies participated in the 2024 summer placements, up from 12 in 2023. In Cluster-1, in the Transformation & Operations Consulting cohort Accenture Strategy was the largest recruiter with Accenture Strategy’s India Market Unit extending 6 offers and Accenture Strategy Global Network making 33 offers followed by Vector Consulting Group with 7 offers. In the Management Consulting Cohort Boston Consulting Group (22), McKinsey & Company (15), Bain & Company (14) were the top recruiters. In the Investment Banking & Markets Cohort Goldman Sachs (11) and HSBC (India and Hong Kong) (6) were the top recruiters. EY-Parthenon India (8) led the charge in the Advisory Consulting Cohort. The Private Equity/Venture Capital Cohort was led by WinZO Fund (6) and White Oak Capital (3).

In Cluster-2, Amazon and Mahindra led by making 8 offers each followed by Hindustan Unilever Limited (7), Aditya Birla Group (6), Sun Pharmaceuticals (6), Lodha Ventures (6) and Tata Administrative Services (TAS) with 5 offers.

In Cluster-3, Tata Consultancy Services was the largest recruiter making 9 offers in the Niche Consulting Cohort, whereas in the Enterprise Technology cohort Adobe led the charge with 5 offers and Microsoft with 4. In cluster-3, Tata Steel and Silver Consumer Electricals were the largest recruiters in the Infrastructure & Core Manufacturing domain with 5 offers.

Cluster-Cohort Placement System

159 firms opened JDs with 125 of them making offers for 147 roles across 3 different clusters on 12th, 15th and 18th November 2024 for the 2024 Summer Placements. Firms were grouped into cohorts based on the industry they operate in, and group cohorts were invited to campus across different clusters. As in previous years, students were provided the flexibility of making “dream” applications to firms of their choice in a subsequent cluster, even with an offer in hand. The dream matrix was made even more flexible this year in line with IIM Ahmedabad’s belief in the idea of “student-recruiter fit”. 106 students made over 200 dream applications this year. This gave students the flexibility and choice to build careers in sectors of their preference.

Cluster-wise details on the number of students placed:

Sectoral Overview

Firms from different sectors participated in the process at IIM Ahmedabad. Recruiters in the Management Consulting domain included Alvarez & Marsal, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Kearney, Kepler Cannon, McKinsey & Company, Roland Berger, Simon Kucher, Strategy& India, and YCP Auctus. In the Transformation & Operations consulting domain Accenture Strategy (India Market Unit), Accenture Strategy (Global Network), Vector Consulting Group and Middle East based TransformationX were the top recruiters. EY-Parthenon India, PwC, EY-Parthenon Singapore and KPMG were the top recruiters in the Advisory Consulting domain. The institute saw an uptick in the Cards & Financial Advisory cohort with American Express making 7 offers, Synergy Consulting making 3 offers and Cranmore Partners making 2 offers.

The Investment Banking and Markets space was led by Goldman Sachs (11) and HSBC (India and Hong Kong) with 6 offers. Other prominent recruiters included Arpwood Capital, Avendus Capital, Axis Capital, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Citibank, Deutsche AG, Deutsche India, DE Shaw, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Moelis & Company, Sanford C. Bernstein, IIFL Securities, and Standard Chartered. In the Private Equity and Venture Capital domain, we saw the participation of firms like Ares Asia Asset Management, Arga Investment Management, Faering Capital, Multiples Alternate Asset Management, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, Neev Funds, Param Hansa Values, Piramal Alternatives, Premji Invest, Pkeday Advisors, RTP Global. WinZO Fund (6) and WhiteOak Capital (3) were the two largest recruiters in this cohort. These two cohorts made 66 offers reposing the faith that the Private Equity, Venture Capital, Investment Banking and Financial Markets industries have on IIM Ahmedabad as an institute.

Consumer Goods, Consumer Durables and Consumer services cohorts saw participation by regular recruiters like AB InBev, Airtel, Asian Paints, Dabur, Diageo, HUL, ITC, Loreal, Nestle, P&G, The Coca Cola Company, Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages and Wipro Consumer Care. United Breweries (Heineken Group), Welspun Living, Zydus Wellness and Trampoline Store were the new recruiters in these three cohorts.

The Conglomerates' cohort saw participation from Aditya Birla Group, CK Birla Group, JSW Group, Mahindra Group, Reliance, TAS, and Lodha Ventures, among others. Retail B2B & B2C cohort consisted of firms like Amazon and Fast Retailing Japan. Pharma & Healthcare cohort continued to show its trust on the institute’s student pool with widespread participation from firms like Bharat Serum Vaccines, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Optum and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. The Consumer Tech cohort comprised firms like Ola and Pluckk. Enterprise Tech showed an uptick with regular recruiters like Adobe and Microsoft increasing the number of offers from previous years and additional participation from companies like Innovapptive, New Gen Software, Salesforce, and Sprinklr. The Renewable Energy and Green Tech cohort saw participation from ReNew Power, British Petroleum Group and Hexa Climate.

Banking & Financial Services sector also witnessed an increase in participation from firms like Axis Bank, FinIQ Consulting, IIFL, Kotak Life Insurance, SMBC (Corporate Banking), and Next Bharat Ventures by Suzuki. ConsultAdd Services and Hex Advisory participated in the Analytics & IT Consulting cohort. Core Manufacturing & Infrastructure cohort saw new recruiters like Forbes Marshall, Thyssenkrupp Industries, Silver Consumer Electricals and Italica Granito along with regular recruiters like Suzuki Japan, Tata Steel and Saint Gobain.

Newer age firms continued to tap into IIM Ahmedabad for their growing talent needs with exciting startups in the Financial Technology space like Zaggle and Progcap participating in the process. Other prominent startups like Trampoline Store and Boult Audio too extended 2 offers each across the cluster process.

Sector-wise details on the number of students placed are as follows:

This year, there were 51 new recruiters compared to 12 last year. These included- BNP Paribas, Cranmore Partners Limited, D. E. Shaw India, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bank AG, EY Parthenon - Singapore, HSBC (Hong Kong), IIFL Securities (Investment Banking), Pkeday Advisors, Roland Berger, Simon Kucher, UBS, Bharat Serums and Vaccines Limited, Bharti Enterprises, Emcure Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Fast Retailing Japan, GMR Group, Lodha Ventures, Michelin India Private Limited, Sony Pictures Networks, Trampoline, United Breweries (Heineken Group), Welspun Living, Zydus Wellness, Axis Bank, Black Brix, Boult Audio, Consultadd Services Private Limited, Forbes Marshall, Hex Advisory, IIFL, Innovapptive, Innvolution, Italica Granito Pvt. Ltd., Kotak Life Insurance, Newgen Software Technologies Limited, Parag Milk Foods Ltd., Pekers Group, Pluckk, Practus, Progcap, ReviewAdda, Salesforce, Silver Consumer Electricals Private Limited, SMBC, Sprinklr, The Buddha Insitute, HexaClimate, Thyssenkrupp Industries India Pvt. Ltd., Zaggle, and Next Bharat Ventures by Suzuki.

Prof. Viswanath Pingali, Chairperson of Placements at IIM Ahmedabad, said, "This year, we completed the summer placement process in hybrid mode, during which all the students were placed with offers across multiple sectors and industries. This year once again saw an increase in the participation of firms and the variety of job roles as compared to the previous years. This indicates that the demand for high-quality talent continues to grow and demonstrates the strength of relationships we have built with our recruiters over the decades. At IIMA, we strive to develop future leaders for enterprises and will continue to supply the industry with the country's most exceptional talent pool of future managers. With our consistent record of producing high achievers, we continued to attract regular as well as new recruiters further strengthening our recruiter pool. We are grateful to the recruiters who have participated in our placement process and have helped our students realize their career aspirations. We are confident that the exceptional talent that IIMA produces through its rigorous and contemporary coursework will provide an enriching experience and significant value to the organizations."

Top Recruiters

In the Transformation & Operations Consulting domain Accenture Strategy led by making 39 offers followed by Vector Consulting Group with 7 offers. In the Management Consulting cohort, Boston Consulting Group was the top recruiter with 22 offers, followed by, McKinsey & Company with 15 offers and Bain & Company with 14 offers. EY- Parthenon India made the maximum offers in the Advisory Consulting domain – 8. Goldman Sachs was the highest recruiter in the Investment Banking and Markets cohort with 11 offers followed by HSBC (India and Hong Kong) with 6 offers. WinZO Funds and WhiteOak Capital were the highest recruiter in the PE/VC and Asset Management cohort with 6 and 3 offers respectively.

In the Consumer Goods, HUL extended the most offers – 7, followed by Wipro Consumer Care and ITC with 4 offers each. With 8 offers, Mahindra was once again the largest recruiter in the Conglomerates cohort this year as well, followed by Aditya Birla Group with 6 offers. Amazon made the highest number of offers in the Retail B2B & B2C domain- 8, followed by Fast-Retailing Japan with 3 offers. Airtel took the lead in the Consumer Services cohort with 3 offers. Sun Pharmaceuticals was once again the top-recruiter in the Pharma & Healthcare cohort with 6 offers, followed by 4 offers by Emcure Pharmaceuticals and 3 by Glenmark Pharmaceuticals.

In the Niche Consulting cohort, Tata Consultancy Services was the largest recruiter with 9 offers followed by Practus with 3 offers and Black Brix with 2 offers. FinIQ Consulting was the highest recruiter in the Banking & Financial Services cohort with 4 offers, followed by Axis Bank with 3 offers. Tata Steel and Silver Consumer Electricals were the highest recruiter in the Core Manufacturing & Infrastructure cohort with 5 offers.

Entrepreneurship

IIM Ahmedabad has always encouraged students to take up entrepreneurship as a career by opting for IIMAvericks Fellowship. The IIMAvericks Fellowship includes mentorship from CIIE.CO and financial support for a period of 2 years. At any time during the Fellowship, the student can return and sit for placements through the Institute’s placement process. This year, 5 students opted out of the placement process to work on their own venture, under the IIMAvericks Fellowship.

Finding the Student-Recruiter Fit

Pratyush Adhikary, the Recruitment Secretary at IIM Ahmedabad, said, "The core philosophy of the placement system at IIM Ahmedabad revolves around the idea of the right student- career fit and providing an equal platform to all recruiters to access the rich talent pool of IIM Ahmedabad. This is achieved by our unique cluster-cohort system, wherein firms of similar kinds are mapped together and provide multiple dream options to students until they secure an internship offer in the company of their choice. The cluster-cohort placement process is designed so that students can secure an offer and upgrade to the company/cohort of their choice within a cluster and apply for dream companies/cohorts across different clusters. Along with these significant efforts were made in revamping processes to provide a seamless experience to the recruiters.

Given the unique market conditions, the Placement Committee onboarded several new recruiters that the students preferred, which is reflected by the significant rise in applications that the new recruiters had. Overall, the hard work put in the Placement Committee, Placement Office of IIM Ahmedabad and the Class of 2026 worked out well, and we successfully completed the Summer Placements process the earliest we have since the pandemic while maximizing the student-recruiter fit objective by the ethos of the placement system, with many students exercising the “dream” option across clusters and several on-the- day upgrades in offers.”

Regular recruiters have always been impressed with IIMA’s Placement Process. Saurabh Chhajer, Managing Director & Partner at BCG, said, “We succesfully wrapped up another summer intern recruitment process at IIM-A. IIM-A has always been a campus of choice for BCG and we are excited to welcome this year's batch to BCG. Would especially want to commend placement committee's efforts to ensure a smooth process in a very competitive and fast-paced cycle.”

Nilesh Gupta, Partner at McKinsey & Co, remarked- “It’s always a great experience recruiting from IIM A. This year we were very impressed with the quality of students and their preparation! Look forward to further strengthening our association with the campus”

IPRS Report

Further details about the placement process will be released in an audited report, as per the Indian Placement Reporting Standards (IPRS), introduced by IIMA to bring about greater transparency in B-School Placements across the country, and the link to the report will be shared with all stakeholders, once released.