GIM students get lucrative postings with attractive returns

Panaji, Dec 18 (UNI) Smiles beamed on the faces of 119 students of the prestigious Goa Institute of Management (GIM), one of the premier B-Schools in India, as they got lucrative placements with an average package of Rs 7.4 lakh per annum.

The average salary showed an increase of 15.62 per cent to Rs 7.4 lakh per annum this year as against Rs 6.41 lakh last year.

Similarly, the highest (annual) salary offered is Rs 9.5 lakh. The median salary this year is Rs 7.5 lakh, with the least salary offered being Rs 5.5 lakh, according to the jubilant Prof Anirban Sengupta, Placement Director of the GIM said here today.

Placements for the 2006-08 batch students started in the early hours of December 14 and ended late in the evening the next day.

During the intervening hours, 119 students from different academic backgrounds with varying work experience were placed in 40 companies. GIM, which has always been a favourite haunt of IT companies, has a different story to tell this time.

Giants like Hindustan Unilever Limited, State Bank of India, Marico, Vodafone, Mercer Consulting, Thomas Cook, Deloitte and Citiglobal straddling across various domains made a beeline to grab talent from GIM. Regulars like Wipro Tech, Infosys, and Cognizant were joined by newcomers like CapGemini and EDS.

A total of 194 offers were made to 119 students. In order to gear up for the forthcoming challenges, expected to emerge from the liberalisation of the banking sector post-2009, leading banking and financial institutions like SBI, HSBC, Kotak, Centurion Bank of Punjab made a total of 55 offers. Out of the 72 companies which registered with GIM for the recruitment process, only 40 could recruit.

Prof Sengupta said, ''Major players from the corporate sector have come down to GIM to recruit our students. Our success in placements is also reflected in the salaries offered, which has increased substantially since last year. The trend noticed is that, over the last five years, while salaries offered to students of prominent B-schools have doubled, salaries offered to students of GIM have tripled. The markets are moving fast, but GIM is moving faster.'' A few students rejected fatter pay-cheques in favour of their dream profiles. Moving higher in the value chain, GIM students managed to attract stellar profiles like Transition Managers, Arbitrage Strategist, Treasury Functions, Investment Research, Risk Management, Valuation Services, Branding and Strategic HR consultancy.

Things look even brighter next year with big names like Yahoo!, Deloitte and Marico offering summer internships to students with stipends as high as Rs 45,000 per month.

UNI