Ahmedabad: The graduating batch of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has received placement offers from 110 firms, including international offers from firms like Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

The placement process for the graduating batch of the Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP)at the IIM-Ahmedabad, closed on Thursday. All PGP students sitting for placements at IIM Ahmedabad have been placed in the firms of their choice, official sources said here on Thursday.

"Despite a recessionary year, a larger batch, a new, untested placement process, all students of the batch were placed in the firms of their choice," the spokesperson added.

"More than 40 offers extended by Global Strategy Consulting firms, Global Niche Consulting firms, Global Investment Banks and Global Private Equity firms, the four cohorts that constituted this cluster. Mckinsey & Co (8 acceptances including pre-placement offers), The Boston Consulting Group (8 acceptances including pre-placement offers), Monitor Group (5 acceptances), Bain and Company, Booz and Company, AT Kearney and Oliver Wyman went back satisfied with the quality of students recruited from IIM-A," Mansi Chitalia, member student placement committee said.

"With 53 percent of the batch of the batch eligible, the thrust on lateral placements ensured that students could leverage their experience to the hilt. Firms like Deloitte Consulting, A&M, Yes Bank, TSMG, Cognizant, Aditya Birla Group, Amazon and Philips were some of the major recruiters during the process. More than 40 firms participated in the laterals process and extended more than 100 offers, an increase of 4 times over last year," she pointed out.

The year also marked the return of the Investment Banks for the Final Recruitment Process. As compared to last year that saw almost no presence of Investment Banks for final placements, this year saw I-Banks extending offers both through PPOs and final placements. "While Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup were among the major recruiters to extend offers through the PPO route, we saw JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, HSBC and Nomura participate in the finals process," Chitalia added.

Similar to last year, this year also saw international offers being made to students of this institute. Goldman Sachs offered multiple roles in London while banks like Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank offered roles across Asia Pacific. In a marked development that probably is an indicator of conditions improving dramatically for IT firms, Cybage and Syntel Inc. made offers for their US operations. P&G, with 4 acceptances, continued with its trend of extending a majority of its offers for Singapore operations.

Yes Bank (13 offers including laterals) and ICICI Bank (13 offers) were the top recruiters on campus this year.

This was closely followed by Deloitte that made 10 offers (including laterals) for its consulting arm serving the US offices. One of the top global consulting firms, the Boston Consulting Group and leading steel maker, Ispat Industries made 8 offers each for consulting and general management roles respectively.

The elite Tata Administrative Services and niche consulting firm, Feedback Ventures re-affirmed their commitment to IIMA with 6 offers each. Public sector enterprises like Union Bank of India (2 offers), Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (4 offers) and National Thermal Power Corporation (1 offer) also participated in the process.

Banking and consulting firms were the flavors of the season this time around with most top recruiters coming from these firms. While about 20 firms offering roles in the consulting space recruited 29 percent of the batch, the Banking and Financial services sector saw 27 percent of the batch joining the workforce. However, there was no dearth of opportunities for students interested in other sectors. 15 percent of the batch took up roles with marketing majors such as P&G, HUL, Nestle, Airtel, J&J, Nokia, Philips, Titan, Cadbury etc.

Similarly, 13 percent of the batch took up roles with firms operating in the systems domain with some of the star recruiters being Google, Inc. which offered Sales, Marketing, Account Management and Business Development roles, Microsoft, Amazon, Cognizant, Wipro, Mindtree and Rediff. Last but definitely not the least, General Management roles were offered by TAS, the Aditya Birla Group, Mahindra, Essar, Lodha Group and Philips amongst others.

This year five students opted out of the placement process to become entrepreneurs. Three students who had opted out of placements to try their hand at their own ventures (2 were from the batch of 2009 and 1 was from the batch of 2008) came back and used the IIMA placement service to get very good offers. IANS