SPJIMR Class of 2008 - The League of Extraordinary Millionaires

It is not the mountain we conquer, it is ourselves.
- Sir Edmund Hillary

Sir Hillary would have been proud. The PGDBM class of 2008 not only conquered mountains, but also propelled themselves into a whole new league during the placement season. Signing off with new, exciting profiles and ever-burgeoning salary packages, the class of 2008 accentuated the trend that has been seen at SPJIMR. The corporate world reinforced its conviction in the participants as they continued to offer new roles and responsibilities for the class of 2008.

New, diverse profiles kept pouring in, and more than 95% of the class signed-off as millionaires. In a perfect culmination of the PGDBM programme of the institute, the average salary increased by 25% to Rs. 13.96 lakhs per annum with the highest domestic offer of Rs. 24 lakhs and highest foreign offer of USD 70,000.

The process ended with the participants being offered their dream profiles in large Indian and foreign firms. Companies in sectors like Consultancy, Banking, IT, Investment Banking, FMCG, Private Equity, Manufacturing, Healthcare& Pharmaceuticals, Telecom, Media lined-up to pick up some of the best managerial talent in the country.

Companies participating in the process for the first time included McKinsey & Company-Corporate Finance, Bharti Group, Cummins, Ranbaxy, M&M Corporate Strategy Group, Principal AMC, Barclays, Aricent, J&J Pharma, ING IM, Swiss Re, GE Healthcare, Suzlon, GSK Pharma, Tata Capital, Reliance Group, Virgin Mobile, Heinz and many others.

The consulting bandwagon was led by Mckinsey & Company who recruited 2 students from SPJIMR. This was out of total 5 students recruited on their Batch Day. Other consulting companies on campus included Accenture Business Consulting, TSMG, PWC (Performance Improvement Team), E&Y (Business Advisory Services), Deloitte and others.

This placement season also saw top of the league I-banks like JM Financial, Enam, Deutsche Equities, banks like Barclays, ABN-AMRO, HSBC, Standard Chartered and financial institutions like GE Commercial Finance, IDFC, SEBI recruiting candidates for their highly-valued skills. Marketing profiles were offered across various sectors in companies like P&G, HUL, Marico, Cadburys, Nestle, Intel, Microsoft, J&J, Motorola, HT Media, and many others.

General Management profiles were offered by Tata Administrative Services, Aditya Birla Group, Reliance Group. The operations domain saw companies like GSK, Cummins, Miebach Consulting, ITW, ECS, and Bristlecone among many others. IT companies like Capgemini, CTS, Wipro, HCL Technologies, IBM, Oracle among others offered plush IT consulting, business development and other exciting profiles.

More than 50% of the batch had pre-placement offers and pre placement interviews from the Autumns Internships which was done in companies like P&G, HUL, Citibank, Sabre Capital, Edelweiss, Pentland Brands (London), Development Bank of Singapore, etc.

The placement process saw an average of two offers of more than Rs. 10 lakhs for each student. Along with the compensation packages offered, companies also carved out roles specifically to meet the interests of the participants. One candidate opted out of the placement process to start his own venture, taking advantage of the new institute rules, by which candidates can opt out of the placement process to pursue entrepreneurial interests, while having the opportunity to sit in the process for next 2 years. The placement process was a fitting end to the PGDBM programme, which aims at promoting an inquiring & analytical mind, which proactively seeks the right knowledge, acquires the appropriate skills and promotes the right attitude to develop capabilities needed to manage enterprises in the twenty-first century.