E-Commerce Companies Lead Orders at IIM U MBA Class of 2015 Summer Placements

IIM Udaipur has published the summer placements report for its MBA Class of 2015 (PGPX). We bring you the highlights. 

IIM U is one of the few B-Schools in India to have an internship component for its One Year Full Time MBA course. We have talked of the ways in which an internship can be an important engagement through which experienced candidates demonstrate their  value to corporates, find a mentor and create a flightpath to getting absorbed into a company on graduation.  

Most corporates in India have been used to hiring at an entry level from PGP/ PGDM courses in India. With One Year MBA courses that are benchmarked to global standards for a full time MBA course, B-Schools in India are finally producing MBA talent in the way the world understands the term: management graduates who are ‘Masters’ of business in the true sense and can contribute to its operations as managers from day 1 rather than join companies as Management Trainees and undergo, what is essentially, another management course crafted by companies to bring graduates with little real world experience up to speed on business basics.     

Companies need to made aware of the differentiated value that these MBA students offer – and one way students can demonstrated their expertise is though a close one on one engagement with their target company. Since One Year MBA courses are shorter, schools in India are adopting different ways of providing this crucial learning component to their students – IIM B chooses to find a mentor for their students who coaches them over a long term, while IIM U, by finding full time internships for its students, is adopting the more traditional route of full time internships.

IIM U says, “The PGPX Summer Internship program is an intensive eight week experiential learning exercise undertaken by the students in Industry. The objective of this exercise is to give students a first-hand experience of the supply chain and operations related processes, best practices and challenges faced in industry and to give students an opportunity to test their theoretical understanding on ground. The experiential learning exercise is part of the academic requirement and has to be undertaken by every student. This year, the exercise saw some very interesting roles being offered in Procurement, Operations and Supply Chain domain. Given that the experiential learning exercise is a graded component of the course, a lot of academic rigor is expected from the projects offered. Hence, to provide support on scoping and for regular feedback, a dedicated mentor was allocated from IIM Udaipur to liaise with the company mentor.

So what did IIM U students do this summer over the 8 week internship? Here are the highlights:

• Companies from sectors as diverse as FMCG, E-commerce, Consumer Durables, Manufacturing and Logistics offered well scoped and structured projects to the batch of 11 students

• E-commerce was the highest recruiter, with one international offer also coming from the same sector, followed by FMCG and Logistics

• E-commerce sector was represented by Urban Ladder Home Décor Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Indiamart Intermesh Pvt Ltd and Sharaf DG

• Cargill India Private Limited and ITC Food Division offered projects from the FMCG space

• In the Consumer Durables sector, Eureka Forbes Limited recruited 2 students and a same number was selected by Cummins India Limited from the Manufacturing sector

• In the logistics sector, Future Supply Chain and Forbes India recruited 1 student each. 

• Most of the projects offered were in the Supply Chain Management and Procurement areas

Detailed report

IIM U follows Indian Placement Reporting Standards (IPRS) which provides transparency and authenticity in the reporting of placement related information across B-Schools through standardized and audited placement reports. IIM Udaipur is the third IIM in India to be a signatory to the IPRS and this report has been audited by an external legal entity.