The final placement process at IIM, Bangalore, which concluded here Tuesday saw the institute set new benchmarks for Indian MBA graduates with the highest salary offer from foreign placements touching $193,000, also a new record across the IIMs.

"It was a career in consulting and investment banking which found favour with the students this time with 26 per cent of the batch of 182, accepting a position in consulting," Saurabh Bansal, representative of Iimb Placement Committee said.

"A consulting career is known for its demand for multi-functional skills cutting across finance, strategy and marketing. In this year's placement, McKinsey & Co was the single largest recruiter, inducting nine IIMB students in their fold", he told reporters here.

The other sectors that saw significant number of positions offered include investment banking (26 per cent), marketing (15 per cent), finance (16 per cent) IT (13 per cent) and operations and general management (6 per cent).

The year saw global consulting firms and global investment banks making a beeline to IIMB, Bansal said.

Along with regular consulting recruiters like McKinsey & Co, Boston Consulting Group, AT Kearney, Accenture, KPMG and others, there were a host of new firms including Bain & Co, besides niche players including AMEX GRSS, Diamong Cluster, Ameriprise Financials, Globaleprocure, Chain Analaytics and others.

The number of new IT consulting and IT companies that came down to IIMB also increased. This included Bloomberg, RSG Systems, US Tech apart from Microsoft, IBM, HP and Dell. Indian companies included Infosys, TCS and Wipro, Bansal said.

IIMB created history this time with almost one-third of the batch taking up offers from day zero (Mar 10), a statistic unmatched across the IIMS, Bansal said.

The total number of day zero offers increased by an unprecedented 58.5 per cent, from 41 to 65. There has also been a tremendous increase in the number of companies that participated in day zero of the process, by a 31 per cent, he said.

For the first time ever, an Indian bank was at IIMB to recruit for its global locations. ICICI offered positions for its London and Singapore offices. A total number of 79 students (representing 46 per cent of the batch) were placed on day-1, that had a "huge diversity in terms of jobs and positions offered", Bansal said.

Overall, 110 companies participated in the placement process with the average international salary increasing to $90,000 per annum this year and the average domestic salary to Rs 9 lakh per annum.

While the highest domestic offer was Rs 30 lakh per annum, "the one that was actually accepted was for Rs 16 lakh", Bansal clarified.

Despite having the smallest batch size (182) among the three older IIMS ( Bangalore, Kolkata and Ahmedabad), IIMB received more offers from most of the recruiters. "IIMB this time was the most preferred B-school for multinationals", he said.

( www.financialexpress.com)