Two IIM-A grads shun Rs 1-cr offer
AHMEDABAD: Declining pre-placement offers is nothing new for students of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, but declining the highest offers ever made in the institute has raised more than a few eyebrows.

Two of the six second-year post-graduate programme students of IIM-Ahmedabad who were offered the position of associates by Deutsche Bank, declined it despite their salaries, in rupee terms, was more than Rs 1 crore.

Debashish Chakravarty, one of the two students who refused the offer said, "I declined the offer because I wanted to be on my own." The challenge of entrepreneurship was more exciting for him than taking up a cushy job.

"Three other classmates and I have planned to start our own business. We plan to start production and retailing of women's lingerie," said Chakravarty, who was serving in the Army before taking voluntary retirement.

Vineeta Singh, who too rejected the Deutsche Bank offer will be joining Chakravarty, along with Bhushan Dabir and Vishal Prabhu Khan-olkar. "We did a detailed market research on women's lingerie and found huge customer dissatisfaction. We have a business plan ready," said Chakravarty.

"The financing of the project is being negotiated with venture capitalists and if everything goes as per plan we hope to be in the market with our product by next year," Chakravarty said.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/968988.cms

IIM-A alumni run online CAT coaching
Though the country’s six Indian Institutes of Management’s Admission Group have decided to make their Common Admission Test (CAT) online from next year, four alumni of IIM Ahmedabad have managed to beat their alma mater in the Net game.

Four students of the Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Management, who opted out of the placement process in 2007, already have a Website that imparts online coaching for CAT. The foursome, Vineeta Singh, Bhusan Davir, Vishal Prabhukhanolkar and Debashish Chakravarty, were in the news in 2007 for spurning high-paying job offers, to start a venture to manufacture a new range of lingerie.

Though this new venture did not take off, they started a Website,www.tenaday.co.in, which provides online coaching for CAT. The venture currently has about 29,000 registered users, Prabhukhanolkar told the Hindustan Times on Tuesday.

Presently, the venture is the only online CAT coaching portal in the country. Asked about what made them start an online CAT coaching site, Prabhukhanolkar said that the logistics of the admission examination was becoming a nightmare, due to the growing number of aspirants every year. “It was soon becoming imperative for the exam to go online some day,” he added.

The online examination would be much easier to mange than the current system, Prabhukhanolkar said. An IIM-A source confirmed that the online examination would cut down administrative costs, involving people travelling to places, and sending papers all over the country, with risks of leaks.

The conventional examination can be conducted from a limited number centers while the online tests can be taken from anywhere.
Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/IIM-A-alumni-run-online-CAT-coaching/Article1-295258.aspx

Past students return to IIM-A to recruit
The Indian Institutes of Management are globally renowned as transformers of bright young students into enterprising adults capable of promoting, running and leading their businesses to success at world level. There have been several examples of IIM Alumni who have succeeded in India and abroad. Graduating students from IIMs often find themselves being offered multiple job postings at top-dollar salaries. While most students opt for such high-profile placements there are few who go ahead and promote their own enterprises.
Here are four young alumni from the highly rated Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) who passed out in 2007 and promoted their own dotcom company who are returning to the campus, this time to recruit. When they rejected their placement offerings of Rs.80 lakh - one crore salary packages people were surprised, but the team was confident of breaking out into the market and making it big. And now the proof of the pudding is in the fact that they are back in the campus recruiting. They want highly talented, enthusiastic and hardworking business savvy IIM-A grads to take their company to new heights.
The quartet include Vishal Prabhukhanolkar, Bhusan Davir, Vineeta Singh and Debashish Chakravarty who grouped together to promote ‘ten-a-day’, an online website which offers coaching for the CAT examination, the gateway to the IIMs and several other B-Schools in India. The venture operational online @ www.tenaday.co.in, has attracted over 22,000 fully registered users in just a year since promotion. According to the promoters the ventue needs more heads to make it big and none but IIM alumni will do.
In less than a year the website has become the largest online CAT training and education preparation platform. The modus operandi of the website is simple, registered students are required to answer just 10 questions every day and generates a daily percentile rankings of the student. This is one way to monitor the students progress on a daily basis. This will enable students to know where they are lacking and work on the areas in which they are weak.
The explanations and ten questions a day are free. But the detailed analyses of the answers and rankings and advising students on the areas they need to work to succeed in CAT are charged. Fees range from Rs.210 onwards and is very affordable compared to other institutes across the country whose courses are priced anywhere between Rs.5,000-14,000 for similar services.
The annual CAT entrance test is written by nearly two lakh students every year. This number is poised to grow to six lakh in the next three years and sounds fantastic business opportunity for those who offer quality and effective training to students desirous of getting the coveted IIM seats.
Tags: CAT, entrance test, IIM, website, coaching, online education, Business

Source : http://www.hellocompany.org/entry/past-students-return-to-iim-a-to-recruit/
It's raining money at the IIMs!

Gaurav Dagaonkar passed out of IIM last year and instead of dancing to his employer's tune he decided to sing his own song. He opted out of placements to become a full time singer. A year later, he's giving the same advice to his juniors. Dagaonkar says, "It is essential for a person to start off as early as possible, So, that within two years you start networking with the right kind of people - you have people in place and you become confident."
But everyone doesn't seem to agree. Ram Ganesh Aiyer passed out of IIM-A in 2004 but instead of starting off on his own, he worked for a consultancy firm for two years before starting off on his own and he recommends the same for his juniors. He explains, "It is good idea for students to have corporate exposure before starting on their own. Some reasons being, it helps to get more experience in the real world as against case studies that we do in these schools."
JOB ACCEPTANCE IN IIM-A
Finance - 44%
Consulting - 30%
Marketing - 8%
Operations - 5%
IT - 4%
Strategy - 3%
Others - 6%

A recent trend suggests that the number of IIM graduates daring to start their own ventures is on a rise. While eight students opted out of placements from IIM-A last year, it's still early in the process. Sources say more than two dozen students presented theirbusiness ideas to venture capitalists last month. With an entrepreurial fair, that was organized on campus for the first time, IIM-A is also encouraging students by allowing their former students (who have passed out over two years ago only) to participate in their placements. The trend is catching up in other IIMs as well.
So, does money make the world go round? Well, IIM graduates this year proved otherwise. In an unprecedented trend, IIM students are turning down offers worth crores of rupees. To talk about the IIM placement quirks, here's what Debashish Chakravarty from IIM-Ahmedabad has to say. Debashish turned down a jaw-dropping one crore offer and plans to start a lingerie business. Also, discussing this issue of why IIM graduates are not tempted by hefty offers are IIM-Bangalore Professor Saurav Mukherjee and Partner at an human resources firm, Redilion, Vikram Bhardwaj.
Excerpts from an interview given to CNBC-TV18
Q: What was your motivation to opt out of placements and become an entrepreneur?
Chakravarty: I have neither been an entrepreneur nor worked in the corporate world. I was a major in the Indian army before joining this institute and coming here and learning a lot about management. I thought the most challenging future I could ever have was entrepreneurship - ie. building something of my own and getting a job wasn’t such an exciting idea but building a company, hiring people, doing something fruitful, I thought this was much more challenging and interesting, that is why I opted out of placements.
Q: Are we seeing a similar trend in Bangalore?
Mukherji: Last year, we had one student who decided to take the plunge but this year none of students as far as I know have walked out of placement, to have a start up of their own. So, I haven’t seen it as a trend in IIM-Bangalore and if anyone asks for my advice on choice - whether to start up their own company versus going through the placement process, and especially if the student is a fresher or relatively low in experience - then I would advice them to go and join an industry first, build up their network and gain experience and then be an entrepreneur.
Q: You have been helping people to get into the corporate world, is it a pipe dream to become an entrepreneur immediately, or would you advice taking up a job?
Bhardwaj: The aspirants from MBA institutes are realizing that despite high salaries, they are the first ones to be laid off if the environment changes in high volatile businesses like i-banking, and so they don’t mind setting this aside as a trade-off, against working independently.
Q: IIM -Ahmedabad has promised this year that entrepreneurs like you, who for some reason, if your business doesn’t take off as expected in two years time, then you can once again opt for the placement process and join your juniors?
Chakravarty: Yes, it is a good offer that the institute has come up with and it does offer reassurance to a candidate, who is still on edge, deciding on entrepreneurship and taking up a job. Right now, in our batch, we have 11 students including freshers who are going into entrepreneurship and that is nearly 5% of the batch, and it is a strong rising trend.
NEW RECRUITERS AT IIM-C
ING
Optiver
CIC International
Bain & Co
Value Partner
(IIM-C: Highest international salary offered in 2006: $1,52,000)

Q: How hard is it for people to get the cream of the talent from these campuses?
Bhardwaj: It is getting harder by the day and Indian companies cannot even match the deep pockets, which global firms have and increasingly these MBA hirings are driven at a global level. So, they don’t mind paying a slight premium over what a Wharton MBAwould get to an IIM graduate.
It's not only the paypackets grabbed by IIM graduates that's increasing but also their entrepreneurial spirit. The placement process is not yet over but experts say that the number of students who opted out of placements to start off on their own, will definitely be the highest this year than ever before.
FLOCKING TO IIM-B
- 90 firms participated
- Consultancies comprise 32%
- Non-bank finance firms comprise 32%
- Marketing firms comprise 14%
- Overseas offers made: 60
- Sun Group offers Deepak Goyal VP position
- Arcelor Mittal offers 2 GM posts in Trinidad

Source: http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/its-raining-money-atiims_271556.html