The Hindu Business Line : All students passing out of IIT Kharagpur's biz school find placement

While 36 per cent of the students joined IT and ITES companies, 27 per cent opted to work in the financial domain. The manufacturing and FMCG companies picked up 13 per cent of the students each, while 11 per cent of the students opted to join consulting firms.

Kharagpur , Jan. 12

IT is yet another major boost for students of the oldest business school in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) system.

The entire outgoing batch of 85 students of the Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) at IIT, Kharagpur, have been successfully placed.

Leading companies from the IT and ITES domain, financial services, manufacturing, consulting and the FMCG sector have lapped up, within one-and-a-half days, all outgoing students of VGSOM, currently ranked among the top 20 business schools in India.

The development comes shortly after students of VGSOM were provided with a lifetime opportunity to meet with the legendary investment wizard, Mr Warren Buffet, at Ohama sometime in May 2006. A team of over 50 students from VGSOM, lead by the Director of IIT, Kharagpur, Prof. S.K. Dube, and the Dean of VGSOM, Prof. Probir K. Gupta, will meet Mr Buffet during a visit to the US in May this year.

Speaking to a group of visiting presspersons here on Wednesday, Prof Gupta said the average salary for the domestic placements this year was Rs 7 lakh per annum. Thirty-six per cent of the students joined IT and ITES companies, while 27 per cent opted to work in the financial domain.

The manufacturing and FMCG companies picked up 13 per cent of the students each, while 11 per cent of the students opted to join consulting firms.

Mr Gupta said that, among the companies that visited the VGSOM campus at Kharagpur, were IT sector companies such as Wipro, Infosys, Hexaware, HCL Technologies, etc.

Present among the consulting firms were PricewaterhouseCoopers, Accenture, MindTree Consulting and A.F. Ferguson. Other companies present at this year's placement included Maruti Udyog, Voltas, Bajaj Auto, ITC and Tata Motors.

According to Mr Gupta, VGSOM, "derives its strength from the oldest IIT facility in the country" and was happy to leverage upon the parent brand.

Besides concentrating on case studies that were of specific relevance to the Indian market, VGSOM had also introduced an engineering entrepreneurship course module that was aimed at fostering a spirit of entrepreneurship among students.

The special MBA diploma course that had been introduced for Air Force personnel would be extended to the Army this year, he said.