The Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore has registered a record number of companies making the highest offers in the history of the institute after its placements for this year.

The median annual compensation package for the 209 graduating students (including 15 accepted foreign offers) was Rs 700,000 (Rs 611,000 last year). The offers ranged from Rs 475,000 to Rs 12 lakh (Rs1.2 million).

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According Ganesh N Prabhu, associate professor and chairperson-placement, IIMB, "The Indian compensation packages varied marginally with prior work experience of the graduating students. For 33 students with no prior work experience, the average salary was about Rs 623,000. Ten students with less than one year work experience got an average salary of Rs 672,000, 68 students between one and two years work experience were offered an average salary of Rs 707,000."

Prof Prabhu added that an average salary of Rs 728,000 was offered to 63 students between two and three years work experience and Rs 732,000 for 20 students with over three years of work experience.

The known annual gross compensation packages for the 15 students accepting jobs abroad ranged from $29,000- $78,500 equivalent for positions based in Singapore and UK.

A total of 352 offers were made from the 101 participating organisations to 209 post-graduate and doctoral students who wanted to be placed through campus placement.

This compares with 232 offers from 68 organisations for 169 students last year. Interestingly, "slot four", which was scheduled for March 19, had to be advanced to March 18, owing to non-availability of students.

Prabhu said "The highlight of this year is the record number of companies that have visited IIM-B. During this year, we had 140 students with work experience as against 40 last year. As a result, a highest number of later placement offers were also made. Though the last day of placement was on March 19, we had to call some companies on March 18 as there were no students available. In fact, many students got multiple offers simultaneously."

Final Placements for graduating students at IIM Bangalore started in late 2003 with 15 organisations making 29 PPOs (Pre-Placement Offers). This compares with 18 PPOs last year.