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Pragya Singh, 25, and her family are excited about her new job with Al Ghanim Industries, a major business conglomerate based in Kuwait.
Pragya who will be joining as a product manager in the consumer electronics division is now packing her bags to head for Kuwait. She will be joining office on first week of May.
Her batchmate, Poorva Mohril, would be leaving for Kuwait too. Both believe there is no reason to be apprehensive about a posting near a war zone.
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Their mentor and Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad director Bakul Dholakia feels the two girls have taken a brave decision while rejecting offers for job in "safer cities".
Middle East is now the new "the destination" for the graduates of Indian Institutes of Management while even girls have started braving to be posted in Kuwait rejecting offers of posting in apparently safer cities in the world as two graduates from the fairer sex from the IIMA this year has chosen to work for Al Ghanim Industries in Kuwait.
While 18 graduates from IIM-A have opted to take job in the UK and 15 opted to be posted in the USA, an all-time record has been created by the IIM-A this year with 13 graduates decided to take up job in Kuwait, besides three students who have confirmed their acceptance of job in Dubai.
While students from IIM-A have showed keen interest in taking up jobs in the Middle East even though till this year, Middle East countries did not feature in the list of 'preferred' region to be posted because of political uncertainties and such reasons, 11 graduates from IIM-C this year have decided to take up their jobs in Dubai while offers also flowed in from Kuwait and Oman.
"But the students denied those offers, specially from Kuwait as Dubai is apparently is preferred more as a peaceful area and the offers for Dubai were better than those came from Kuwait," said an IIM-C official.
"In spite of the offers from Citi Bank and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, I had decided to take up the job with Al Ghanim knowing that Kuwait might not be as peaceful as Mumbai or Delhi but the place was never been a reason for apprehension for me. The offer which will fetch me $75,000 per annum is exciting enough," Pragya told Business Standard.
A graduate from IIMC who has accepted offer from a Dubai-based company, said, "The city is coming up in a big way and a heaven for consumer goods manufacturing companies."
Among 59 students from IIM-C who bagged overseas offers this year against 23 students bagged overseas offer last year, 71 graduates from IIM-A has bagged overseas placement offers this year.
Poorva, an IIM-A graduate and a native of Nagpur, reacting on her decision to join the Kuwait-based company, said, "In fact my uncle been to Kuwait for long time and I had learnt lot about Kuwait from him and some of my friends. It would be a great opportunity to work in the organised retail market in Kuwait as a Product Manager and I always wanted to work in this sector which opportunity has been brought to me by Al Ghanim."
Things are changing very fast as far as Middle East is concerned and this year's placement processes in the major IIMs, like IIM-A, IIM-C and even in IIM-B shows clearly that this region is going to be one of the favourite most destinations for the management graduates soon as the ball has already started rolling," added Dholakia, the IIM-A director.
Sources in IIM-B said that about a dozen of its graduates this year have bagged offers from Middle East and the number is astronomically high in comparison to students had chosen to work in Middle East in last year or for that case, in last a decade.