The Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore has broken all records and beaten the other IIMs by getting the highest pay packet for an individual student in the annual placements.

At the end of 'slot zero,' Gaurav Agarwal of Kanpur has secured placement from Barclays Capital with an annual salary of $193,000 (about Rs 86 lakh), thereby breaking the record of $185,000 secured by a graduate from IIM-Ahmedabad just two days ago.

Gaurav Agarwal will be posted in London. Another student, Venkatesh Shankararaman, got a package of Rs 30 lakh, the highest offer for a domestic position, in Mumbai. Agarwal, an IIT Kanpur alumnus, had done his summer internship with Barclays. Prior to joining the IIM-B, Agarwal was working with a network chip-design company, Tera Blaze, at the Silicon Valley, USA.

On the other hand, a B-Tech graduate from IIT-Madras, Venkatesh Shankararaman did his post-graduate in science from Ohio State University and worked with i2 Technologies in the US.

Overall, a total of 21 companies took part in the placement process, including the biggies of global investment banking, the like of Goldman Sachs (London, New York), BNP Paribas (Hong Kong), Barclays Capital (London, New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore), Merrill Lynch (Hong Kong, Singapore), Lehman Brothers (New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Hong), Deutsche Bank (London), ABN AMRO (Hong Kong), UBS (Hong Kong, London), and JP Morgan (London).

Besides the investment banks, the gravy train this time included consulting giants. The consultants brigade was led by McKinsey, Bain and Co, Boston Consulting Group, Ameriprise Financials, Deutsche Post (USA, Germany and Singapore), AT Kearney and Diamond Cluster.

"The numbers speak for the quality of students. The students were brilliant and we have recruited the highest number of candidates from here, among the three campuses," said Vikash Daga of McKinsey.

As many as 182 students signed up for the process and by the end of "Day Zero", 65 of them, comprising 34 per cent of the batch, were placed.

McKinsey has taken nine recruits from the IIM-B, the highest among all IIMs this year.

The IIM-B's growing reputation of producing specialist students was underlined by the presence of private equity firms like Baring Private Equity Partners, news giant Bloomberg (New York) and conglomerates like British Petroleum (Singapore) and Mittal Steel. Last year, 78 companies had together made 328 offers at IIM-B.

Indian companies began their recruitment on Sunday, the first day of the recruitment process, wherein the activity focused on students interested in marketing, retail banking, IT services and consulting. The line-up includes FMCG behemoths like HLL [Get Quote], P&G, banking giants like Kotak and Citibank, and consultants like Accenture and KPMG joining the parade. The process will go on till mid-night.

Amid this shower of lucrative offers, one student, Kunal Mahipal of Kolkata, has opted out of the placements and has decided to start his own business. He did his BCom degree from Xavier's College, Kolkata.

His aim is to make it big in the branded garments industry. His company, Kriti, will focus on designer wear for men, women and kids. He has already managed to arrange 30 per cent of the capital from his partner. He plans to approach venture capital funds for the rest of the investment.

XLRI student bags Rs 13 lakh offer

A student of XLRI Jamshedpur has bagged highest salary offer of Rs 13 lakh (Rs 1.3 million) per annum from McKinsey in its placement for 2006 batch.

Last year's highest domestic offer of Rs 12 lakh p.a. was made by Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

McKinsey has recruited three XLRI students with the highest offer followed by Hay Group, Accenture Business Consulting and HSBC Bank.

More than 25 students were offered salaries above Rs 10 lakh p.a.

The average salary offered to 186 students, both from the Business Management (BM) and Personnel Management & Industrial Relations (PM&IR) courses was around Rs 8.4 lakh pa, 13.51 per cent higher that last year's average of Rs 7.4 lakh p.a.

IBM, Cognizant, Goldman Sachs Equity Research, Ernst & Young Human Capital, ICICI Prudential, Hewitt Associates and Nokia were amongst the major players who recruited around 85 XLRI graduates.

Capgemini Consulting, KPMG Consulting, SAP America, Nokia, Oracle and Virtusa were few among the nine new entrants for the placement 2006.

FMCG sector showed its dominance in this year placement with major names like Asian Paints [Get Quote], Cadbury, Coca Cola, Colgate Palmolive, HLL, ITC, GSK [Get Quote], Marico, Nestle [Get Quote], Pepsi, Reckitt Benckiser and Seagrams.

Around 27 per cent students signed out with offers from FMCG and manufacturing firms. The banking, finance and insurance sector has been the favourite sector amongst the students. Around 26 per cent of the students opted for offers in these sectors. Another 21 per cent opted for consulting firms.

Besides the top banks like Citibank, HSBC Bank, ICICI Bank [Get Quote] and Standard Chartered Bank, new entrants list included Lehman Brothers India and Goldman Sachs Equity Research.

The insurance sector, represented by AIG and ICICI Prudential picked up 11 students. The number of lateral offers made was 82 out of which 53 candidates were offered pre-placement offers and another 18 were offered pre-placement interviews.

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