E-Tailors Hire Aggressively From B-Schools for Second Year

NDTV.com

For the second straight year, e-commerce companies have hired aggressively across top business school campuses in the country, not only in terms of number of offers, but also in terms of salaries.

While IIMs have not revealed the pay packages offered by recruiters yet, it can be safely said that e-commerce companies have been among the top paymasters considering their offers in other B schools.

Chennai-based Great Lakes Institute of Management on Tuesday said its highest offer in the current placement season came from Amazon, which offered one student a salary package of Rs. 51 lakh per annum.

Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, emerged as the second largest recruiter in IIM Ahmedabad in the recently concluded placement season. IIM-A is India’s most prestigious B school. (Read: IIM-A Placements: Accenture, Amazon Top Recruiters)

In IIM Calcutta, domestic e-commerce firms such as Snapdeal, Flipkart and Olacabs joined the likes of Amazon to make a total of 47 offers, accounting for nearly 10 per cent of the batch size of 438 students. In IIM Kozhikode, Snapdeal – India’s second largest e-tailor after Flipkart- was one of the major recruiters. (Read: IIM Calcutta Placement Sees Demand From E-Commerce Industry)

The e-commerce sector accounted for about 16 per cent of placement in IIM-Bangalore this season. Amazon made 11 offers in IIM-B, Taxiforsure hired 8, Flipkart recruited 10 and Freecharge made 2 offers.

“An increasing academic focus on e-commerce was complemented by one-tenth on total offers coming from recruiters like eBay, IndiaMART, Shopclues and Urban Ladder for analytics, sales and marketing and general management roles. Meru Cab, Olacabs and Snapdeal rolled out more than 20 offers,” said the IIM-Indore’s placement report.

E-commerce firms had earlier hired aggressively from Indian Institute of Technologies or IITs for various roles spanning operations, marketing, analytics and software development.

Last year, a survey by industry body Assocham had revealed that e-tailors such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon are the new favourites among engineering and B-schools graduates looking for their first placement. (Also read: Flipkart, Snapdeal Emerge Favourites in Campus Placements)

The aggressive hiring comes amid a scramble over the past few years to get a piece of Indian e-commerce companies, including Flipkart, valued by industry at around $11 billion, and Snapdeal. Domestic e-commerce firms last year attracted more than $5 billion in investment, the bulk of it from overseas investors, compared to less than $2 billion in 2013.