With a powerful blend of faculty, staff, alumni, and corporate partners working together to achieve excellence in business education, the PGP-ABM program has the best there is to offer in terms of exploring the endless possibilities in agri-business. The program equips students with the required conceptual and interpersonal skills, along with a sense of social purpose for managerial decision making and implementation, in the unique context of agri-business. The program widens the students’ vision and instills in them values of professionalism, integrity, ethics, and social commitment.

The program is well known for its academic rigor. The first year imparts the basic fundamentals of communication, finance, marketing, economics and human resources management, the building blocks of managerial aptitude. In order to build a more holistic learning environment, and to promote the spirit of competitiveness, the first year of the program is common with the PGP and FPM programs.

Building on this strong foundation in general management, the second year courses equip students with specialized multifunctional knowledge and skills that are required by the agri-business sector managers for excellence in planning and decision-making. Students choose from courses including Agricultural Finance, Strategic Food Marketing, Public Policy, Agribusiness and Energy Markets, Management of Micro Finance, Carbon Finance and Agribusiness, and more. The Logistics, Supply Chain, and Infrastructure Management in Agribusiness course is highly appreciated by the business world. The course also orients students to the global agribusiness scenario, and has a student exchange program with ESSEC, France.

During the second year students also have the opportunity to pursue Independent Projects under the guidance of a faculty member. The research is geared towards the practice of management within specific organizations or sectors. Moreover, they may also take up independent consulting engagements with public or private sector organizations.

For a better understanding of the corporate environs, students are mandated to undergo a two month summer internship in the agri-business industry at the end of their first year. Summer internships offer recruiters a fresh outside perspective and raw talent. For the student, it means valuable insights into today’s business situations and solving real-life managerial problems.

Unique to the PGP-ABM program is the Rural Immersion Module (RIM). The Rural Immersion Module is developed to sensitize the students to the ground realities in India’s heartland. Through spending time every year at a location in rural India and working to understand, suggesting and implementing solutions to problems faced at the ground level, students gain a valuable appreciation of what they are working to change. Industrial Visits complement this entire process by providing students a glimpse of the numerous functions in varied agricultural sectors.

The program receives key support from the Center for Management of Agriculture (CMA) at IIM-A, comprised of eminent faculty members having practical expertise from various fields, and also invites a number of visiting professors and eminent individuals from other esteemed colleges and the industry. The rigor, academic discipline, and diversity of IIM-A prepare the participants of the program to rise up to the challenge of working in a dynamic industry.

Students are handpicked by faculty members from the top performers in the CAT and GMAT. While the age, experience and academic background may vary, one common characteristic is the zeal to excel in the chosen field of activity. Nearly 120,000 students applied to the program in 2010, of which 37 joined the batch of 2011-13. The program sees students from diverse backgrounds such as commerce, economics, law, healthcare, and others join its ranks every year; there is a good mix of fresh graduates and people with work experience across diverse functional and industry sectors.

Students of the program have fared very well, both on and off campus. PGP-ABM were active members of the team that won the Mahindra War Room 2011, a highly prestigious Business School event, from among 1,250 teams coming from the finest Business Schools in India. Students have also been actively involved in the Forum for Industrial Interaction at IIM-A, and some of the highest rated teams had PGP-ABM students, including the overall best rated team. Students have been actively involved in all of the Student clubs on campus, and have even served as the heads of the Marketing, Economics, Dramatics, Agri-Business clubs amongst others. In all, students are actively engaged in activities on campus, from sports to scholastic competitions and beyond.

These students go on in life, and find managerial positions across the value chain. Many of the program’s alumni head top corporate houses or contribute at key positions in several agri-business conglomerates in India and abroad. Others have made great progress in the social sector through NGOs.

Over the years, our alums have found their way into Olam international, Rabo Bank, Monsanto, Harrison-Malayalam, the Godrej group, ITC, and many other renowned companies in the field of agri-business and also others like the Boston Consulting Group, Frito-Lays, and Nestle, proving their mettle in whatever field they chose.

The PGP-ABM program has its own placement cell, and offers recruiters access to an unparallel bouquet of talent and experience. In order to encourage agri-preneurship among students, a two year placement window facility provides students a chance to take the path less travelled, and still have the safety of the institute’s assistance.

The PGP-ABM was developed to ensure that it meets the highest international standards, and to be of high quality and direct relevance to the real world. Today the PGP-ABM program stands a class apart from its counterparts across the world, and its efforts have not gone unnoticed. In 2011 Eduniversal, a French Rating Agency, declared the PGP-ABM Program to be the No. 1 Program Globally in the Agribusiness / Food Industry Management Category, a matter of great pride for the institute. Yet there is always much to do, and in the future of agri-business in India and across the world, the PGP-ABM program will be leading the way.

For the past few years, we have been following the policy of proactively engaging with the media by releasing the results of each cluster. This year, the press releases for each completed process can be accessed here.

We felt compelled to communicate this clarification because as a matter of policy we do not publish individual specific compensation details. These are confidential information and should be respected as such. The number of PPOs received by students is also data which we only share once final placements are over. Further, the Placement Committee has not received any compensation details for the mentioned PPOs from the firm(s).

We would also like to clarify that Times of India has not contacted the Media representative of IIM-A Placement Cell or any other Placement Committee member or the Placement Chair to verify the information they have published. The quote attributed to the Placement Committee member does not carry their name and further discredits the authenticity of this report.

IIMA has this year embraced transparency in reporting salary information as part of the Indian Placement Reporting Standards. We share this information with not just the media but also the general public. However we only share aggregate level data in this report. We do not release specifics of any individual firm’s offer. We understand that placements at IIMA are regularly followed. However we expect reputed newspapers to verify the information that they publish and accredit the quotes that they carry in the article.

Those interested can fill the form up at iima-jgw.co.cc or email us at adayatiima@iimahd.ernet.in. The final batch of 50 ‘students’ will be chosen on the basis of a draw of lots. As this initiative is part of the ‘Joy of Giving Week’, we encourage the participants to donate to Prayaas, IIMA’s student initiative to educate underprivileged children around campus. We thought the flavour of the event could be captured best through quotes from some of the key people involved, so here goes!

Parampreet Singh Bhasin, the General Secretary of the IIMA student body: The batch of ‘students’ will be taught by our Professors using the pedagogy of IIMA i.e. the case method. They will be privy to some of the traditions and quirks that make up our Dorm culture. They will also learn interesting things about our campus and experience first-hand the academic rigour that we students are exposed to on a daily basis.

Vipul Kedia the founder of Prayaas: It’s heartening to note that Prayaas has continued over the years and has managed to
motivate IIMA students continuously to contribute to society. The latest effort to raise funds through this innovative concept showcases the out of box thinking that IIMA teaches. These funds will help expand Prayaas significantly and ensure further continuity of this initiative.

Jayesh Chawla, a young entrepreneur: I always used to identify myself with the entrepreneurs mentioned in Connect the Dots, Rashmi Bansal’s book. Through this opportunity, I can experience what IIMA is and what the difference between an MBA entrepreneur and a non-MBA entrepreneur might be.

Tushar Tarun a Law Officer at Indian Oil Corporation: As a lawyer working in a corporate, such a day would let me observe the work ethic of MBA students, their approach to business problems and give me a greater insight into the working of companies and the market.

Akshay Kataria a 2011 IIMA pass out: I want to thank the present Joy of Giving Week team of IIMA for planning this event. This initiative is also exciting for an alumnus like me, who would love to live those glorious moments at IIMA again. Merely by learning about the event, I am getting nostalgic about those red bricks, the brilliant professors and the LKP!

Professor Rajanish Dass, Warden of IIMA: Initiatives like this, especially during the golden jubilee year of the institute, are a great welcome. This provides a fantastic platform for our students to interact with people from different streams, as well as help them understand  IIMA way of doing things.

Rashmi Bansal, noted writer, blogger and IIMA alumnus: I’m delighted to hear of this creative and exciting initiative to raise funds for a great cause. To all those who get this one day at IIMA, I’m sure it will be the experience of a lifetime!

Sulabh Jain, Student Coordinator for Golden Jubilee Committee: We want this event and the several other events we have launched for the Joy of Giving week this year such as ‘Shadow a CEO’, ‘Meet a Prof’ and ‘Dinner of Joy’ to continue over the years to come. This being the Golden Jubilee year, we thought it would be a wonderful occasion to launch these events. A lot of work has gone into planning and arranging ‘A Day at IIMA’ and we intend to make it a memorable experience for all those involved.

Thus, IIM Ahmedabad has taken the initiative to introduce the Indian Placement Reporting Standards (IPRS) that can be used by business schools uniformly to report placements.

The need for these is evident as many potential MBAs look at reports of placements and salaries to make a decision as to which B-School to join. The reporting standards seek to present information on placements in a clear manner with defined parameters which will facilitate easy comparison. The data is also relevant to current students who are usually privy to inflated CTC figures and will now know their salary break-up.  The biggest step taken is to ensure that the data is audited by a reliable agency. This verified data would then be made available to the general public i.e. existing and prospective students, recruiters, media and ranking agencies and other stakeholders. IIMA has been working hard with other business schools to carry forward this initiative.

The introduction of these standards took place in 4 stages. They were first proposed in October 2010 at the IIMA Recruiter Conclave in Mumbai. Post this; a draft of the standards was prepared and circulated among students, other B-schools, recruiters and the media. The suggestions and revisions were discussed and incorporated at the Placement Reporting Conference held at the IIMA campus in June this year. Finally on the basis of these standards, the IIMA placement reports for PGP, PGP-ABM and PGP-X final placements were released on the 7^th of September. Several notable institutes have adopted the IPRS, the full list of which can be found at the IPRS website.

Audited by CRISIL, the IIMA Placement Report concisely classifies the offers given on the basis of function, location and salary. These clearly demarcated heads allow for easy comparison between B-Schools and also for complete transparency in presentation of the data. The reception of this fully audited report was highly positive with most media agencies and stakeholders commending the step.

It is hoped that truthfulness and fairness in placement reporting is adopted among all major business schools in the country. The IPRS represent the willingness of some B-schools to take a step towards publishing verified reports in the interest of all stakeholders. Over time, the practice of releasing unaudited reports will hopefully be discontinued and all B-schools will see the merit in subscribing to the IPRS.

The members of IPRS and audited placement reports can be found at: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/iprs/members.php

More information on the IPRS can be found at: http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/iprs/index.php

Some of the responses the IIMA community has posted to inflated salary reporting can be found at:

https://insideiima.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/the-truth-about-b-school-salaries/

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-03-12/news/27599643_1_highest-salary-bonus-highest-package

https://insideiima.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/clarification-regarding-the-article-in-the-economic-times-dated-26-2-2011/

The first change that one notices is the sudden appearance of a multitude of colors – blue, green, pink, purple and of course, the ubiquitous black. The umbrellas jostle for space outside libraries and classrooms, dorms and eateries. Often, people crowd under an umbrella in twos and threes, trying desperately, but unsuccessfully, to stay dry. Everybody makes a mad scramble to reach shelter, professors and students alike. The coffee at Nescafe and the chai at Ram bhai becomes a staple part of everybody’s diet.

This being a relatively “chill” period on campus, a whole host of activities takes place simultaneously. The intra-campus TT tournaments sees boys and girls fight it out outside the class. Friendly matches of football and basketball with other colleges result in dirty clothes and new acquaintances. Frisbee gains a whole new level of popularity with matches continuing well past midnight. IIMACTS, the dramatics cell, put up their annual theatre festival – a series of three plays on three evenings which left the audience wildly cheering for more.

The campus itself blooms like a fresh, new flower. The green grass, twittering birds and leaping frogs make it a perfect time for the romantic soul to go for a stroll. Prakriti, the nature club, arranges for campus walks in the morning, arguably the best time of the day. Amateur photographers sprout faster than mushrooms and face-book pages get flooded with pictures of the…campus in the rains.

1.      Careers in Finance talk:- This widely acclaimed talk by the BETA 2^nd year members covered finance careers in both width and depth. It dealt with a range of topics from career paths to interviews to on-the-job experiences in finance, often treading on issues that few people openly dare to discuss.

2.      Tryst with Industry stalwarts:- Mr. Ramaswamy Govindan and Mr. Vijay Kuppa(IIMA 2009 passout) of L&T Finance’s famed treasury function, shared their ‘on the ground’ experience.

3.      FinQuest:- The finance quiz did not fail to disappoint, with 7 select teams competing for the 2 prizes on offer.

4.      BullsEye(the trading game):- Replicating the open-outcry system, it gave an insight into on the skills/temperament needed to be successful traders and investors. Teams of investors and traders competed within their peer group for top honors.

These events allowed the first years to engage with Finance at a more practical level – letting them learn for themselves, the kind of finance knowledge they would need during their internships.

This year, IIM-A also tied up with Bloomberg to conduct their financial aptitude test ‘Bloomberg Aptitude Test’ on campus, absolutely free for IIM-A students. This 3 hour test saw more than 250 test takers from both the first and the second year. While the results will not be publicly aggregated/searchable on an institute basis, we are confident that the results will bolster IIM-A’s standing as the nation’s top B-School, and among the best worldwide.

We thank the guest speakers, students, Bloomberg personnel, administrative staff and others who helped make this a grand success.

T nite!

They said it would be unbelievably hectic. They said we’d have to sing, dance, walk the ramp, shout slogans, write newsletters and do other things we had never even thought of doing before. They said managing the above with academics would lead us to having less than three hours of sleep a night. They always used to say that the experience would leave us with some of our best memories of IIM Ahmedabad.

Boy, were our tuchchas right on all counts! The phenomenon called T-Nite took the campus and us fachchas by storm between the 5^th and 8^th of August. Those four days seemed to pass us by in no time, as we moved from preparing for dances, class performances, fashion shows and the like to actually taking part of them – from making numerous posters to rushing to find the best spots on campus to put them up – from creating slogans for our respective sections to screaming ourselves hoarse while chanting them – from spying on the other sections for faux pas to thinking of ways to inform the campus about them – from preparing for the next day’s classes to attending them, irrespective of how sleep deprived we were. Yes, we did it all!

Along the way, the management student in us couldn’t help but observe how T-Nite involved applications of different streams of management in one way or the other.

Managing the limited funds of a section to the last rupee, wisely investing in useful and not-so-useful assets (chart paper, coloured pens, wigs, costumes, beards) and finally creating a detailed account of where the funds were used is an apt example of accounting. Creative printed material, slogans, videos and themes to differentiate your section from the others definitely sounds like something every successful marketeer would attempt to do. Ensuring that a missing white lungi is found and delivered to the fashion show stage on time, procuring different materials required within the given time and budget constraints – Examples of practical applications of operations and supply chain management.

Yet, perhaps none of the streams of management would be more applicable to T-Nite than the area of Human Resources – especially team building and motivation. Who would expect all the eighty odd people of a section to sacrifice sleep and endure fatigue to contribute to their section in any and every way possible. Every management programme has a course on team building in one form or the other. T-Nite was the best example of a group of individuals getting together for the first time, working towards a common goal and in the process, becoming the thickest of friends. Add the challenge of finding the right person for the right job and we cover every aspect of human resources, in four days!

Perhaps sometime in the future, an enthusiastic student will write a case study on T-Nite. Needless to say, it will be at least twenty pages long, as anything shorter would not do justice. It would be interesting for a bunch of sleep-deprived students to start their second day of T-Nite, at 8:45 am, to hear an amused Professor begin the case with “So, what should the Class Representative of section A do?”

Needless to say, that would be one case for which pre-class preparation would be completely unnecessary!

This week IIMA plays host to T-Nite – that legen…(wait for it)…dary battle between the first year sections. First years or our facchas, as they are lovingly called, take some time off from their ridiculously busy schedules to explore their hidden talents. Singing, dancing, walking the ramp and acting comes naturally to these future CEOs as they battle it out to see which section comes out on top.

The aptly named ‘Talent Night’, is a friendly (or some may argue, not so friendly) contest between the five sections of first year. The sections A, B, C, D and E compete in a range of cultural and fun sports competitions to win the coveted T-Nite trophy. Add a dash of competitive masala and dollops of enthu and the result is a memorable 4 days for first and second years alike. While the first years prepare, second years are very much involved cheering their erstwhile sections and giving gyan (which they are always ready to do!). During these 4 days, the campus is transformed – the mess is decorated with banners and posters of the sections, the corridors and pathways ring with section tempo shouts, common areas in the dorm play host to dance practices and classrooms are used by sections to make props, practice and strategize for the upcoming night.

T-Nite this year has got off to a great start, with the sections going all out to claim the trophy. We leave you with some moments of the first day of T-Nite and the promise of more news and first year’s views on these 4 amazing days.

According to the Placement Reporting Standards, the institute will share the maximum, mean, median and minimum salary figures (international and domestic separately) at the end of the placement process. Since only two clusters of the placement process have been completed as of date and more are scheduled, the identification of the ‘top’ recruiter is premature. The determination of the highest salary package on campus has not been done by the placement committee as of date and hence any report on this parameter has no validity. We request the readers to wait for the official data and not rely on speculation.

Additionally such reports are misleading since the ‘top’ recruiter could be defined in several ways such as the recruiter making the highest number of offers, the recruiter having the highest acceptances etc. IIM Ahmedabad does not differentiate between recruiters on basis of salary offered or the number of offers made and strives for the best recruiter-recruit fit. In this context, defining the ‘top’ recruiter in terms of salary is not justified.

The Placement Reporting Standards drafted by IIM Ahmedabad and shared with various stakeholders including media (available for download from http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/index.php?id=409&newsID=363), differentiates between data and statistics. The standards have been drafted with the objective of reporting the aggregate statistics and not names of individual companies or students. We request media to refrain from publishing specific data as it may adversely affect the individuals concerned. The responsibility for any negative implication connected with identification of individual recruiters or students would lie with the media house concerned.