IIM graduates rush to join e-commerce companies and startups

MUMBAI: Students at India's top business schools are making a beeline for e-commerce companies and startups, lending credence to the emergence of the sectors as the hottest new career destination.

One in every nine students from the 2013-15 batch across 11 of India's top B-schools will be joining an e-commerce firm or startup after they graduate as compared to just one in 19 students in the 2012-14 batch, according to data ET has collated from these schools. Importantly, offers from the e-commerce/startup space have gone up by 120% over the past one year alone. All these schools have completed their final placements.

The colleges include the Indian Institutes of Management at Lucknow, Kozhikode and Shillong, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, International Management Institute (IMI), Xavier School of Management, Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar, SVKM's Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Management Development Institute (MDI) and Symbiosis Institute of Business Management.

"This is just how the IT industry was in the initial days. First it attracted only the engineers and then when operations increased, they needed managers from top B-schools to expand," says Sharad Sharma, angel investor and former head of Yahoo India R&D.

A similar frenzy to join these new-age companies was seen across the Indian Institutes of Technology in December.

IIM Bangalore started its final placements on February 10 and placement sources told ET they are confident that offers from them will jump by at least 30% from last year. IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta are yet to begin their final placements.

Some of the top recruiters from B-schools include Snapdeal, Flipkart, Olacabs, Housing.com and Amazon (see graphic, 'Startup Sweep'). Others include Appsdaily, Commonfloor, Shopclues, Urban Ladder, PlayGames24x7, Zovi and Uber.

The buzz to join these firms has been noticed by traditional recruiters too. "There is definite pressure and we are watching this year," says P Thiruvengadam, senior director for human capital at consulting firm Deloitte.

Indian mobile payments and ecommerce platform Paytm, which saw Alibaba acquiring a 25% stake in its owner One97 Communications just last week, has also made an emphatic debut on campuses.

It plans to hire 100 students across B-schools, at salaries between Rs 16 lakh and Rs 20 lakh across operations, merchant acquisitions and product management.

"There's a huge buzz around ecommerce and startups," says Pushpendra Priyadarshi, chairperson, placement, IIM Lucknow. "They have the funds, the appetite to hire and are offering really challenging profiles. Most are giving Esops," he says.

Hectic start-up activity, big-ticket fund-raising and an increasing cool quotient among students have all contributed to this surge in hiring. In 2014, big e-tailers including Snapdeal, Flipkart among others raised over $3 billion in funding,

That's not including investments in early-stage startups by VC funds which amounted to $2.1 billion across 1,108 deals, an increase of 47.7% from 2013 when VC funds invested $1.4 billion across 246 deals, according to data compiled by VCCEdge, the financial research arm of VCCircle.com.

"It's not just that new recruiters have joined the flock. Older recruiters in this space have also increased numbers," says Kanwal Kapil, chairperson - placements, MDI Gurgaon. The start-up mania is catching up in consulting firms too and almost all leading firms - McKinsey, BCG, Bain, AT Kearney - have lost talent to the new ventures, says sources.

In the past few months, just Myntra has hired more than 10 McKinsey consultants. VC firms like Rocket Ventures have also targeted consulting talent. When Rocket Ventures wanted to start FabFurnish, its online furniture store, the firm picked up Vikram Chopra, an ex-McKinsey consultant, Mehul Agrawal from BCG and Vaibhav Agrawal from Bain to kickstart operations.



Consultants are finding favour with start-ups because they are used to being dropped into new clients, most times in adverse situations involving multiple variables, and rely on data-driven problem-solving approach, something that can be critical in new ventures.

"The value proposition that consulting firms offered to the best of talent still stands," says Arindam Bhattacharya, CEO, BCG India. The kind of personal development and challenges that consulting as a profession offers is unparalleled, he says, citing dealing with client problems across the value chain, working closely with the C-suite, thinking through big decisions for large companies and so on. Also, the compensation jump for top talent as they rise through the ranks is the still the best, he adds. "We are a people-centric profession, maybe we just need to sharpen the value proposition a bit more."