Internship stipends rise at top B-schools as recruiters step up hiring

Recruiters are increasingly using summer internships as a key hiring channel at India’s top business schools, and are offering higher stipends to the 2026-28 batch even as they make pre-placement offers (PPOs) to more interns from the Class of 2027 than earlier batches.

Placement officials at IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode and SPJIMR told ET that internship hiring has strengthened this year, with greater recruiter participation.

The summer internship process takes place in the first year of the MBA course while PPOs are offered in the second year, right before the final placements at B-schools.


“Many recruiters view summer internships as their primary channel for full-time hiring,” said Prem Prakash Dewani, chairperson, placement, at IIM Lucknow.

The institute’s students have attracted an average monthly stipend of Rs 1.72 lakh against Rs 1.67 lakh last year, while the median rose to Rs 1.75 lakh from Rs 1.72 lakh.

“What stands out is that the median is higher than the average, indicating that strong stipends were distributed across the batch rather than concentrated among a few top offers,” Dewani said.

IIM Kozhikode reported an increase in PPO conversions. “We have one of the highest conversion rates from summer internships to PPOs,” said Ankur Jain, chairperson of the institute’s CARE (corporate access, readiness and engagement) platform.

While the summer internship placement process is still underway and final year-on-year comparisons are not yet available, Jain said recruiter participation, stipend outcomes, student coverage and the relevance of internship assignments have improved significantly over last year.

At IIM Calcutta, the highest monthly stipend rose to Rs 9.5 lakh this year from Rs 6 lakh last year, while the average stipend increased to Rs 1.93 lakh from Rs 1.85 lakh. The institute onboarded 51 new recruiters, including Asian Paints, Gridlines, L.E.K. Consulting, L’Oréal, Mondelez International, Raine Group, Samara Capital and UKG.

“The summer internship drive is better than last year,” an IIM Calcutta official said. The institute received 546 offers for 475 students this year, compared with 510 offers for 470 students last year.

At SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), the highest stipend rose 20% year-on-year to Rs 3 lakh per month, while the median climbed 17% to Rs 2 lakh and the average increased 12% to Rs 1.86 lakh.

“A defining feature of this cycle is that the median stipend exceeded the batch average,” said Bhishm Chugani, director, career services, at SPJIMR.

IIM Bangalore placed more than 600 students in just two days, which its placement committee said was a record. All 608 participating students secured internship offers from 128 organisations.

At IIM Ahmedabad, Tata Consultancy Services emerged as the largest recruiter in the analytics and IT consulting cohort, alongside Indegene and Accordion India. Recruiters in the artificial intelligence cohort included CRMIT Solutions, DCirrus Cloud and Suchama AI.

More than 50 new recruiters participated at IIM Lucknow, including Arvind Fashions, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Cummins, DBS, Expedia Group, Firstsource, Flipkart, Groww, IBM and JioStar.

The institute received more than 600 offers this year, up from 570 last year. All the offers were for India-based roles, Dewani said. “Recruiters, including global firms, focused on hiring for their Indian operations, which are now central to their growth plans,” he said.

Chugani of SPJIMR said, “Despite cautious macroeconomic sentiment, this year’s internship cycle surpassed previous benchmarks across participating companies,” Chugani said.