Talent hunt: Startups descend on B-schools
New-age tech firms woo management trainees with ₹15-35 lakh packages
Navi, a fintech firm set up by Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal, robotics enterprise Addverb, jewellery business BlueStone, and recruitment company Erekrut are among startups that have trooped into management campuses to hire graduates, as B-schools draw the curtain on the 2024 placement season.
Startups in fintech, HR-tech, robotics, and the software-as-a-service sectors have picked up candidates from top managements schools, offering them niche profiles and competitive compensation, despite the sluggishness in private equity and venture capital funding in the sector.
While top-tier management institutes such as the older Indian Institutes of Management have been able to place most of their students with companies, others in the pecking order have had to reach out to a fresh set of startups as they struggled to successfully complete their placement drive amid a challenging macro-economic landscape.
"We're committed to attracting top talent from universities and business schools, and we invest heavily in building relationships with these institutions. This year, we've hired over 100 talented individuals for long-term internships,” said Abhishek Mehrotra, chief human resources officer at fintech startup Yubi (formerly CredAvenue).
According to the final placement reports of the older, marquee IIMs such as the ones at Ahmedabad and Bengaluru, BrowserStack, a SaaS unicorn, recruited from both the campuses. Jewellery startup BlueStone, fintech startup Navi, merchant platform unicorn Pine Labs, online payments firm Simpl are some of the other startups, besides more established ones such as Flipkart and Myntra, that have snapped up graduates from these two campuses. The startups that have gone to management colleges are competing with the more established companies with heftier compensation packages. They offer between ₹15 lakh and ₹35 lakh on
THE number of firms visiting B-schools went down this year, after post-pandemic hiring frenzy
STARTUPS going to management colleges compete with the more established firms they struggled with placements.
"We reached out to the new firms (startups), looked at placement reports of the last few years published by tier 2 and 3 colleges to check if any company we have missed out," said a placement team member of Goa Institute of Management. Whiles most students were keen on joining established companies, the younger IIMs such as those in Tiruchirapalli and Rohtak knew they could not afford to ignore the startups given the prevailing stress in the job markets. "The profiles and designations are good. While students preferred the more established companies, this was a challenging year and we called large and small startups," said a placement team member of IIM Tiruchirappalli. The college, set up in 2011 in Tamil Nadu, has just concluded its placements.
devina.sengupta@livemint
YOUNGER IIMs could not afford to ignore the startups given the prevailing job market stress
average to management trainees. In some cases, their niche profiles have become their biggest calling card.
To be sure, the number of startups visiting B-schools has gone down this year, after the post-pandemic hiring frenzy, prompting many colleges to reach out to them as