Come April, IIM-Ranchi’s wide-eyed and bushy-tailed first-year budding managers are all set to get their first live industry interface.

For summer placements, as many as 72 recruiters have come knocking this year and made offers to 197 of 210 postgraduate diploma students of 2013-15 comprising management and human resource management streams.

Colloquially called summers, the two-month stint is important for both students and the B-school. It gives budding managers their first exposure to a workplace with real projects and deadlines, while it tells their B-school how the industry rates it before the final placement held for second-year students.

This year’s summers is a fair indication of how the young IIM has arrived, going by recruitment across sectors such as banking, finance, fast-moving consumer goods and durables, strategy and consulting, automobile and so on.

IIM-R has earned kudos from industry watchers for attracting private and public sector companies that almost span the alphabet spectrum from A to Z.

The list includes Aditya Birla Financial Services, Ad Astra, Berger Paints, Cisco, Deloitte, Dr Reddy’s, Eveready, Fitch Ratings, Greenply, Hero, IKYA Human Capital, ICICI, IIFCL, JP Morgan, Kotak Mahindra, MTR, PhillipCapital, Raymond, RPG Group, RBI, Samsung, SBI, Singhi Advisors, Sun Pharma, Tata Steel, Tata Quality Management Service, Trident, Tupperware, Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting, among others.

Vinu Varghese, a member of the IIM-R’s senior placement committee, said: “Our students will go through their summer placements in April and May. Despite an increase in batch strength by 33 per cent and the ongoing slowdown, IIM-R has been able to successfully emulate the trend of previous years.”

For IIM-R, the quality of recruiters is important, he added.

According to Varghese, finance and marketing were the top picks. “Of the students, 43 per cent chose to intern in marketing and 30 per cent opted for finance. The rest, 27 per cent, chose to intern in general management, marketing and consulting services,” he said. “Many students got multiple offers.”

Himanshu Lohani, a first-year management student who will intern with MNC Becton, Dickinson and Company, a leading medical technologies company, said: “Summers are important because we get a real feel of how things work. I’m getting a stipend of Rs 30,000 per month and will try to learn as much as possible from my stint.”

Animesh Pandey, his batchmate, is set to join financial services firm JP Morgan this summer. And more than the Rs 40,000 per month stipend, he’s kicked about the fact that there are “enough jobs in the market”.

Sumeha Kaushal, first-year human resource management student, has been hired by ICICI Bank for a stipend of Rs 50,000 a month. “It’s a practical opportunity to learn and prepare for the workplace, and in the short-term, the final placement next year,” he said.

Is IIM-R the best thing to have happened to Ranchi in recent years? Tell ttkhand@abpmail.com