The summer placement process for the first batch of Post Graduate Programme in Sustainable Management (PGPSM) at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow concluded recently.
PGP-SM is the third two year PGP offered by IIM Lucknow, but the first one to be offered from its Noida campus. It is the only of its kind programme focusing on sustainability across IIMs. PGP-SM has been designed to groom business managers with an ethos of sustainability (economic, social, and environmental) and equip them with skills to handle varied business sustainability challenges in a dynamic and unpredictable environment.
PGP-SM was inaugurated in June earlier this year, and the first PGPSM batch now has 19 students with an average work experience of 4.5 years. Students came with a previous background of having worked in some of the largest PSUs (e.g. Power Grid, NTPC, SAIL, Coal India Limited, Indian Oil Corporation Limited, BSNL), large private sector organisations (e.g. Tata Teleservices, Ingersoll Rand, Tata Motors, Adani Power, ICICI Bank, TCS, Capgemini, Atos India) and startups (e.g. SnapDeal, Taxi For Sure).
For the summer placements, only those companies which work in the field of sustainability, energy, environment, urban issues, smart cities, CSR and related topics or have large practices in the one or more of above subjects were approached.
Overall 17 students received offers from 9 organisations spanning across conglomerates (Mahindra, Tata Sustainability Group, Wipro), energy sector (Cairn Energy), developmental space (Azim Premji Foundation, and Fortis Hospitals Group), sustainability and policy think-thanks (Wipro Earthian-CSTEP), and start-ups (Valluri Technology Accelerators, and Sweep Enviro). 2 students opted out of the placement process to pursue their alternate career interests. The roles on offer included roles on varied sustainability & CSR related aspects, smart cities, energy & policy analysis, and environment and waste management.
Professor Kalyan Bhaskar, the Faculty Coordinator for PGP-SM placements said, “It is extremely heartening and exciting to see the industry response to the inaugural batch of PGP-SM at IIM Lucknow. Apart from the 9 companies whose offers were accepted, there were close to a dozen more firms which either participated in the process or expressed interest in the process, but could not be accommodated mainly owing to high interest level from the industry and the small batch size. The credit for the successful summer placement process goes to the Director, IIM Lucknow, the Placement Team at IIM Lucknow’s Noida campus chaired by Prof S Venkataramanaiah, and PGP-SM students who put in the maximum efforts. We look forward to a productive and long term association with our industry partners.”