To honour the accomplishments and contributions of Late Professor Amitava Bose, Renowned Professor of Economics and Former Director of IIM Calcutta, IIM Calcutta in alliance with Late Professor Bose’s family announces the launch of the Amitava Bose Lab for Economic Analysis and Policy (ABLEAP) Fund. The family of Late Professor A. Bose has donated an endowment of Rs 1 crore for setting up the Amitava Bose Lab for Economic Analysis and Policy. Some of the initiatives under this Lab include Amitava Bose Scholar-in-Residence Programme, Amitava Bose Memorial Prize for best performance in Economics, Amitava Bose Memorial Lecture series, Workshop on Economic Analysis and generic research support towards the students. The ABLEAP Fund will provide numerous opportunities. It will provide researchers/scholars a place to network and stay connected to other researchers during events. It will also provide students an incentive to take a deeper interest in Economics and provide them exposure to economists and other relevant thought leaders. The fund if required will also be utilised for research projects that are unfunded. Speaking on this initiative, Director of IIMC, Professor Anju Seth said, “The Amitava Bose Lab for Economic Analysis and Policy fund is a great initiative that honours the late Former Director of IIMC and provides students and faculty an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding in economy and policy related matters.”

Samsung has picked top students from IIM-Calcutta and other B-schools for the two-month long summer internship program called IGNITE (Inspiring Growth & Nurturing Interns Towards Excellence). Through IGNITE 2019, they will be mentored by top management leaders at Samsung India and will work on live projects across verticals within the company. Before these interns start working with their respective teams, they will go through a fun filled two-day induction program that will start with an interaction with senior leaders at Samsung India. Alongside Zumba and Human Bingo sessions, there will be biz quiz and strategy making sessions.

Jaya Upadhyay, a first-year FP student from the Public Policy and Management group, has received the Alexander von Humboldt International Climate Protection Fellowship 2019 for her research idea on "Planning Regional Adaptation Strategies to Support High-Altitude Wetland Management in Arunachal Pradesh, India". She was also voted for the 2nd best poster presentation by the panel and other international participants during the selection process. With this fellowship, Jaya will be based in Germany for a year and conduct her research and develop policy initiatives with the help of experts in Europe, India and other countries.

Rupeshkumar Jadhawar, a student of IIM Calcutta and belongs to a team of 4 business students from all over the world were listed as the top 44 of the 1113 teams that participated in the 2018-2 track of the X-Culture Competition! He was guided by Prof. Ramya Venkateswaran. A total of 5,216 MBA students, undergraduate business students, and non-student contestants from 148 universities in 37 countries on all 6 continents enrolled in the 2018-2 round of the X-Culture competition. Of those, 4,742 passed the Readiness Test and successfully completed the project.

During September last year, a group of students of IIM Calcutta launched an initiative to collect unconsumed food from one of its student's canteen and to feed the street kids. The initiative has been an instant success and following this they have started collecting more such unconsumed food from other student's hostels. Now they feed 500 plus street kids every day. The students were inspired by Chandra Sekhar Kundu, a teacher in an Engineering College, who set up an NGO — Food, Education and Economic Development (FEED) — and arranges for several thousand plates of food for street kids every day. IIMC’s Initiative for Community Action (INCA) got in touch with him and offered to help. After discussing the matter among themselves and seeking permission from the authorities, the IIMC students began collecting unconsumed food from the canteen. The logistics support and distribution of this food to the street kids are undertaken by the NGO.

All 441 students of 54th PGP batch were placed, ensuring 100% placement in Final placements. 123 firms from diverse sectors participated in the placement process making a total of 501 offers, translating to 15% of the batch receiving more than one offer. 50% of the batch accepted offers in Consulting (29%) and Finance (21%) sectors. Reputed consulting firms such as AT Kearney, Bain & Co., The Boston Consulting Group, and McKinsey & Co. made offers in double digits. Other prominent names included EY-Parthenon, Alvarez & Marsal and PwC amongst others. Accenture was the largest recruiter with twenty four offers accepted. Top names among finance recruiters reposed their faith in IIM Calcutta talent with big names such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), Citi, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Avendus making offers to the students. New age firms in E-commerce, Operations and Product Management also attracted a large chunk (16%) of the class of 2019 with 68 accepted offers. Amazon, Uber, Udaan, Media.Net, Flipkart, Microsoft and Salesforce were some of the top names among recruiters in the sector. General Management (14%), Sales and Marketing (12%) and IT-Analytics (8%) also hired in large numbers from the campus. Top names included Aditya Birla Group, Mahindra, Wipro, Adani, L’Oréal, Mondelez, Hindustan Unilever, Samsung, Coca Cola, Bajaj Auto, EXL, American Express and Cognizant. The brisk placements can be attributed to an amalgam of initiatives undertaken by IIM Calcutta in the last one year.

Commenting on one of the system changes, Prof. Abhishek Goel, Chairperson CDPO said, ”Some student volunteers co-developed a scheduling system with a Bangalore based startup aimed at increasing efficiency and ensuring maximization of interface opportunities between students and recruiters. Automation has helped us.” Senior officials also congratulated the students. Dr. Anju Seth, Director IIM Calcutta said, “[I am] delighted to see such strong demand for the skill set of the participants of our MBA programme. This bears testimony to their talent and to the value added by the high quality education that we impart at the institute.” Dr. Prashant Mishra, Dean - New Initiatives and External Relations said, “The results reflect the hard work of the faculty as well as the students. I congratulate the placement team on this success.” Basic statistics also continued to climb. Average CTC was 24.96 lakhs and median was 23.5 lakhs, showing an increase of 0.76 lakhs and 1.5 lakhs respectively. The mood on the campus was of relief and happiness. “At IIM Calcutta we were not worried about 100% placement. We focused on our preparation and learning. A hard-working student can easily secure an offer of choice,” added a student.

The Final Placements for the PGDBA Programme of IIM Calcutta, ISI Kolkata and IIT Kharagpur for the 2017-2019 batch concluded with the batch of 52 receiving a total of 66 offers made by 35 firms. The average CTC has risen to ₹25.05 lakh per annum from ₹22.89 lakh per annum last year with the domestic median CTC of ₹23.23 lakhs per annum. The domestic offers alone recorded 11 percent increase in mean salary to Rs. 24.40 lakh per annum. BFSI made up for about a third of the total offers emerging as the biggest sector. The highest domestic offer made was ₹35 LPA. The major recruiters from the final placements include JP Morgan Chase, Adani Group, Viacom 18, Myntra, Flipkart, United Airlines, Piramal Group. With an impressive conversion rate of 63.5%, the PPOs make up the majority of the offers made. The major recruiters in the internship process included DE Shaw & Co, ABInBev, Amazon, PwC, Barclays, Gartner, Johnson & Johnson, MasterCard. The average monthly stipend of the internships bettered last year’s number by 22.8% reaching ₹1,13,565/- this year. The median monthly stipend rose by a remarkable 29.4% to reach ₹1,11,100/-.

IIM Calcutta students, Paras Gala and Rashmeka Banerjee emerged as winners at the Inter-University Annual Debate Competition organized jointly by Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata and Victoria Memorial. While Rashmeka spoke in favor, Paras presented opinions against the motion at this year’s debate themed around ‘Social Media is the New Courtroom for Justice’. Arpit Agarwal, Paras Gala, Rashmeka Banerjee & Utkarsh Thakur represented IIM Calcutta among the other seven teams from various educational institutions of Eastern India. The winners from IIMC were awarded a 2-month internship with the Observer Research Foundation. Some of the eminent speakers at the event were Nadira Patherya, Former Judge Supreme Court of India, High Court at Kolkata, Odisha, Patna and Jharkhand; Debanjan Chakrabarti, Director, British Council, East and North East India; Nilanjan Ghosh, Director, ORF, Kolkata and Jayanta Sengupta, Secretary and Curator, Victoria Memorial Hall.

Indian Institute of Management Calcutta has signed a MoU with The Jan Chetna Trust--established by Late Prof. Nirmal Chandra--for organizing the Nirmal Chandra Memorial Lecture series. IIM Calcutta has additionally received an amount of Rs 10 lacs for the implementation of the initiative, which will be held annually between November and February. This initiative has been created to honor the outstanding contributions of the Institute's former faculty member of the Economics group, Late Prof. Nirmal Chandra. Prof. Nirmal Chandra was a renowned economist and socialist thinker who encouraged many individuals to undertake the path of research in the field of economics. He offered a very distinct insight towards economics to his pupils and was a great inspiration to those who received his able guidance. He joined IIM Calcutta in 1966 as an assistant professor. He was one of the early recruit professors of the institute who played a pivotal role in shaping not just the Economics group, but also the perception of management education as a whole. He and his fellow professors emphasized on the need for management education to be implemented towards development of the society and not just remain confined to the corporate world. According to the MoU guidelines, the responsibility for organizing the event will be bestowed on a three-member committee called the NCML committee, comprising of Professor Prashant Mishra (Dean, NIER), Chairman, Professor Mritiunjoy Mohanty (Faculty, Economics Group), and Professor Uttam K Sarkar (Faculty, Management Information Systems). The committee, in consultation with the Jan Chetna Trust will be responsible for inviting a speaker for the lecture every year, who has a record of significant contribution towards Social Sciences.

IIMCIP, the four-year old company incubates 46 start-ups and has not only helped 18 start-ups raise funds worth over Rs 52 Crores but has provided access to over 100 mentors to help the entrepreneurs create an efficient business model as well as scale-up faster. IIMCIP, as a part of its pledge to handhold social start-ups, has embarked into an ambitious project “INVENT”, supported by TDB – GoI and DFID, UK, since 2016. During the last 2 years we mentored 500+social entrepreneurs, provided seed funds worth Rs 11 Crores and helped create at least 20 sustainable social ventures.

IIMCIP is actively working to build the entrepreneurship ecosystem in East and North-East India by partnering with various state governments. Recently, we conducted- The ‘Training of Trainers on Entrepreneurship’ workshop for 15 delegates from Mizoram at the IIMC Campus from 14th – 17th February 2019. The participants were sensitized about structuring a business model canvas. The topics covered during the session included: Reasons to carry out innovation & taking up entrepreneurship, Usage of Ideation Tools & Techniques, Process undergone during Design Thinking, Structuring a Customer Value Proposition Model, Genesis and structure of a Business Plan and Process of Drafting a Business model canvas. An elaborate discussion on ideation tools and techniques used while structuring customers Value Proposition Model, marketing and branding requirement for any product was also held. The trainers also interacted with various start-ups of IIMCIP.

Professor Partha Priya Datta was invited as one of the honourable jurors to be part of the jury panel for the regional Tata InnoVista, Tata Group’s flagship annual event for recognizing and celebrating innovations of Tata companies, which was held on 11th March 2019 at Kolkata for the Implemented Innovations award category. His co jurors were Dr Arup Chandra, Head Global R&D Apollo Tyres, Mr Sunil Bhaskaran, CEO and MD AirAsia, Mr R Ayyaswamy, Global Head IoT and Vice President TCS, Mr Vivekanandah, CEO Titan Engineering and Automation.

Professor Partha Priya Datta was also invited to join as a jury member at the 31st Convention on QC Circle Regional Finals: CII Eastern Region held in Kolkata on February 27, 2019. There were 16 teams from Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar for the eastern regional finals from which they selected top 3 that would compete in the National finals.