This year's placement season at the B-schools gave lots of reasons to smile, with a host of B-schools reporting an uptick in the number of offers, while registering double-digit growth in the average compensation package compared to last year.

B schools saw robust placements particularly from the BFSI, FMCG, IT and manufacturing sectors. Offers from the analytics and the consulting domains also increased. The e-Commerce space also saw heightened interest with the likes of Amazon, Flipkart, Uber, Ola, Quikr visiting campuses to hire the young turks.

IIM Kozhikode completed the final placements process for the 2014-16 batch in record seven days, as per media reports. As many as 119 companies visited the campus and made 370 offers to a batch of 353 students. About 40 first-time recruiters, including 3M, Bank of America, Boston Consulting Group, Brand Accelerator, Capita, Caratlane, Credit Suisse, Frost & Sullivan, McKinsey, Mondelez, Paytm, Schneider and Shell, together made around 100 offers. The top domestic offer this year was INR 37 lakh, a staggering 25% increase over the previous year figure. The average salary stood at INR 17.1 lakh, a 12% increase over previous year.

The highest offer in the final placements at SP Jain increased 25% to INR 37 lakh per annum this year. Over 45% of the batch received pre-placement offers and pre-placement interviews. The average salary increased to INR 19.3 lakh from INR 18.2 lakh last year. As much as 82% of the batch secured a salary above INR 15 lakh. Consulting and FMCG took heavy chunks of the overall pie at SP Jain.

MDI Gurgaon has completed its final placements in 3.5 days, with a 28.4% jump in top salary to INR 32.1 lakh and a 12.4% increase in the average salary across three streams to Rs 18.53 lakh. The 333-strong batch of 2014-16 took a total of just 5.5 days to get placed.

Average compensation at IIFT has seen a tremendous increase of 24% over last year, at INR 18.01 lpa. The highest International compensation at IIFT saw a 36% increase over last year to USD 150,000 pa. The highest domestic package reported was INR 29 lpa, a significant rise of 21% over previous year’s highest. BFSI seems to be the preferred sector at IIFT this year, with 26% of the batch going for jobs in the sector.

SCMHRD had a robust season as well, as 20% of the MBA 2014-16 batch received Pre-Placement offers and Pre-Placement Interviews from prestigious business houses like Aditya Birla Group, Cisco, Deloitte Consulting, HUL. Their average CTC stood at INR 13.24 lpa at a time when 90% of the batch was placed. The students from the institute managed to land good placements across the functional areas.

At IMI-New Delhi, the average salary was INR 14.9 lpa, a staggering 52.4% jump over the last year average CTC. The highest domestic offer at the campus was made by Google - INR 29 lpa. The campus has reported a 33% increase this year in recruitment from companies in manufacturing sector.

At IMT Ghaziabad spokesperson stated "where we hardly got 21 offers crossing INR 15 lakh last year, we received 52 offers this year in that range. On day zero alone, we placed 241 students. We have got 19 offers crossing INR 20 lakh package". Recruiters at IMT- Ghaziabad included KPMG, PwC, EY, Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, and HSBC. Among them, Deloitte made 30 offers.

Overall, placement officials from B-schools said sentiments were positive because of the massive comeback of the manufacturing sector even as e-commerce firms continue to look to hire in bulk.