In changing times, with what people termed as 'recession', that is now considered to be passing by, a student from the Indian Institute of Management (Calcutta) earned the highest summer internship stipend paid to an IIM student ever, exceeding the highest paid stipend to an IIM student last year for a summer internship by over 50%. As part of internship, we worked with an investment bank in Hong Kong and was paid a stipend of INR 12.5 lakh. With some experience finance domain, the IIT Delhi student has worked with a few companies over a period of two years. The stipend, he said, would be utilized to pay his MBA fee and some part of it might be invested in market. If this stipend is translated in terms of a pre-placement offer, the student could fetch about Rs 75 lakh as basic salary alone, excluding perks, variable pay and bonus. He also added that the part-payment was made to him in dollars and the rest in rupees, but even after factoring out the exchange rate quotient, the stipend is significantly higher than last year.
The highest stipend paid last year was also by another I-bank in London. Ironically, at a time when IIMs saw a dip of 15-30% in the average salary packages being offered this year, the internship stipends are increasing against a trend that saw global investment banks and other companies reducing the number of jobs offered to IIM students significantly. Instead, many students had to take up job in start-ups and smaller companies. Students at IIM-A have also indicated that summer stipends have gone up, but not necessarily at the same rate. However, the institute did not provide any official figures or data related to this year's or last year's stipends. Those familiar with the IIMs say that the remuneration paid across IIM A, B & C are in the same bracket, with a 10-20% difference in upper and higher limits. Summer internship stipends can start from anywhere between INR 20,000-30,000 for a two-month period.
