Pradipta Baisya's Review on IIM Kozhikode

This is one of the most important sections budding aspirants would be interested in and it is fair on their part to try to know more about it even before joining the institute. Let me paint the picture across verticals - 

Finance - Overall the finance situation at IIMK is decent. Regular recruiters include Deustche Bank (offering Markets & Corporate Finance profiles), Goldman Sachs (profiles offered - Global Investment Research, Investment Banking, Risk), Nomura (Risk & Operations), Citibank (Institutional Clients Group and Retail Clients Group, they used to call it ICG and RCG - mostly equivalent of Corporate Banking & Retail Banking), HSBC (Corporate, Retail Banking, Risk), JPMC (CRG and CAU), ICICI (Treasury, Corporate Banking, Retail Banking, Business Intelligence), Axis Bank, Indus Valley Partners. Some firms like Standered Chartered stopped visiting K after my batch. One notable addition for the graduating batch of 2015 was RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland). None of the companies offer fancy front end  IB roles and there was no single PE firm visiting K during my time.

Marketing -

Regular FMCG/Consumer Products recruiters - HUL, ITC, Kellogg, L'oreal, Godrej, PepsiCo, HCCB

FMCG/ CP (Not regular but mostly visits K) - Britannia, Dabur, Nestle, Heinz, Perfetti, J&J Consumer

Telecom - Airtel, Vodafone, Idea , Consumer Durables - Samsung, Pharma - GSK Pharma, Abbott, J&J Medical, Healthcare - Apollo Hospitals 

Others - Asian Paints

Operations - Ecom mostly Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Jabong, EBay etc. Apart from this, Asian paints and HCCB offers roles in Supply chain. If you want a career out of supply chain, I would not advise you to join IIMK. P&G stopped coming from my batch.

IT - TCS, HCL, Wipro, Capgemini, Mindtree, Comviva etc.

General Management - TAS, Aditya Birla Group, RIL, RPG, Mahindra GMC, Muthoot Group

Consulting - Deloitte USI S&O is the only big name, though Accenture Strategy has started hiring from the graduating batch of 2015. Apart from these two, we have CBC (which is a mass recruiter, close to 20), IBM Consulting, Infosys Management Consulting (new addition). Avalon comes only for summers.

One thing which I have noticed after passing out of K is that things have significantly improved with tech firms like Google, Microsoft, InMobi becoming regular recruiters (through summers/laterals/finals processes) and the number of PPOs increasing on Y-o-Y basis (from 38 in my batch to almost 76 for the graduating batch of 2015, # of students almost remaining the same at 360). Big names in consulting like Mckinsey, BCG, AT Kearney, Bain do not visit IIMK. Case is the same with big financial behemoths like Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Barclays, UBS etc.

Also one thing I would like to advise to the aspirants - do not get too much carried away by the placement statistics, rather focus on gaining knowledge. Jobs will come and go, but knowledge would always be with you. I have seen many of my batch mates , seniors and juniors who shifted to very good roles within one year of their graduation because they deserved it. First job at campus certainly matters, but it is not the end of road for you. If you're good, sky is the limit for you. 

IIMK is now hitting the 20 year mark and alumni presence is also becoming sizeable across all sectors. IIMK hosts its annual alumni meet called Nostalgia where alumni across all previous batches come and visit their alma mater and interact with the current students. There  is also one more event which happens outside the campus called SANGAM - which is a forum where the current students, alums and IIMK final converts come together in a single platform. This event provides a great opportunity for the final converts to interact with the current students and alumns and get their questions answered/doubts clarified.

Infrastructure is a very important parameter one should carefully consider for deciding any B-school a candidate eventually wants to join. I would categorize infrastructure into three broad categories - Academic, Sports & Recreational, IT & Network (I haven't included Hostel & Mess as it would be covered in the next section).

Academic - IIMK boasts of a world class central library facility which has collection of almost all the world renowned journals, publications and magazines. It has a wide range of reference books across all verticals including economics, finance, marketing, HR, IT, strategy and operations. As stated earlier, since case based learning forms a significant component of the pedagogy, access to HBR cases and other remonwed case publication houses is available. Not only this, IIMK also has enterprise level access to various analyst reports, Data Monitor, Euromonitor and other industry reports. Classes are AV-enabled with good quality surround speakers. Mode of delivery is through presentations as well as usage of glassboards and whiteboards. I would also like to mention here that IIMK has access to a whole lot of management simulation games which are a part of the curriculum post 1st trimester.

Sports & Recreational - Sports facilities have improved a lot over the years. IIMK has a decent sized ground which is used for both football as well as cricket matches. Apart from that, it has a fantastic basketball court, badmintion court, indoor carrom and table tennis facilities. It has also a state of the art gym (as heard from my batchmates, though I never hit the gym in two years :P). Many of my batchmates used to be regular visitors at our insititute gym. The insititute does not have a swimming pool, so if you're a swimming enthusiast, this piece of news would possibly let you down. Personally I used to play soccer almost regularly, cricket, table tennis and badminton at times and I was quite satisfied with the facilities available. IIMK has an inter-section sports war known as the Clash of Titans which used to be super fun. Other important initiatives started by the Sports Committee was the IPL style franchisee based soccer tournament KFL (Kozhikode Football League - franchisees were based on regions). During my time, there were 4 franchiees - Bongs, Mallus, Tams and North Indians. I was both an owner as well a player from the Bong Franchisee. From my junior batch, Sportscomm also started KCL (Kozhikode Cricket League) on similar lines.

IT, Network & Entertainment - Most of the academic establishments within the campus were WiFi enabled. Connectivity in the hostels was through the LAN cables and it was pretty decent. The available download speed for essential applications was quite good. IT committee used to make sure that they had in their arsenal all recent movies, TV shows and all other ESSENTIAL media content :P. IIMK has an open amphitheatre where important functions like our cultural fest ECHOES, International Food Festival, PGP Batch Farewell, PGP Convocation et al are organized. IIMK also has two auditoriums, both of which are equipped with state of the art AV systems and seating arrangements. The inter-section war ROOBAROO which is integral to every IIMK alumnus/student  is organized in one of these auditoriums. 

IIMK has a state of the art INDIAN BUSINESS MUSEUM - first of its kind across all IIMs portraying the history of Indian business through the medieval times to pre independence and post independence era.

Transportation - The best way to drive around the campus is to have a personal conveyance. I along with many of my batch mates got our bikes on to campus and conveyance for us was pretty easy. Having a bike on campus also had its own advantages due to obvious reasons, thanks to IIMK's continued focus on getting more students from the fairer sex. Four wheelers were not allowed on campus for students. Those who did not have any personal conveyance, had to rely on the auto-ricksaws which were very reliable as far as service was concerned. Auto-ricksaws used to take students from campus to the nearby Reliance Fresh outside campus, Lovely Dhaba near NIT Calicut and popular restaurants in the city.  

IIM Kozhikode has a rigorous acacdemic curriculum. The course is spread across six trimesters and the pedagogy focuses a lot on case based learning. Professors encourage a lot of class participation which brings about diverse perspectives from students coming from diverse bacckgrounds. The course curriculum not only focusses on traditional MBA subjects like Finance, Marketing, HR and Operations, but also on non traditional courses like Social Transformation of India, Environmental Management, Indian Economy to name a few. The elective courses give you a diverse range across all the verticals along with unique and interesting courses like Economics of Strategy (taught by Prof. Rajesh Upadhyaula), Business & Government (taught by Prof KK Ladha), Globalization & Culture (taught by Prof AF Mathew), Management Consulting - Profession & Pracctice (taught by Prof Unni K Nair) to name a few. IIMK also has a compulsory Social Development Project, a non-credit project course which has to be completed successfully by every student, failing which the PGDM degree would not be granted. Apart from these courses, IIMK also has 3 compulsory workshops as part of its academic curriculum namely - Entrepreneurship Workshop, Leadership Workshop and Consulting Workshop which is scheduled in trimester 4,5 and 6 respectively.

Every vertical had 2-3 very good professors and they were very helpful in clarifying most of the doubts even outside the classroom hours. Though I learnt a lot from all my professors, but still I would like to call out few names who have inspired me through their teaching methodology and passion for the subject - Prof Saji Gopinath from Operations, Prof Rajesh Upadhyula from Strategy, Prof SSS Kumar from Finance, Prof Sunder Korivi from Finance, Prof Atanu Adhikari from Marketing Research and Prof Lionel Aranha from Business Law. 

Based on the academic rigour, choice & relevance of courses, quality & methodology of teaching and professor accessibility, I would rate Academics & Faculty a 8/10

For the graduating batch of 2013, the fee was INR10.00 lakhs which was reduced to INR 9.7 lakhs for my junior batch. Financing was very easy as we had very good tie ups with Central Bank of India and Union Bank of India. They used to offer competitive interest rates somewhere between 10.25 - 10.75%. Average cost of the program turned out to be 10 lakhs plus 25K per trimester for Mess charges plus living expenses (close to 2-5K per month depending upon personal preferences). If someone opted for forex, there was an additional burden of INR 3-3.5 lakhs. So total cost of MBA turned out to somewhere between INR 12.5 - 15.5 (depending upon the decision of opting for Foreign Exchange Program).

Regarding scholarships, we had two renowned merit based scholarships in the form of OPJEMS and Aditya Birla Scholarship. Apart from these two, there were other forms of merit based and need based scholarships. To be honest here, I did not ever try to know about the existing scholarships one could avail during the course, so I may not be the right person to talk in depth about it.

Having said this, money would never be a deterrent for a budding aspirant to pursue his MBA from IIMK. If you have a final convert from IIMK, getting an education loan from UBI/CBI is very easy. And like most other banks, they also offer you the option to start paying your EMIs 6 months after your graduation to ensure you're well settled with your new job in a new location.

Based on the above comments, I would rate Scholarships & Financing 7/10

IIMK has the followings committees and clubs - 

Students' Council (APEX student body which oversees/monitors the working of all committees and clubs except the Placements Committee). The following committees come under the purview of the Students' Council - 

1. Alumni Committee - Responsible for organizing NOSTALGIA and SANGAM, mentioned above in the Alumni Network section.

2. Backwaters Committee (responsible for organizing our annual management fest BACKWATERS)

3. Calicut Marathon Committee - responsible for organizing the annual CALICUT Mini Marathon.

4. Cultural Committee (responsible for all cultural programs like Onam, Ganesh Chaturthi, Diwali, Dandiya Nights etc. and our annual cultural festival ECHOES)

Backwaters and Culcom jointly organizes the ROOBAROO - inter section war right at the beginning of the 1st trimester.

5. Editboard

6. Entrepreneurship Cell - responsible for organizing our annual E-Summit

7. Industry Interaction Cell (responsible for all workshops, guest lectures, industry sponsored live projects, corporate events like Industry Deep Dive - sectorial conclave, Vertical Summit and our annual management conclave - HORIZONS). All non-placement industry related activities come under the purview of IIC

8. IT Committee

9. Media Cell (Media relations with key external stakeholders)

10. Mess Committe

11. MADCOM (Merchandizing and Design Committee)

12. Sports Committee (responsible for organizing Clash of the Titans - inter section sports war, KFL, KCL, coordinating SANGRAM - tripartite annual sports meet featuring IIMB, IIMK and IIMT and organzing our annual Sports Management Conclave)

13. Social Service Group 

In addition to these committees, following IGs (Interest Groups) and clubs were also there. The purpose of setting up IGs was purely from an academic standpoint and for the clubs it was solely based on interest and passion.

IGs - ABACUS (IT), OMEGA (Operations), Konsult (Consulting), EPS (Economics and Social Sciences), FY (Finance), mPower (Marketing), Hriday (HR)

Clubs - Krescendo (Music), Kalakriti (Art), Tripod (Photography), Footvibes (Dance), Prolitcult (Literary), Theatrix (Drama)

Theatrix, Footvibes were the most popular clubs and EPS evolved as one of the finest IGs over the years. Quality of plays organized by Theatrix was outstanding and much of it goes to the relentless effort of my immediate seniors, batchmates and junior batches.

IIMK has a student run venture called BHOOKI - a food delivery unit. This was started by my batchmates and then ownership was successfully transferred to subsequent batches. BHOOKI used to deliver food from almost all the popular restaurants in the city.

I was an ex-IIC member, RACE Director - Calicut Marathon 2012 & 2013 and OMEGA Coordinator.