Consulting firms are queuing up at top-tier business schools with surprising hiring numbers, especially after artificial intelligence impacted employee figures in some of these very companies, according to the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), which are among the prominent recruitment grounds for these companies.
“We started our final placements earlier and till now 492 of 594 students have been successfully placed, reflecting steady progress in a competitive market environment,” said Debashis Chatterjee, director IIM Kozhikode. “This year witnessed a strong resurgence in consulting and finance roles, with consulting offers rising by nearly 60% and finance roles by about 10%.”
These offers are driven by India’s growing role in complex, AI-driven work. According to the director, one of the main reasons for this resurgence is because a “significant portion” of them is “now aligned with strategic and high-impact teams as complex global work based out of India has relatively increased.”
Consulting, banking and advisory firms have always been the coveted recruiters at B-schools. But the global slump hurt hiring for the 2024 batch. However, the next batch saw the pace from these sectors pick up.
Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company and Accenture are some of the consulting companies along with investment firms General Atlantic and Temasek Holdings that are expected to pick up students aggressively. And their needs are specific and AI-driven.
“India continues to be a priority, and we are committed to investing in our teams and ensuring that we have the right talent in place to support our growth strategy,” said Prabhav Kashyap, a partner at Bain. “We are confident in high-level of talent emerging from these institutions (IIMs), and see them as integral to building strong, future-ready teams across our business.”
Accenture’s talent-guzzling spree mirrors the growing requirement of clients for strategy and scale with AI. Last October, Mint reported on the widening gulf between Accenture and its IT rivals over AI business.
In the 12 months through August 2025, Accenture pulled in $4.78 billion in new business—a figure that surpasses the combined incremental revenue ($3.92 billion) generated by India’s 15 largest IT services firms in 2024-25. In the case of Singapore’s Temasek, India is a key market and in July 2025, the investment firm hit a record $50 billion assets under management with its portfolio in India.
Higher salaries
According to a placement head in one of the IIMs, there is a 10-12% increase in the median compensation offered by the consulting and finance firms – in line with market changes. Compensation depends on the company and the sector, and for the older IIMs, the median compensation can hover around ₹30-35 lakh.
IIM Indore noted the “heightened interest and participation from consulting and finance firms this year” for the batch of 2026. The irony of this uptick while global wars and uncertainty continue has not gone unnoticed.
“Despite a moderation in global consulting hiring, India has continued to see sustained recruitment as firms deepen their presence in the country. The expansion of global capability centres and the increasing role of India offices in leading end-to-end delivery, transformation, and analytics-driven engagements have created steady demand for management talent,” Himanshu Rai, director of IIM Indore, said in an email response to Mint.
According to a Bloomberg report published in November, McKinsey retrenched 200 roles because of AI led automation.
The older IIMs—Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta—start their final campus placements in the last few days of January or the first week of February.
“The market is looking a tad better than what we had experienced over the past few years,” Viswanath Pingali, chairperson of the placement committee at IIM Ahmedabad, said in an email response. “Participation of finance and consulting companies has always been great at IIMA, and this year too seems to follow the trend.”
Last March at IIM Ahmedabad (batch of 2025), Boston Consulting led the group of consulting firms with the highest number of offers at 35, followed by Accenture Strategy at 30. Among the investment banks, Goldman Sachs was the largest recruiter with nine offers, followed by Avendus Capital at seven.
Summer internships
The hunger among consulting companies was evident even when they visited the B-schools for their summer internships for the batch of 2027. Management consulting accounted for 46% of all offers during the summer internships at IIM Bangalore.
Accenture Strategy made 132 offers while its peers’ offers included those by Boston Consulting (24), Bain (18), and McKinsey (13). The B-school did not respond to Mint’s queries on its final placements for the batch of 2026.
Summer placements at IIMs start in September/October, after students intern with the firms for a couple of months during the summer. These placements are often indicative of the job market and offer students a chance to secure pre-placement offers (PPOs).
This is a preferred route as the employer tests the candidate during the two-month internship, while the student with a PPO can skip the final placements that take place more than two quarters later. IIM Kozhikode said its batch of 2026 recorded an about 40% increase in PPOs versus the earlier batch.
According to a McKinsey spokesperson, nearly 80% of its hiring over the last three years has been from leading business and undergraduate schools, reinforcing campuses as a critical talent pipeline. "The increased presence of consulting firms is driven by sustained client demand, the need for future-ready skills, and strong outcomes from campus hiring historically," the spokesperson said.
"While hiring trends vary by region, India continues to remain a strategic growth market, driven by strong client demand, expanding capability centres, the ability to support both local and global engagements, and access to high-quality talent," the spokesperson added.
General Atlantic, Temasek and Accenture declined to comment on their recruitment plans. BCG, IIM Calcutta and IIM Bangalore did not respond to queries.
Placements at engineering colleges drew a different cohort of companies with top offers. AI-led profiles again were in the offing at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) for the batch of 2026. High-frequency traders and startups battled with agentic AI firms as well as tech giants Tesla, Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia, and even aircraft makers Airbus and Boeing at the IITs.