Despite the global meltdown, and the persistent slow-growth story of India Inc that is worrying prime minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister P Chidambaram no ends, as many as 240 companies participated in the first phase of the campus placement drive of IIT-Bombay between December 1 and 18 last year.

According to the institute, 900 out of nearly 1,500 students graduating from various academic programmes — BTech, Dual Degree, MTech, MDes, MPhil and PhD — have received job offers.

With the technical sector increasingly becoming the choice of students, a larger number of graduates opted for engineering, technology and information technology firms, it was noticed.

Of 417 students in BTech courses, 299 found placement during the first-phase drive on campus. The placement figure was 186 out of 239 students from Dual Degree course, 332 of 532 MTech students and 11 out of 18 students from Integrated MSc courses.

Nearly 90 offers came from financial service companies and about 60 from management consulting firms, including eight leading management consultants and 10 top financial services firms.

“These organisations are very selective on the campuses they recruit from and have extremely high bar in their recruitment process,” according to a media release issued by IIT-B.

Over 80 students have been recruited by multinational companies.

The continued focus on firms as per the placement office’s look-east policy has meant creation of several new job opportunities with highly rated organisations, it was informed.

While first part of the campus placements  was dominated by firms from sectors like management consulting, engineering, IT, finance and FMCG,100 more companies are expected  to participate in the second phase of campus placement from January to June this year. This is in addition to the 240 companies that have already participated in the initial phase of the placement drive.