Lateral placement, placement for students with work experience of a year or more, at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, have seen newer entrants from the industry in the race this year.

Companies from sectors like energy, infrastructure and manufacturing have joined the game alongside players from the pharmaceutical, financial, retail, consulting and information technology industries.

So far, 60 offers have been made to students with the average salary offered being almost 50 per cent more than last year's figures.

Out of the 260-odd students in the current batch at IIM-C, almost 60 per cent have had prior work experience. This has led to the possibility of up to 100 lateral placements offer being made to students this year, clocking a 50 per cent increase since last year.

As companies from varied fields enter the placement arena, it is also interesting to note that positions being offered to students have changed from middle level managers to country heads, or from higher level positions within the country to on-site positions abroad to handle international workforces.

Even IT companies, which primarily recruited students for technical positions of business analysts, have offered positions in the marketing division to students of IIM-C. The average salary offered this year is around Rs 14 lakh (Rs1.4 million) per annum, an increase of almost 50 per cent over last year's figure, with the highest salary offered so far being Rs 27 lakh (Rs 2.7 million) per annum.

The energy sector, which has come to campus for the first time, had US-based Acme Electric Corporation and AES Corporation participating in the lateral recruitment drive.

Retail giants like UK-based grocery home-service provider, Tesco and Middle-East-cased M H Alshaya were also first-time recruiters at the lateral placement this year at IIM-C.

Other recruiters making offers to students included KPMG, PWC Citi Financial, Standard Chartered, Dr, Reddy's and Ranbaxy Arcelor-Mittal,DLF,  Google, Microsoft, Pepsico, Reliance Retail, Tata Strategic Management Group and others.