Records took a tumble as the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, completed its annual placements last week.

The B-school boys and girls preferred domestic offers to the ones abroad, but the number of foreign offers accepted still touched an all-time high of 58. A dozen students turned down overseas offers to work in the same industries in India.

“Consulting companies came up with challenging roles and highly competitive pay packages for domestic offers. This was the primary reason for students taking up domestic offers. Also, more students want to be part of the rapid growth of India and contribute to its success,” said Vijay Menon, secretary of the external relations cell of the institute.

The B-school also held on to its record of placing the largest batch of students (251 this year) in the shortest time (5 days, within Day One of Slot Two) among the IIMs.

The highest foreign salary offered to a management student on Indian soil — $250,000 (Rs 1.1 crore) per year — was bagged by two IIM Calcutta students. A leading investment bank came up with the offer for their New York office. The previous record of $221,000 annually also belonged to an IIM Calcutta alumnus.

The average domestic salary in Slot Zero registered a 43 per cent growth from Rs 14.65 lakh last year to Rs 20.9 lakh. The highest salary on offer was Rs 40 lakh per year. The average domestic salary in Slot One also recorded a 28 per cent increase from Rs 9.65 lakh last year to Rs 12.35 lakh.

The institute continues to be a happy hunting ground of finance companies with 37 per cent students joining the sector. The percentage of students joining consulting firms has increased from 14 per cent last year to 30 per cent.

“This is primarily due to the increase in the number of firms recruiting in this sector,” explained Menon.

Apart from regulars like McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, AT Kearney, Merill Lynch, Barclays Capital, UBS, Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, firms like JP Morgan Chase, BNP Paribas and Sun Group chose to recruit exclusively from the Calcutta campus.

Optiver, a trading brokerage firm that usually limits its recruitment to Ivy League B-schools, also took in students only from IIM Calcutta.

The campus also saw an increase in offers from Singapore, Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian and east Asian markets.