this story originally appeared in on mar 18 2013 mumbaibangalore placements at the indian institutes of management iim which got off to a brisk start are now feeling the impact of the downturn gripping the indian economy the pressure is being felt by both old and new iims which have 515 of their batches left to place officials in charge of placements say a combination of factors most notably the feeble state of the economy but also a bulge in the number of students has made the current placement season the most challenging in years despite iims reaching out to more companies in all 13 iims have to match 2800odd students with potential recruiters all iims have had trouble with placements this time says krishanu rakshit placements chairperson at iimcalcutta the oldest among the public business schools it was set up in 1961 iimc kicked off final placements on march 3 but has over 5 of its 462strong batch left to place last year it had placed all of its 350 students from the class of 2012 in just four days had we had the same batch size as last year all our students would have been placed by the third or fourth day its the final 100odd with whom we are facing difficulty says a person associated with the placement process at iimc according to rakshit banks are hiring but investment banks are cutting back sharply at iimlucknow the batch size is 430 compared with 380 last year we have always managed to finish our final placements in a week but this year they are still going on about 10 of the batch is yet to be placed says a member of the placement committee for iimlucknow the final round began in the last week of february our next batch comprises 460 students and we cannot increase anymore infrastructure is not the problem but placements are he adds iimbangalore has just five students left out of a batch of 381 but officials admit this year has been a struggle it is luck that we are left with so few numbers to place says an iimb placement member iimahmedabad maintained its position at the top of the heap with student placement committee coordinator s balasubramanian saying all students have been placed however sources said the institute faced difficulty as well all this is in striking contrast to the gogo years since 2004 with the exception of 200809 when students at the premier business schools would be lapped up by companies the increase in the number of students is because the congressled upa government which came to power in 2004 expanded the number of iims as part of its programme of inclusive growth as a result seven new iims have been set up since 2007 the numbers have also increased after the introduction of a 27 quota for students belonging to other backward classes obc in 2008 in addition to the traditional quotas for students belonging to the scst category