Design Placement

Ludhiana-based Trident Group, leading home textiles producer, offered a Rs 72 lakh-pay package to a PG student in retail design at National Institute of Design (NID) on the first day of three-day industry placement drive here, sources said.

Eight students from textile design also bagged pay packages of Rs 48 lakh each (cost to company), they said. Besides Trident Group, which made 17 job offers, Samsung and Microsoft were among the other firms interested in hiring NID students.

According to the sources, NID Bangalore student Lalit Anil Sawale, who is pursuing Design for Retail Experience PG programme, was offered a role in corporate communications and branding. Company officials said the offer was made to Sawale, keeping in mind his previous work experience which he had before joining NID.

“We are looking to make around 20 offers and salaries in the broad range of Rs 48 lakh for UG students to Rs 75 lakh for PG students, who have work experience. Why should only global firms like Google or Yahoo recognise our home grown talent? Even Indian companies need to wake up to talent in India.

The recruits will get a chance to have an interface with the market, negotiate price, look into manufacturing side and dabble into design, execution, merchandising, marketing departments and global exhibitions. We are also taking some interns with a offer of Rs 9 lakh,” said Rajinder Gupta, chairman of Trident Group, which had hired 16 NID students in 2014.

On the first day of the placement drive, 47 companies visited NID’s Paldi campus and offered an average pay package of Rs 15 lakh. Over 200 students from NID Paldi, Gandhinagar and Bengaluru campuses will be sitting for placement.

“We interviewed around 25 students and may take in two interns as their 6 month diploma project format ties in nicely with our requirement for designers to work on our festivals… We will also be looking at hiring some candidates on a full-time basis,” said Anuradha Hardikar, HR from 70 Event Media group.
NID officials said that there was a significant increase of 40 per cent in new companies visiting the campus compared to last year. “We are looking to hire two people for graphic design discipline for UI(user interface design) as it is a profile that is in demand and even have a ceramic design student coming in for this profile. Having short-listed around 24 candidate,” said Anant Gopal, assistant director for design, MakeMyTrip.com.

Most companies having digital and mobile presence also offered roles in UX/UI (User Experience Design, User Interface Design), that were sought after by students across disciplines. NID student Divya Verma, a final year PG student of graphic design said, “It looks like graphics is finding its way into every discipline because we have many brands hiring people from diverse sphere like apparel, exhibition and textile design, unlike earlier when they would look only at graphic design.”

Jonathan Bergstrom, senior manager at Amazon Creative Services India, said, “We may be looking at three-four designers for UX/UI out of around 15 people we have interviewed till now. We would be offering jobs in roles of visual design, experience design and motion design from disciplines of retail, new media design and graphic design and animation for domestic roles.”

NID placement officer Sujitha Nair said, “All students who sat for placements have to give two confirmations by the end of the day. A few firms like Lifestyle Ltd and Dabur International are also scheduling interview via Skype. For the first time, we have job offers for photographers, apparel and product designers as well. We also have a lot of NID alumni studios like Codesign, StudioABD and Incubus coming in this time for recruitments.”

The campus placements at National Institute of Design (NID) started on Friday. In Ahmedabad campus, more than 100 students and 32 companies are participating in the process. The highest package of Rs 38 lakh was bagged by a student of product design who will join Toshiba Japan. The process will continue for another two days. The NID officials said that for the first time, they have integrated student portfolios with the placement and industry interface website where the prospective employers can review the work of the students. Talking about the initiative, students’ placement officer at NID, Sujitha Nair said that world over, the design schools have started the practice of putting up students’ work in form of searchable portfolios that can be accessed by the design community and the industry. “The portfolio not only gives the students international exposure but also showcases their creative outcomes and accomplishments. We pitched the idea with the students and faculties and they agreed to it enthusiastically. It took us five months to collate up to 500 online portfolios in searchable format and linked it with our industry interface webpage. Thus, the company officials can directly search the name of the applicant and see his or her work even before visiting the campus,” she said. “The initiative is a landmark as far as connecting industries and students is concerned,” she added. On day one of the placements, representatives of Honda R&D (India), Tata Consultancy Services, DDB Mudra, Maruti Suzuki, Samsung India Software, Tata Motorsand VIP Industries visited the campus.

Campus placement at National Institute of Design (NID) winded up on Friday. While around 15 companies took part in the recruitment process on Friday, a large number of them were first time recruiters. Companies like Naukri.com, Justdial.com and Logitech were some of the recruiters that visited the campus for the first time this year. The highest package this year remains Rs 11.07 lakh which was offered by Bajaj Auto.

Talking about large participation by new recruiters in the campus this year, industry relations and students’ placement officer at NID Sujitha Nair said, “Of the recruiters that visited the campus this year, 40 percent are visiting the campus for the first time this year. This is a good trend which reflects that there is a growing awareness about design among companies in the country.”
Nair said that the placement in the campus has been better this year and it is likely that more than 90 percent of the students who took part in the placements will get a job offer. The final figures, however, Nair said, could be confirmed next week as many recruiters are yet to respond with the final offers.

The first phase of campus placement of NID was held at its Bangalore campus on November 11 and 12, in which 30 firms participated. The placement at the Paldi campus on December 7 and 8 is the second phase.

Three National Institute of Design students have won three-month internships with Pininfarina — an Italian automobile design firm with customers like Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Rolls Royce — after winning a competition to design a possible successor of the Indian autorickshaw.

The competition was organised for NID students as part of an ongoing MoU between NID and Pininfarina that is currently in its third year. Transportation & Automobile Design students Gopal Pai, Rajib Kalita and Abhilash Sudhindran have won the contest.

The theme for this year’s competition was “Taxi for India”, where students were required to conceptualise a vehicle that could succeed the auto-rickshaw.The conceptual vehicle had to uphold the ubiquitous 3-wheeler’s simplicity, inexpensive maintenance, functionality and space efficiency. About 40 students from the design-school’s Transportation & Automobile Design (T&AD) and Product Design programmes participated in the competition.

NIFTian selected as trend forecaster for European design firm NIFT fashion management students get 100 pc placement; 60 pc got pre-placement offers. On an average, each student received 3 offers Megha Thomas, a final year Fashion Management student from the National Institute of Fashion Technology in Gandhinagar, is a trend-setter. She has become one of the first students from her course for clinching the challenging job of a fashion and trend forecaster with an European firm called Promostyl, an international trend research and design agency. Prior to being offered the job of a trend forecaster with a pay package of $1,08,000 (Rs 49.24 lakh) per annum, Thomas worked as a trainee forecaster for 12 weeks with the agency’s New York office. Her take on Spring 2011 runway trends and the shopping list she drew up for New Yorkers got her this internship opportunity.

Talking about her experience, she said, “After working there for a brief while, I am really excited to join the firm. Forecasting trend and fashion at such an international level is a very different experience. I saw the creative team travelling around the world to discover and analyse the latest consumer currents and preferences. I also forecasted the Spring 2011 trends in home-fashion for a US-based company during my internship.” Job offers from Domestic market Another student, Raashi Gaur will be joining Cosmopolitan magazine as trend forecasting journalist at a salary of Rs 3.5 lakh per annum after doing a successful internship of 13 weeks. In the domestic market, the highest salary has gone to Bimlendu Prakash, who will be joining the supply chain department of Marks and Spencer at a salary of Rs 5.2 lakh net salary per annum. Multiple job offers before graduation Along with these two, most of the 35 students from the third year batch, are beaming as they have received multiple job offers before their graduation day on May 21. On an average, FMS students have three job offers in hand. These students will be working with leading retail companies, garment manufacturers, magazines, export and jewellery houses. The major recruiters this year for FMS are DR Garments (India) Ltd, Future Group, Bharatiya International, Marks and Spencer, Gini and Jony, Titan Industries and Megha Thomas, a final year Fashion Management student from NIFT Gandhinagar, has been offered the job of trend forecaster with a pay package of $1,08,000 (Rs 49.24 lakh) per annum Gujarat-based Fibre2Fashion. Head of the department Dr. Binaya Bhushan Jena said, “Fashion management students have proved to be a hit among companies. Till recently, companies preferred management students who hardly understood the fashion and textile industry. I am surprised to see that the industry’s perspective has changed.” Pre-placement offers galore “I am very happy that this year we have got cent per cent placement. Three of our students have opted out of placement as they want to be entrepreneurs. As against last year, where 25 per cent of students received pre-placement offers (PPOs), this year 60 per cent received PPOs,” he said. Cent per cent hike in pay package Compared to the last two years, there has been a rise of more than 100 per cent in average pay package. The batch, which saw a fall in average salaries by Rs 1.5 lakh in 2008 and faced a deferred final placements in 2009, has got an average salary of Rs 3.5 lakh.

A graduate from the National Institute of Design, Paldi has landed a job in world’s leading automobile design house Pininfarina as a consultant designer.
Rustom Mazda, who graduated from NID’s product design department in 2010, is the first NIDian to join the Italian auto-design firm which caters to auto giants such as Ferrari, Ford, Jaguar and Fiat. Talking to Minor from Turino in Italy, Rustom, who joined Pininfarina earlier this month, says, “I feel overwhelmed and honoured to be working at the ‘Mecca of auto-designing’.
I have joined Pininfarina as a consult ant transportation designer. I couldn’t have asked for a better start to my career. It feels like a dream and the feeling is yet to sink in,” gushes Rustom despite having to go through lengthy visa and work permit process to realise his dream.

“Hiring procedures for a non- European, especially in Italy, are a bit complicated and involves a lot of paperwork and interviews. But at the end, all the running around paid off,” says Rustom who has come a long way from designing a vehicle for rural India on his NID campus to designing sleek sports cars at the prestigious Italian firm. Commenting on his job profile, he says, “As a designer at Pininfarina, I will get to work on the interior and exterior of cars ranging from Ferrari supercars to small hatchbacks. I will also have opportunities to work on other transportation systems like trains and forklifts.”

“Here, even a junior designer is given opportunity to handle complete projects right from the concept and sketch phase, to physical and digital modelling. We then consult with engineers to further understand the complexities of cost and feasibility,” he adds. He however, refused to dis¬close his pay package. Earlier, Rustom had interned with the design house after winning the ‘NID-Pininfarina Design Contest 2010′ where he designed a compact and affordable car for rural India. During his internship, Rustom designed a sports car for Pininfarina, based on the overall package of the Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, reflecting Pininfarina values.

During that period, the recruitment process at Pininfarina was also in progress. Impressed with Rustom’s work, he was offered a second internship in the firm in February 2011. “I got a positive response from my seniors in July after they evaluated my internship work,” says the Mumbai lad.