Ahmedabad: The process of the lateral placement has begun at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), when the recruiters and students come face to face and talk roles, offers, locations and pay packages. With the increasing number of experienced candidates in the batch every year, the laterals are fast growing in importance, reports the Economic Times. "The lateral placements for over 50 percent of the batch have begun from January 4. This is a long process, and is expected to go on till middle or end of February," Vivek Jain, student member of the placement committee for the Post Graduate programme (PGP) told Economic Times. This year, over 150 candidates from the batch of 300 are eligible to sit for the Lateral Placement process, which is a process of placement specially for the students having work experience of over 18 months prior to joining the course. In the past couple of years, the trends prevailing in lateral placements are the popularity of domestic offers. In 2008, 37 companies made 103 offers to eligible students. Of this, only seven were international offers. Among the companies that visited the campus for laterals in the previous years and are expected to be back this year are Monitor Group, Google, Amazon, private equity player Greater Pacific Capital and Dawnay Day. Consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and major domestic players such as Aditya Birla Group, Trilogy and HCL are also among the companies invited. The firms that are expected to be on campus during the process come from a wide range of sectors - consulting, private equity, real estate, finance, information technology, general management and marketing. There also companies in private equity, niche consulting, technology and logistics that are expected to offer challenging roles.