There are numerous research areas in IT and systems and the point of doing research in a management institute is to have the research as close to practise as possible. Please note that IT and systems research in itself is quite vast and each institute and the professors there have a core strength area or niche where they excel. Going through the recent publications and interest areas of faculty might help in understanding the same.
As for IIMC in particular, the major strengths would be Business Intelligence, Business Analytics, Business Modelling, Business Process re-engineering amongst host of other factors.
During thesis work, the intern-ships are not fixed, they are neither mandated nor required. It is based on the requirement of your thesis work etc. After first year if you are a fresher you might be asked to go to industry for summer term and do some project. During thesis if required people do go to industry to collect relevant data and industry insights.
There is no fixed mechanism, method or process for the same. It is done on a cas to case basis by the student concerned and the TAC (thesis advisory committee). For your info in past students at IIMC have worked at Yahoo, TRDDC, Infosys research labs, JDA, and research labs at UK for thesis work.
About absorption in academia, it all depends on your quality of work. If you have a FT 45 publication you would be gladly accepted in any university. Your final absorption depends on the publication record, conference papers and your thesis. No IIMC FP had to sit jobless for want of a job or absorption in academia is what I know about the system at IIMC.
But also speaking for the bigger picture ( To the best of my knowledge and abilities only), there is a slight positive inclination for people with PhD from foreign universities. As for preference to IIT and IISC PhD, I would not completely agree with @AAOne . You would have to look at the complete research cycle and inclination of the group. MIS as a field has evolved tremendously over past 40 years from a heavy postivist mindset to a more interpretive mindset. Till early 2000 there was no formal MIS training in India and IIT and IISC computer science people with interest in managerial studies set the MIS departments at Indian institutes. However with increasing research in the field, the realization that MIS is a separate field altogether with separate requirements is increasing. Post 2000's most hirings in MIS groups across all India has been of people with MIS backgrounds from IIMs or abroad. However still institutes with more technical groups in both MIS as well as OM do have a lot of faculty coming in from Engineering backgrounds from IIT and IISC.
So if you come over to IIM to do research in algorithm development, you would be in same bracket as IIT pHds but if you are doing a more managerial research like "Impact of IT on employee productivity" you would be in a niche. ( The examples above are pure imaginary and any connection to a real thesis is coincidental only 😛 )
To sum up my really verbose statement in short, Focus on relevant research and understand why you want to do research in IIM. If your research is good, there is no place where you cannot go.
