Placements start on a high note at new IITs

MUMBAI: They may be unable to boast of crore-plus packages like their more established brethren, but newer IITs have got off on a strong note this placement season. Those in this group, like IIT Ropar, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Bhubaneswar and IIT Mandi, confirm that hiring season will surpass previous years.

In the first week of placements, 60% of the 120-strong batch at IIT Mandi had already been placed across 16 companies. IIT Mandi was started in 2009. And at IIT Gandhinagar, which was established in 2008, 15 firms picked up 50% of their undergraduates. Tata Motors, Mahindra &Mahindra, Flipkart, Cognizant and Microsoft are some of the companies that have hired from the new IITs this year.

"Salaries are better this year, firms from power and e-commerce sectors are still to come and despite not having branches in core and computer science, we will get more companies than the 45 last year," says a placement team member at IIT Gandhinagar. The institute has to place 127 students.

Hiring season for the most of the newer IITs starts in end-October — earlier than their older counterparts. After a week of placements, they typically begin a rolling process. This gives them a headstart and time to bring in additional firms during the course. To give their 108 students more options, IIT Ropar approached several new companies well in advance. It is running a parallel recruitment process of two companies on the same day, a strategy the older institutes adopt.

At IIT Mandi, the highest salary offered by an IT firm was Rs 27 lakh as compared to Rs 23-24 lakh last year. Amazon offered Rs 29 lakh to students of IIT Ropar and they got seven pre-placement offers (PPOs) as compared to two last year. The average salary so far is Rs 11 lakh.

"Average packages have gone up by 1520% this year. The number of PPOs have doubled from last year," said Arti Kashyap faculty advisor, IIT Mandi. "This year, the response from core companies for mechanical and electrical engineering students is much better. Average packages in this sector are between Rs 7 lakh and Rs 12 lakh," adds Kashyap.

The feel-good sentiment has made IIT Bhubaneswar experiment with placement timings. They started their recruitment season on December 1, like their more established counterparts, and in the past two days, Flipkart, Cognizant, Tata Motors and United Health Group have hired 25 students from a batch of 145. "The new schedule has given us time to get more firms and complete our hiring at one stretch," says a placement team official at the institute.