Huge salary offers & a glut of companies as IIT placement season kicks off with a bang

Students at IIT-Delhi campus (Representational image) | Getty Images

Microsoft, Apple offer packages over Rs 1 crore as IITs expect better recruitment season due to ‘robust early hiring trends’.

New Delhi: It’s raining big offers, including some huge salary packages from tech giants Microsoft and Apple, for students at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) across India, where the five-month-long placement season kicked off Saturday.

The industry response on the opening day, including from a number of international companies, has led to expectations that this will be a better hiring season in all of the premier technical institutes.

Anishya Madan, industry liaison officer at IIT Delhi, said the first day of placements had given hope that the institute would see more offers as compared to last year.

“Looking at the robust hiring trends this year and the interest from companies in terms of the quality of profiles being offered to the students, we look forward to a happy season for students,” she said.

IIT Delhi, which is also one of the three Indian institutes to be ranked in the global employability index, said it has recorded a 10 per cent rise in placement on the opening day as compared to last year.

Students at IIT Delhi received over 225 offers on the first day of the hiring season, including around 25 international offers, the institute said. The highest salary package, of Rs 1.75 crore annually, was offered by Apple while Microsoft offered an annual package of Rs 1.4 crore to five students.

Companies from Japan, Singapore and the US extended the international offers to the students with the maximum being from Microsoft Redmond (US) and SquarePoint Capital, Singapore.

At Delhi, many of the organisations are registering to hire students for core engineering profiles such as electrical engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering.

Huge packages elsewhere too

Annual packages ran into crores at IIT Bombay as well, with Microsoft offering one student an annual package of Rs 1.14 crore. The institute received as many as 21 offers on the first day of placement.

IIT Bombay said that Microsoft, Qualcomm, BCG and Strategy and Cairn made the maximum number of domestic offers, with the number of offers where students are getting an average package of Rs 25 lakh having increased as compared to last year.

At IIT Madras, 85 offers were made by 19 companies on the first day of placement, which includes six international offers. The institute’s placement cell also said the big recruiters of the first session included Microsoft, Google and Apple.

Domestic recruiters included the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), which, like the other government agencies, make their offers a week before the official placement season.

“IIT Madras is the only educational institute in India that had all the top three global consulting majors — McKinsey, The Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Co — recruiting on campus. They accounted for 13 offers in Session 1.1,” a statement from IIT Madras said.

Manu Santhanam, advisor, Training and Placement at IIT Madras, added that the institute hoped to increase its numbers as compared to last year.

Olders IITs see good numbers too

Among the older IITs, Roorkee recorded 215 offers on the first day, including seven international offers. Microsoft accounted for 31 of the offers, including three international offers. The highest salary offered was Rs 1.5 crore annually.

At IIT Kharagpur, over 400 job offers were made on the first day of the placement season including as many as 13 international offers. Microsoft was one of the major recruiters at Kharagpur as well.

At IIT Hyderabad, 14 offers were made on the first day of placements, including four international offers. These offers are made to students of Electrical, Computer Science and Design Departments.