Mumbai: The bad times seem to be over for the IITs. In 2006, eyebrows were raised when finance companies wooed technical undergraduates with fat cheques. Then, all of a sudden, there was a dry patch on campus grounds with the economy slowing down. This year, the big bucks have made a comeback. At IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Bombay, over a dozen computer science students, all 22-year-olds, received offer letters with an ‘overwhelming’ annual compensation in bold red—Rs 45 lakh.
Tower Research Capital has so far been this year’s favourite among new techies for showing them the moolah—Rs 28 lakh as the basic pay and the rest as variable performance bonus. A month into the placement season, all the IITs have seen at least 50% BTechs and about 35% senior MTechs and PhDs placed.
Some IIT campuses saw very few or no foreign firms.
At IIT-Kharagpur, Barclays Capital selected 10 students who interned with them and offered them an annual package of Rs 22 lakh. Pimco, an investment solutions firm that made news for offering $1,00,000 to an IIT-Delhi tie in 2006, did not turn up this time. However, other prominent finance companies, management consultancies, trading firms and banks, including McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, J P Morgan, Credit Suisse, A C Nielsen, Deloitte Consulting and Nomura, did queue up to select the best and the brightest.
“These firms come and pick a few students. What we are glad to see is that a good percentage of our students are now taking up jobs in core engineering companies,’’ said Kushal Sen, faculty in-charge for training and placements at IIT-Delhi. Of the 1,160 students who registered for placements at the Powai campus, close to 350 of the 700 placed have joined core engineering services.
Similarly, Saurabh Basu, IIT-Guwahati faculty incharge of placements said, “The fascination for IT has come down and students signed up to join core engineering companies.’’ Here, the highest salary has so far come from IBM-India Research Lab, which offered Rs 15 lakh to the several young grads. Of the 600 students, 320 have been placed as of now.
The presence of IT majors like Infosys, TCS, Intel, Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo, Amazon, Oracle and Intel indicated that they have all started booting their hiring. However, Schlumberger, one of the highest paying recruiter, has not confirmed its participation yet. When asked about the mood on the campus, an IIT-Kharagpur student who bagged an offer from GE said, “The good times have returned.’’
source: TOI