Gold rush on Day-1 at IIT Madras placement
CHENNAI: The elite IIT placement season has begun and it’s raining offers at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras. On Day-One, about 130 offers were made in a hunt for the best of the talent, which included nine international offers.
Sources said that a student from the Computer Science department reportedly bagged the highest pay package of over $1.80 lakh (`1.20 crore) and a couple of other students got pay packages close to `1 crore. However, the officials have not confirmed it saying there is a non-disclosure agreement signed with companies which prohibits them from talking about the CTC (cost to company) offered.
The big-fat international offers were made by Microsoft, Uber, Rubrik and Indeed, all US-based companies. Of these, the first-time recruiter Rubrik, which is a cloud data management company, has made six out of nine international offers.
Unlike previous years, there was no graveyard session. The placement began at 7 am and the first session (slot 1) concluded by 2 pm. A total of 93 offers were made in the first slot. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had already done campus interviews and made six offers, thereby taking the total tally, at the end of the first session to 99. In comparison, last year saw only 71 offers in first session. The students who have chosen to join ISRO are Aniruddh Venkatakrishnan, Chintala Anvesh, Chinni Chaitanya, Gudipati Sowmya, V Aditya and Swarup P. All were observed as scientist engineers.
A total of 16 companies, including Apple, Microsoft, The Boston Consulting Group, Texas Instruments, Goldman Sachs, Samsung Research, IBM Research, ITC Ltd, Alvarez and Marsal, Auctus Advisors, Dalberg Advisors, Indeed India Operations, Uber, and Procter and Gamble and Nasdaq participated in the first round.
In the second slot starting at 4 pm, 14 companies with 30 profiles were scheduled. These include Airbus Group India, EXL Services, Flipkart, Oracle, Samsung R&D, and Qualcomm. E-commerce giant Flipkart made a comeback this year after having stayed out last year with an obligation of honouring the earlier year’s recruitment commitment.
Manu Santhanam, Advisor, Training and Placement, IIT-Madras told Express that the season had begun on a promising note and there was a marginal increase in pay packages since top recruiters from all sectors participated.
“The average pay package was between `9 lakh and 10 lakh last year, which is also expected to go up at the end of this season. We don’t generally reveal the highest pay packages offered, but usually it remains then and there every year,” he said and added that there would be more international offers coming from Japan, Singapore and Taiwan-based companies in days to come.
More than 1,100 students are registered for placement this year from the IIT-Madras, across different streams of study. There are more than 400 profiles from nearly 280 companies that are planning to visit campus in the first phase of placement that lasts until December 10.
Sashi Sekhar, Academic Affairs Secretary, said the placement team had done a fabulous job targeting all big names in the business. The weather has also been kind and allowed the sessions to go on smoothly.