A jobs crisis is brewing in India, but the country’s elite engineering institutes seem to be immune.
Bucking fears of an economic slowdown, students at the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are getting swooped up for stellar salaries this year, too.
At five of the older, more reputed of India’s 23 IITs—Kharagpur, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur, and Delhi—scores of students were offered annual packages of around Rs1 crore ($140,000), the Mint newspaper reported. In IIT Madras alone, five did.
The placement season has started on a good note with over 1,200 pre-placement offers going out to students across all IIT campuses. At the conclusion of Day 1 of placements, on Dec. 1, there was a 15-20% rise in first-day packages compared to last year.
To some extent, the boost in salaries has stemmed from foreign companies stepping up their hiring game in India. For instance, three IIT-Roorkee B.Tech students from the computer science, electronics and engineering, and physics streams were offered an annual package of Rs1.54 crore from an American multinational—the highest ever for a student at the institute.
San Francisco-based ride-hailing firm Uber and Amsterdam-based trading firm Optiver recruited students at salaries topping Rs1 crore at the Mumbai campus.
Microsoft accounted for the highest number of offers overall. It made 30 placement offers to students at IIT-Delhi, including two international offers. Last year, too, it was the top recruiter.
In Mumbai and Kharagpur, it was even the highest-paying recruiter. The software giant came in second at IIT-Madras, where the US-based cloud computing company Salesforce pipped it with a Rs1.8 crore package.