With fewer offers from international firms as well as big tech companies, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are now looking at PSUs and domestic start-ups to place the remaining students in the second phase of placements in what has been a particularly difficult year in terms of campus recruitments for even the premier tech institutes amid a global economic slowdown.
The IITs, even the first-generation institutes, had a tough academic year 2023-24 with a dull first round of placements that took place in December last year. Many of the institutes have not even come out with a proper placement report for phase-I giving out statistics of the same. Several IITs had a change in strategy this year reaching out to more domestic start-ups and PSUs.
Over the past few years, some of the Indian start-ups had not been very reliable, as they did make offers but kept on deferring joining dates keeping students in a fix. Hence, they were not considered for campus placements. But, now, placement executives said that they are reaching out to those startups that had stable funding mechanisms.
According to placement team members at some of the first-generation IITs, while most students have been placed, the average pay packages have not been as high as the previous year. “The number of high pay packages offered, mainly from international firms this time, is somewhat lower than what was in the previous batch, which is certainly an impact of the slowdown being felt across the spectrum. But, more PSUs and startups are coming in now,” said a placement team member at one of the top IITs.
Also, the team member added, that there may be a 10%-20% drop in the average salaries across disciplines being offered this year, as compared to previous years.
Most of the institutes had been hopeful of the second phase being better, as, despite the slowdown in the advanced economies, the Indian economy had been doing well.
Prof S K Srivastava, placement cell in-charge, IIT-BHU, said that the second phase is ongoing and some PSUs have promised to visit the institute in March while startups have also been coming in. “Definitely the recession phase has been there with recruiters hiring less overall, but we are not very far from matching our placement numbers with that of last year. We have also decided that we will not be having companies offering a CTC of less than Rs 7-8 lakhs over on campus,” he said.
“For the second phase of placements, we have companies coming over from the core engineering domain and the education sector. However, we also have companies which are interested in hiring analysts and software developers. Still, there is a slowdown in the market in terms of the hiring numbers,” Prof Srivastava added.
The second phase of placements for most IITs began around January 15 and will go on till April-May. The first phase for all first-generation IITs started on December 1 and concluded before heading into the winter break. However, second and third-generation IITs start placement interviews around September.
In a usual year, most of the batches across IITs are placed within the first phase itself with a large number of students getting Pre-placement offers (PPOs) by recruiters during their internship period, which was not the case this time.
“It’s been a month into the second phase, and it has been better in terms of more recruiters coming down than what we saw in the first phase,” said a student placement executive at one of the newer IITs.
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