Startup buzz continues at IIT placements, 100% rise in such job offers

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: This placement season, the startup buzz at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) continues unabated. The country’s premier engineering schools are seeing a fresh surge in hiring from startups, including first-timers such as Wrig Nanosystems, PepperTap, Roadrunnr, Grofers, Rivigo, Inshorts and Nutanix Technology.

Several IITs, including Delhi, Varanasi, Bombay, Kanpur, Guwahati and Roorkee, are reporting an up to 100% rise in the number of startups coming to recruit, suggesting that recent layoffs may not deter graduates from signing on. The rise in the numbers is despite the schools undertaking much more stringent background checks to vet startup credentials this year and several heavy recruiters from last year, including Housing.com and Zomato, either dropping out or being excluded.

At IIT-Kanpur, around 80 startups are coming compared with 50 last year. IIT-Delhi is seeing a rise of about 50%, with over 20 new startups heading for the campus this year. For IIT-Roorkee, the numbers have almost doubled, from 40 last year to over 75, while at IIT-Guwahati, the number is up 66% to 32 companies. At IIT-Bombay, there will be at least 15-20 more startups this season.

“We are expecting around 15-20% of the batch to bag a job in a startup/ecommerce company compared to about 10% of the batch last year,” said a placement source. At IIT-Kanpur, there is expected to be a 40% rise in the number of students joining startups or ecommerce companies. Anil Agarwal, professor in charge of training and placement at Varanasi (IIT Banaras Hindu University), said that the number of startups would double from last year.


ET reported last year that at least one in every nine students from the 2015 batch was set to join an ecommerce company or startup. At the time, Flipkart, Ola, Snapdeal and Housing.com accounted for around 600 hires at the top IITs. Not factoring in the bigger ecommerce firms, the increase in the number of startups alone is substantial, considering that the IITs have been extra cautious this year.

For the first time, some schools counseled students on the wisdom of opting for a strong company rather than a hefty pay package offered by a newbie with a weak revenue model. Before placements, IITs in Delhi, Bombay, Guwahati, Roorkee, Madras and Kanpur scrutinised business models of all startups and conducted background checks on them.

Even so, the numbers have grown. Startups are especially keen on data scientists, product managers and business analysts in addition to the most common profiles such as software developers or coders and operations. The interest from startups is as strong as ever, said an IIT-Kanpur professor. “Maybe the startups realise that they need premium talent or else they would also succumb like their counterparts,” said a source at the IIT-Delhi placement cell. According to a professor at IITRoorkee, the startups are eyeing a large pool of engineers for coding and analytics (data scientists).

“Coding is key for startups to strengthen the technology backbone,” he said. Despite salaries offered by a few of startups being at par with many Day 1 companies, institutes were being careful. “We rejected this startup which had less than 10 employees but said that money wasn’t a constraint for hiring. It was offering a package of Rs 25 lakh and negotiating for a Day 1 slot. We didn’t give it to them,” said a placement official at IIT-Guwahati.

The highest annual salary offered by a startup at Guwahati is Rs40 lakh. In other IITs, the rise in salaries offered by startups over the last year is in the range of 15-25%. Several startups are paying upwards of Rs 20 lakh. According to IIT sources, Nutanix is offering a package of Rs27 lakh, Rivigo Rs24 lakh and CodeNation Rs24 lakh. Peppertap, a first timer at the IITs, is planning to hire up to 30 students from Delhi and Bombay, said CEO Navnit Singh.

The company is primarily looking for business analysts but is open to hiring for marketing and operations too. CarDekho.com, which hired 20 last year, is planning to take on as many as 60 this time. Another first timer, Roadrunnr, is planning 35-40 offers in Madras, Roorkee, Guwahati and Kharagpur at a salary of Rs12 lakh each.

“Our company is about eight months old and as a new-age software company, we were looking for very analytical, very numbers-driven people with plenty of hustle and eagerness to learn. IITs we felt are the best bet,” said Aneek Mukherjee, director of operations at the hyperlocal delivery company. Last year, a few IITs had issues with CodeNation for not hiring as many students as originally anticipated.

The institutes had felt that CodeNation had overstated hiring intentions. Anuja Arekar, who heads operations and human resources at CodeNation, said that while it had wanted to hire more, the problem was partly to do with slotting — Day 2 at some institutes and Day 3 or 4 at others.