Bigger, better: Average salary up 20% in phase 1 of IIT placements

The average salary offered so far in the first phase of placements at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has seen a 20 per cent increase compared to last year. And the number of job offers has jumped 45 per cent to over 100 per cent on certain campuses.

At IIT Delhi, for instance, the quality of jobs offered in terms of salary has improved. “The average compensation offered on campus this year as indicated by recruiters has shown an over 20 per cent increase,” the institute said.

IIT Patna, meanwhile, recorded a 30 per cent rise in the highest domestic pay package, up from Rs 47 lakh per annum (lpa) last year to Rs 61.3 lpa so far this year, apart from the higher international package of Rs 47.9 lpa made by Accenture Japan.

While most of the campuses are yet to wrap up the first phase of placements, which began on December 1, some of the older IITs have witnessed a significant jump in salary packages, especially in light of the high offers made by companies to candidates on Day One.

For instance, IIT Roorkee bagged the highest international cost-to-company (CTC) of Rs 2.15 crore ($287,550) during the first session of Day One of the final placements process — this continues to be the highest offer so far. Uber had offered the highest international CTC of Rs 2.05 crore ($274,000) at IIT Guwahati and IIT Bombay on Day One, first session. IIT Bombay also saw Rubrik make an international offer of Rs 90.59 lakh ($121,000), apart from domestic offers of Rs 62 lakh by Millennium, Rs 51.71 lakh by WorldQuant and Rs 46.62 lakh by Blackstone in the first slot of Day One.

While the highest international salary offer at IIT Roorkee grew by a whopping 211 per cent from last year's Rs 69.05 lakh, on Day One of placements in 2020, Dutch firm Optiver had made the highest international offer of euros 1.57 lakh or Rs 1.39 crore at IIT Bombay.

Apart from the highest international offer, IIT Roorkee also bagged the highest domestic offers for three students — ranging from Rs 1.30 crore to Rs 1.80 crore. The institute also saw 11 students getting salary packages of more than Rs 1 crore and 13 international offers by the afternoon of Day One. IIT Guwahati saw multiple numbers of domestic offers of above Rs 1.1 crore in the first session of Day One.

The IITs have also registered a healthy growth in the number of jobs offered compared to last year in the first phase until now. For instance, IIT Delhi received over 1,250 offers till December 15 — a jump of more than 45 per cent over last year. The top five recruiters in terms of the number of jobs they offered were EXL Analytics, Graviton Research Capital LLP, HCL Technologies, Jaguar Land Rover India Limited and Microsoft. Microsoft led with around 60 job offers, while Rakuten Mobile of Japan made the highest number of international offers.

At IIT Patna, one of the younger IITs, students have so far received 252 offers from various top companies of national and international repute for multiple roles compared to the 96 offers received in 2020 by the same time — that’s a 162.5 per cent jump.

The first to conclude Phase One of placements, IIT Madras ended on a historic high by attracting as many as 1,085 job offers from a total of 226 companies. With this, 73 per cent of IIT Madras students who had registered for campus placements have landed a job in Phase One.

IIT Madras received 45 international job offers in Phase I, of which 11 came from Rakuten Mobile, Inc. Others were from Glean, Micron Technology, Honda R&D, Cohesity, Da Vinci Derivatives, Accenture Japan, HiLabs Inc, Quantbox Research, MediaTek, Money Forward, Rubrik, Termgrid and Uber.

Among sectors, at IIT Madras, maximum job offers came from core engineering and technology (42 per cent so far), followed by data science and analytics (19 per cent), IT and software development (18 per cent), R&D (8 per cent), financial services (7 per cent) and management (6 per cent). At IIT Delhi, IT led the sectoral breakup (32 per cent), followed by core (30 per cent), consulting (14 per cent), management (11 per cent), analytics (9 per cent) and finance (4 per cent). IIT Patna has seen over 90 companies from IT, finance, banking, analytics, consulting, core engineering, e-commerce, automobile, infrastructure, manufacturing and health care.