Flipkart to pay campus hires Rs.1.5 lakh each for delayed appointment

E-commerce major Flipkart on Thursday announced it would pay Rs.1.5 lakh each to an unspecified number of campus hires, in a damage control move after deferring their appointment by six months.

A few hundred pass-outs from top Indian institutions, including IITs and IIMs, were supposed to join the company in June after successfully clearing multiple rounds of campus interviews but Flipkart has delayed their joining, citing its business restructuring.

"In the past few months, we have been working on restructuring our businesses to strike the right balance among key levers such as innovation, strategic execution, and operational excellence," said a Flipkart statement on its website.

Along with business restructuring, the e-commerce company said its campus hiring programme is also going through a comprehensive overhaul to align with the ongoing business restructuring.

"As we work on redesigning this program, we have taken a decision to postpone the joining of new recruits by a few months. Instead of June 2016, the new recruits will now be part of the improved campus programme in December 2016. Flipkart will also pay an additional joining bonus of Rs.1.5 lakh to all campus recruits," said the statement.

However, it is not clear if Flipkart revealed to its business and campus hiring restructuring process to those being recruited, giving them a choice to take up the offer or not.

Facing music from several affected parties which included top-tier institutions, students and others, Flipkart, in response to an IIM-Ahmedabad letter, declaredit cannot go beyond Rs.25,000 per month for six months, amounting to Rs.1.5 lakh altogether, as compensation for the delay.

Interestingly, with an intention to join Flipkart, many students rejected offers from other companies, some of which are also much larger and reputed, while several affected students earn way more than Rs.25,000 a month.

Unlike major IT firms, Flipkart does not have the concept of bench, where employees are recruited and paid well in advance without a project in hand.

The company further suggested that suffering campus hires can seek extension from their respective banks to repay the students loans they availed for education.

"Loan repayment starts a year after the end of studies or six months after the student gets a job, whichever is earlier (this is known as 'moratorium period' or 'repayment holiday'). Candidates can seek an extension on this period by submitting their revised offer letters to the bank," said the statement.

Without giving a date, the company, founded by IIT-Delhi pass-outs Sachin and Binny Bansal, assured that the campus hires will be taken on board in December 2016.

--IANS

sth/vd