Hyderabad: They come from poor families in remote villages and their annual parental income is in the range of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh per year. But these students received job offers of Rs 5.2 lakh per annum from IT majors in campus placement drives at rural IIITs located in Basar, Nuzividu and Idupulapaya.
At a time when IT majors have been missing from most college campuses in the city due to weak global financial conditions, the rural IIITs, run by the state government and located in remote places, succeeded in attracting the firms. Interestingly, these IIITs have no track record that can be used to gauge the capabilities of students since this is the first batch facing campus placement drives.
IT majors such as Infosys, TCS, Infotech, Tech Mahindra etc., besides FMCG major ITC, have registered for campus placements in rural IIITs. The IIIT students are from remote villages who had studied in government schools in Telugu medium till SSC and are from socially and economically weaker sections.
The government had admitted 6,000 students in three IIITs in 2008-2009 based on their merit in SSC exams. It’s a six-year integrated course in residential mode, culminating in a four-year B.Tech degree in the sixth year. Free education, hostel and mess facilities were provided by the government for six years.
Already 185 of the 6,000 students have been placed, the highest annual package being Rs 5.2 lakh. Officials expect 80 per cent of the students to be placed by the end of January and the highest pay package to touch Rs 10 lakh.
Prof. R.V. Rajakumar, vice-chancellor, Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, which runs the rural IIITs, said, “We have established quality engineering education in the university with highly motivated faculty, which was picked up locally as well as from the premier institutes. Choosing meritocracy as the main benchmark, we had to go for a lot of innovations while imparting engineering education and technical skills to match the scale.
Our students’ technical skills would be further visible when other engineering firms come for campus placements and their performance in competitive examinations like GATE is reported.” The beginning has seen major IT firms like Infosys completing the recruitment, Tech Mahindra initiating its process and many others lining up.
The number of students placed in the first instance in Basar, Nuzvid and RK Valley campus is 51, 64 and 71 respectively. The recruiters are all praising for the students and several firms will be visiting the university in the coming months.
According to Dr Amarnath Reddy, Placement Cell in-charge, firms like TCS, Amara Group of Companies, InfoTech Enterprises, ITC and IVIZ Techno Solutions Pvt. Ltd. are lined up for campus placements.
