Chennai: The number of start-ups recruiting students from IIT-Madras has increased, going from five last year to 20 this year. Several new age companies and start-ups, like Ola Cabs, Flipkart and Snapdeal have recruited students from IIT-M. Flipkart, which hired 118 students from the IITs last year, has taken 200 so far this year. Surinder Bhagat, senior director, human resources, at Flipkart, said that the massive growth in the e-commerce industry meant that there was a corresponding demand for qualified talent: hiring by e-commerce companies had become quite intense of late to keep pace with industry expansion.
“We hire graduate trainees and software development engineers from the IITs and our pay packages are some of the best in the industry,” he added. Saurabh Nigam, vice-president, human resources, at Snapdeal, which hires students from the IITs for software design engineers' jobs and analysts, said that the company had been rapidly scaling operations and hiring talent across the board. “From 1,300 employees in June this year we have grown to 2,500 in November and are continuing to hire, particularly in the technology space,” he said.
Jayashri Ramamurti, head of people operations, technology, at Google India, said, “We believe that all our teams should have opportunities to innovate, so we don't limit these hires to new roles alone. We visit a few colleges every year and IIT Madras is one of them, it is a leading engineering institution in India with global recognition as well,” she added.
A spokesperson from Ola Cabs, which has hired IIT-ians for engineering, data sciences and operations and management trainees (in business, marketing, finance), said in an email reply that they saw fresh talent from campuses adding tremendous value to fuelling the company's growth. “We intend to hire about 200 students from campus this year. Our salaries range between Rs10 lakh- Rs18 lakh per annum," he said Prof. Babu Viswanathan, advisor, (training and placement), IIT-M said, “Last year, start-ups had recruited about 10 students, but this year the number has increased substantially and we expect it to grow as placement goes on.” He said that working with a start-up had its risks but there were rewards too.
