Kolkata | New Delhi: India is beating the world at Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) this placement season. For the first time, final placements are seeing top salaries offered for India-located jobs shoot up 30-35 per cent higher than in previous years, often beating best global position offers.
At some IITs including Madras, Roorkee and Guwahati, best-paying domestic packages have even surpassed top international offers, ensuring that these newly-minted graduates will be earning more sitting in India than they would have abroad.
Many of these skills that are in demand are for work-from-home roles. In a pandemic-hit year, where the likes of Microsoft and Uber have not yet opened up international roles at campuses, firms such as MTX Group, Quantbox Research and Graviton have rolled out offers of Rs 70-80 lakh for India postings.
RS 45-62 Lakh Offered in Previous Years
Institutes say that top domestic salaries in previous years have usually hovered around the Rs 45-62 lakh levels at the most.
At IIT Roorkee, the top domestic offer this time is Rs 80 lakh, 16 per cent higher than the highest international offer of Rs 69 lakh and 28 per cent higher than Rs 62.28 lakh domestic offer last year. The institute says this the first time that an Indian offer has surpassed a foreign one.
It’s the same at IIT Guwahati, where the top domestic offer of Rs 70 lakh is not just 35 per cent higher than last year’s Rs 52 lakh, but also a shade higher than this year’s highest international salary of 125,000 Singapore dollars (Rs 69 lakh). At IIT Madras too, till now the top international offer from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is lower than what has been paid by MTX Group for a domestic role, said CS Shankar Ram, Advisor (Training & Placement).
The highest domestic offer this year is of Rs 82 lakh at IIT Kanpur, 32 per cent up from Rs 62 lakh last year.
Global cloud implementation partner MTX Group has hired IIT students in the MTX India entity at about Rs 70 lakh, according to campus placement cells. But the roles are global, where they work with teams in US and Australia.
“We believe in making sure that we pay people for the skills they possess, irrespective of location. We strongly believe in bridging the global pay gaps especially during Covid times and in future. As we are working remotely, everyone works towards achieving the goal of the organisation regardless of the locations they are contributing from,†said Ankita Sinha, chief people officer at MTX.
‘Retaining Top Talent’
“IITs are where the cream of the country’s talent comes to study, and the offers reflect the value attached to every campus hire,†says Prashant Singh, managing director of proprietary trading firm Quantbox Research. “Isn’t it better we retain our rockstars in India than lose them to the Silicon valleys of the world?†he says.
According to campus sources, Quantbox has made offers of Rs 80 lakh, including performance bonus for domestic roles. Location isn’t an issue. “Being a tech trading firm, the geographical restrictions don’t impose any limitation on our business continuity,†said Singh.
In a year when IITs prepared themselves for a challenging placement season, this has been a welcome development.
“We notice a trend emerging among companies offering higher salaries for domestic roles, especially in cloud, this year,†says TG Sitharam, director-IIT Guwahati.
“This could be due to companies envisaging a need for such roles as work from home is the new normal during the pandemic and beyond. Also, companies are trying to hire good talent from campuses, which would otherwise choose or prefer international offers, by offering them higher salary for domestic roles,†he added.
