As the dust settles on Phase 1 of the placement session, let us take a look back at the record-breaking placements session at IIT Kanpur.
More than a thousand students sat for placements this year and 77% of them (undergraduate and graduate) got placed in the first phase. This means that 4 in every 5 people got a job. This figure is higher than sister IITs with 65% students being placed in IIT Bombay, whereas IIT Delhi and IIT Madras had figures of 60% and 62% respectively.
IIT Kanpur trumped it’s sister IITs in terms of average pay too. The average package among undergraduates was close to the 20 lakh mark while being 15.8 lakh overall. The same being 13 lakhs at IIT Bombay which is traditionally considered the one having the best placement record among IITs. For international offers, this figure was a whopping 81.59 lakhs in IIT Kanpur.
Apart from the volume of packages received, the offered pay has been a standout as well. More than half of the campus got a 7 digit package. Putting it in perspective, in 2016 only 22% of IIT Bombay students got 13LPA+ packages (which is along the lines of the packages this year too, as quoted by Times of India here )
There were several notable new companies as well visiting IIT Kanpur. Rubrik, which is one of the world’s fastest-growing startup offered roles at it’s US Office this year. While there were the usual top hiring partners like Tower Research, WorldQuant, ITC, Goldman Sachs, Nutanix, and Intel.
International recruiters include US-based firms like Microsoft, Uber, and Rubrik, and Asian firms like Samsung, RV Capital Management, CBS Techno, and Schlumberger. KPIT Technologies, a Pune based MNC also gave 4 job offers for their Germany office.
A deeper analysis of the statistics reveals just why IIT Kanpur has led the placement season in all aspects. A sector-wise distribution of the number of students placed shows that IIT Kanpur has been the major beneficiary of the boom in the tech sector. About 200 students were placed in their core sectors, while 42 in Research and Development as compared to 150 and 23 last year respectively. This bears testimony to the fact that IIT Kanpur carries an excellent reputation in the core engineering sector.
Looking at the overall percentage, UGs and Dual Degree students were more or less equally divided among Analytics, Software, and Engineering. This shows the amount of freedom one has with respect to the academic flexibility. On the other hand, with a masters programme being a focused 2-year program saw more than half the students being picked by top core engineering companies.
This rise placement can be attributed to a wide variety of reasons. It appears that this year, the students were much more prepared for the placements at IIT Kanpur that before with special sessions from Prepleaf, a start-up itself founded by IIT Kanpur alumni. There is no doubt in the fact that the incessant efforts put in by the placement team form the major part of the reason behind this spectacular performance.
By Kushagra Gupta, Anirudh Ojha and Siddhartha Saxena
Thanks to Student Placement Cell IITK for the Data for 2017-18
