It's just their second year on the placement scene but the new Indian Institutes of Technology at Ropar, Patna, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar and Gandhinagar, among others, are already nipping at the heels of their much-older and more established counterparts.

Big-ticket recruiters like Microsoft, Amazon and Google have descended on these campuses and average salaries have shot up by 15-20%. In comparison, the older IITs - Madras, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Bombay, Delhi and Guwahati - have recorded a 5-10% increase in salaries at the final placement offers. Also, more companies are visiting the newer IITs this year and pre-placement offers (PPOs) have increased. Top salaries have also gone up. IT services company Epic Systems, for example, offered $105,000 ( 57 lakh) to two students at IIT Ropar. It had offered $80,000 ( 43.6 lakh) last year.

Stress on PPOs has worked in favour of new IITs. Students have been encouraged to give their best shot during summer internships, which has led to a significant increase in the number of PPOs.

In IIT Ropar and IIT Patna, the number of PPOs this time have gone up to 10 and 3, respectively, from just a single PPO each last year.

Also, IITs in Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar, Patna and Ropar started their placements in as early as end-September to get an early-mover advantage.

"We started contacting companies much earlier. Already 30 companies have visited our campus this year compared to last year's 21 and more are expected," said Prabh Sharan Singh, training and placement officer at IIT Ropar. IIT Gandhinagar's student coordinators arranged interactions with HR heads of companies to ensure they do not skip this institute.

These efforts seemed to have paid off as TCS and Cognizant were some of the new visitors.

Various conferences, techno-cultural fests and research activities that students participated in have also helped forge stronger ties with industry.

New recruiter BPCL's pay packages amounted to Rs 10 lakh in IIT Bhubaneswar and Flipkart offered packages between Rs 9 lakh and Rs 12 lakh in the new institutes.

So far, students of IIT Ropar have got salary offers between Rs 11 lakh and Rs 16 lakh while those at Gandhinagar are getting between Rs 9.5 lakh and Rs 9.9 lakh. The average salary offer at IIT Ropar was Rs 8.32 lakh last year.

Over the last two days, IIT Patna has seen 19 students of its 89-strong batch getting placement at an average package of Rs 11.3 lakh. Last year, average salary at the institute was Rs 7.1 lakh per annum, said Shashank Srivastava, student-in-charge, training & placement cell at IIT Patna. "US and Japan-based companies are coming to visit us for placements which is likely to push the current year's average package even higher," he said. So far, the institute has seen a top domestic salary of Rs 16 lakh offered by Microsoft to six students.



Keywords: Indian Institutes of Technology , Ropar, Patna, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar , Gandhinagar,Microsoft, Amazon ,Google , IITs ,Madras, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Bombay, Delhi ,Guwahati,pre-placement offers ,PPOs, Students, Prabh Sharan Singh,TCS ,Cognizant ,BPCL, Shashank Srivastava