IIT Bombay favours manufacturing recruiters in placement season to bolster Modi's 'Make In India'

IIT-Bombay sources informed ET that engineering companies like Tata Steel, General Electric, Sony Japan and a few others have now been given slots on Day 1 of the placement season after the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) nudged IITs to do this to bolster the central government's 'Make in India'.

Traditionally consulting, finance, technology and ecommerce companies form majority of the companies that come on Day 1. Last year, a few offered salaries as high as Rs 1 crore.

Interestingly, IIT-Bombay is the only institute to have obliged the government. Sources at IIT-Kharagpur and Delhi told ET that the institutes are not giving any such preferential treatment to any company. IIT-Madras is moving up core companies by several days in the placement schedule, but is not giving a Day 1 slot to any engineering company. IIT placements kick off on December 1.

IIT-Bombay will see a total of 110 core engineering companies this placement season, a jump of 40 per cent from last year. The institute received about 190 job announcement forms from the core engineering space, compared to only 110 last year.

A senior MHRD official confirmed that the government is encouraging the leading IITs to take "relevant measures" to push the Make in India campaign. "This is the need of the hour for the country," the official, who did not wish to be named, said.

"I am a beneficiary of talent from the IIT-Bombay," Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman of Biocon Limited and the current chairperson of IIM-Bangalore said. "During my days of developing bio-manufacturing, we had a large team of engineers from IIT Bombay." Nobody can be forced to support the Make in India campaign, but all IITs would gain from it, she added. She continues to pick fresh talent from IITs even today for the company.

"Earlier, consulting firms used to take up most of the slots in the early days of the placement. But now as a conscious effort, we are pushing for core engineering firms, partly due to the students' preferences," an IIT-Bombay placement faculty said.

According to sources in the placement cell, the institute is not choosing Day 1 companies based on salaries offered. Going forward too, the institute intends to strengthen its focus on the core engineering companies, the source added. The institute wants to give a balanced choice to students in terms of offering equal importance to firms from consulting, finance, banking, technology and core engineering.

"This will give the students a lot of choice as there are a few students who prefer good profiles in core companies to hefty salaries in non-core companies," a student at IIT-Bombay said.