All IIT Placement Committee Evaluated Start-up Hiring on Friday

Meeting of the Placement Heads of the 16 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) was held on Friday, June 3, in Mumbai. The objective of this meeting was to discuss ways to deal with start-ups who want to hire students from these leading Indian engineering schools. Although two meetings are held each year by the All IIT Placement Committee, this out of turn meeting was held to address the issue of start-ups delaying the joining dates of students.

Prof. Kaustabha Mohanty, Convener of the Panel said "Our AIPC (all-IITs placement committee) meeting was scheduled for October. But we are having to convene this out-of-turn meeting in light of recent developments."

Among these startups were Flipkart, CarDekho and HopScotch, that delayed the joining dates of students by four to six months. Road-Runnr, Zimply Home Shopping, Click Labs and PepperTap have also withdrawn some job offers. Taking this into account, the IITs decided to evaluate start-up hiring.

Talking about Flipkart, Mohanty added, "I do believe the brand is already affected by this furor. What's worse is that it is not Flipkart alone, but the entire industry of ecommerce and the startup world that bears the brunt of this image drubbing. It's temporary for sure and life will go on, but the scar is left behind for sure."

It’s not just the IITs that have been affected by the deferment; Hopscotch, CarDekho and other star-ups have delayed offers at IIMs as well.

"There are also instances of some startups reducing pay packages from what was initially promised," said Mohanty.

Following are the few aspects that the Committee discussed:

• What are the parameters by which they should decide whether a company is a start-up or not. The students must be able to differentiate between huge companies like Flipkart and other start-ups.

• Listing out the start-ups that delayed the joining dates or withdrew offers made on either of the IIT campuses.
• Ways to deal with start-up that delay the joining dates. Deciding if there should be a compensation for the period of deferment or not. If yes, then how much should the compensation be?
• The slots that will be given to the start-ups. Earlier, the slots were allotted according to the preference of students. The committee will decide whether or not they should let these startups come after the core engineering companies have recruited.
• If students can accept more than one offer or not. Letting students take up more than one offer as a backup option in case there is an issue with the company.