Day Zero is the first day of placements starting in December for older IITs, and can continue till early next year. As usual, the day saw several crore-plus salary packages on offer.

An IIT student appearing for placements said Ola made offers for about 14 profiles, including program manager for founder’s office, business strategy manager for founder’s office, research engineer, software developer, data scientists, chemical engineers, and machine learning experts, without specifying if these were for the EV business or the ride hailing business.

On Thursday, Ola’s Aggarwal posted on social media platform X that he will be heading to his alma mater IIT Bombay for recruitments.

“We are a growing organization and are looking to hire more talent across verticals. As part of this, we are meeting students from IITs and Tier 1 engineering colleges and looking to hire around 150 top talent across engineering domains including Autonomous Technologies, AI, ML, Silicon Design, Vehicle Engineering, Cell R&D, and more,” an Ola spokesperson said.

Ola is not the only one looking at students who will fit into the clean energy business. According to IIT placement teams, Reliance Industries Ltd is offering about ₹15 lakh to engineers for its new energy business.

IIT-Bombay saw 40 companies turn up, with about 80% of the regular recruiters participating compared to last year. Among the recruiters were Google India, Apple, Microsoft India, Procter and Gamble, Sony Japan, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and Tata group, the IIT said. While over 250 pre-placement offers were accepted, the engineering college expects more than 350 companies to participate in the placement season.

High-end trading firms and software firms offered salaries ranging from ₹80 lakh to ₹1.4 crore, according to placement executives across IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, and IIT Kanpur.

These companies, including Databricks, Quadeye, Graviton Research Capital, Maverick Derivatives, Da Vinci, Optiver, NK Securities, Cumberland-a DRW Company, Quantbox Research, and Squarepoint have offered roles that are both based out of India and, in some cases, the UK, the US, Singapore and Hong Kong.

“The offer includes joining bonus and, for some of the trading companies, the domestic salaries are at par with the global counterparts,” said a placement team member at one of the top three IITs. On the first day of IIT placements, which started in the early hours of Friday, the trading companies offered salaries similar to last year, but the number of roles was fewer.

Compared with last year, the placement season this year is modest as the global economy remains sluggish and companies had over-hired from the batch of 2023. Among finance and consulting majors, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, and Arthur D. Little offered roles for the graduates ranging from ₹17-35 lakh.

IIT Roorkee said that in less than half a day, it got three global and 358 domestic offers. IIT Guwahati got 164 offers from 59 firms by evening across core, software, and business analyst job profiles. It received 11 placement offers with more than ₹1 crore salary packages, compared with seven last year.

“More than 50 startups have also registered for recruitment in the ongoing academic year along with seven public sector undertakings,” the statement said. 

Some of the firms that visited these campuses include Flipkart, Google, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Navi, Jaguar Land Rover, Plutus Research Pvt. Ltd, and Squarepoint.

The students across IITs told Mint that Google is offering ₹30-35 lakh for domestic roles, while Microsoft will pick up students for ₹40–45 lakh for roles based out of Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Data analytics and cloud software firm Axtria told Mint that it will hire for computer science, IT, maths, and industrial engineering from campuses.

While the older IITs started campus recruitments in December, the newer ones opened up placements in September to get a headstart. The colleges say pre-placement offers (PPOs), which are rolled out to selected students who have interned earlier, will see higher salaries. Last year, trading firm Jane Street broke records with PPOs of around ₹3.7-4.3 crore at IIT-Delhi, Kanpur and Bombay.