The first flush of pre-placement offers handed out to IIT Bhubaneswar students point to a very encouraging placement season this year, the institution has said. As many as 160 BTech students received offers, according to officials.

Companies make pre-placement offers based on the performance of candidates who have interned with them. Many companies like Microsoft, DeShaw, Goldman Sachs, GEP Solutions, etc, use this route more as it helps them gauge candidates better over longer periods of time and in real work situations, IIT Bhubaneswar said in a release.

IIT director Prof. R.V. Raja Kumar said, “The premier institute has seen a surge in PPOs this year with the offers received already equalling last year’s total offers and is sure to surpass. Offers as high as 43 LPA (lakh per annum) CTC have already been made. Majority of them are core industries and are wide ranging indicating a healthy trend.”

“The average salary offered is Rs 15.8 lakh per annum, which is a sharp increase of 34 per cent over the last year,” an official said.

Around 51 per cent students are getting jobs in core engineering fields. Students have also got offers from the analytics sector (8 per cent), IT sector (32 per cent) and consulting (9 per cent).

IIT Bhubaneswar also claimed the placements are even better than some of the senior IITs, which is a testimony to the standards of education at the Odisha institute.

“The final-year students are all gearing up for the upcoming placement season at IIT Bhubaneswar which is scheduled to start from October 31 via online mode owing to the Covid-19 restrictions,” an official said.