The Beat Report | IIT placements then and now: The story behind tracking top offers

In The Beat Report, Mint's journalists bring you unique perspectives on their beats, breaking down new trends and developments, and sharing behind-the-scenes stories from their reporting.

I am Devina Sengupta. I remember 2013 was a gleeful one for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The lingering effects of the Lehman Brothers collapse had finally begun to fade. The first indication was when an information technology (IT) firm resumed offering salaries of over a crore after a three-year hiatus. But it was the second sign that truly electrified the campuses: a six-year-old e-commerce startup named Flipkart launched a blitzkrieg, making 118 offers in just three days.

That startups could outshine established companies came as a shock, much like how the older generation reacts when the younger lot tries to upstage their popularity. And the fact that students were now eager to join companies that barely had their business models in place, yet still managed to attract top talent, reshaped campus placements for the next decade.

The Goliaths became Davids almost overnight, and a new set of Goliaths began entering the leafy campuses every few years. Back in 2013, I could never have imagined that startups would one day become the established regulars at the IITs. And come December, when placements begin, they too will jostle for space with high-frequency trading firms, quant analytics companies, and even AI players that are now the reigning favourites everywhere.

Although 2013 was not my first experience covering IIT placements, the story kept changing, refusing to settle down as placements carried on for days.

The nervousness is palpable while tracking IIT placements. But why?

Covering IIT placements means tracking scores of students every year before they even sit for interviews. You make a list, note down their numbers, and keep in touch over many months—checking how their classes are going, how their summer internships turned out. Some maintain that connection with you, while in other cases, the link between two parties who have never met simply fizzles out.

I have called them during classes, holidays, and even family gatherings, listening for long stretches to their disappointment over lost opportunities or their frustration with the placement process. In the middle of one such conversation, a name would slip—the company that had offered their friend the top salary. Today, some of those angst-ridden 20-year-olds have become company founders.

Over the years, tracking campus placements has become increasingly difficult. I was told that both the IITs and business schools used to be more open about their top offers until students and their families began receiving kidnapping threats.

In my early years covering placements, a professor told me that a student’s details, along with the compensation they were offered, had once been leaked. Kidnappers had threatened the family, assuming they could demand a high ransom now that the package was public. Colleges responded by clamping down, making it far harder for us to gather information.

Tracking IIT placements is also something of a rite of passage for education reporters. Every reporter’s experience is unique. For me, 2013 stood out—just as 2025 may stand out for Pratishtha Bagai, who now covers it for Mint.

The season 2025-26

When I joined Mint in May 2024, the placement season for the batch of 2024 was drawing to a close, and the first byline I shared with Devina Sengupta highlighted the angst of students who hadn’t been placed. Since then, I have covered the education sector alongside her, and this was the first time I am tracking IIT placements alone.

By August, the students of the 2026 batch had finally entered the final year of their four-year programmes. They were back on campus after their summer internships, and pre-placement offers had already started to roll in for some. I called as many students as I could to gather information on these offers, since some of the packages from high-frequency trading firms were the highest of the season, reaching ₹3-4 crore.

Since then, I have stayed in touch with the students, wishing them on every festival, sharing some of my stories, and occasionally just texting them at random, “How is it going?”

I entered all the information I could gather about companies offering PPOs, those hiring from the newer IITs, and those registered for campus placements at the older IITs into an Excel sheet—my holy grail.

I regularly followed up with the students to ask which companies were hiring, what some of the top offers were, and which firms they had applied to. Over the next few months, as companies registered for campus placements on their portals and students prepared for interviews, I continuously updated these details in the Excel sheet.

By the last week of November, I had compiled information on over 300 firms expected to hire from the IITs. The sheet included details on job roles, salaries, locations, required skills, and benefits offered by each company. This data bank became the foundation for the stories you read in the paper.

• Startups shake up IIT placements with high-skill AI roles and sky-high salaries, but in small numbers

• IIT placements bring startups into a hiring war with the bigwigs, who wins?

• IIT placements 2025: Top firms offer ₹1 crore-plus packages—but with tough conditions

• IITs to see high-paying recruitment battle

• Candidates using AI? Not on IIT campuses as placement season gets stricter

Then came the painstaking process of cross-checking and ratification. I couldn’t simply rely on the data I had, so I called or emailed all the institutes and companies I was tracking to confirm the details. Right up until the very last moment, I was scrambling to get the green light on the top salaries being offered this year.

Even two weeks after day zero of placements, we are still scanning through the list, making calls, and adding to it to track emerging trends. This will continue until April and May, when placements for the batch finally conclude—a full circle.

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