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India's Top Engineering Colleges Would Rather Invite State-Run Cos. Over Startups For Student Hiring

Stability trumps pay
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There's more bad news for startups trying to attract students from India's top engineering colleges.

According to an Economic Times report, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), is gravitating towards India's public sector companies (PSUs) for student placements, awarding them key slots on earlier on in their student placement fairs this year.

With help from the Ministry of Human Resources, many IIT schools are planning to invite about 100 PSUs each, the report said citing people with knowledge of the matter. Oil and Natural Gas Corp, Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, NMDC and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd are among the PSUs expected to attend.

Public-sector companies, which typically pay much less -- Rs 10 lakh annually on average-- than some startups which have in the past paid as much as three times that amount, are now seen as more 'stable' bets.

The participation of PSUs would also mark a return by the state-run companies to IITs campuses after a temporary ban on them was lifted earlier this year. Following a PIL petition filed in the Madras High Court in 2014, many state-run companies had to stop hiring from those colleges as they were seen taking job opportunities away from the students of other government institutions.

Earlier this year, several startups including Grofers, Flipkart, and Zomato withdrew offers and skipped campus recruitment events faced with business pressures. At least 30 startups were blacklisted earlier this year by the All-IITs Placement Committee following the withdrawals.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.