



IIT placements bring startups into a hiring war with the bigwigs, who wins?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Startups are offering higher salaries, bigger bonuses and more employee stock options (Esops) at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) this year, but despite securing first-day slots too, they are struggling to attract top talent as campus hiring shifts from mass hiring to picking a few high-quality candidates amid an AI-led productivity boost.
At IIT placements, venture-backed startups like Razorpay, Fractal Analytics, Battery Smart, OYO, Navi, Meesho and SpeakX are aggressively competing with tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Nvidia, as well as high-frequency trading (HFT) firms, to secure top engineering talent. While startups have long recruited from IITs—Flipkart alone extended over 100 offers across campuses for the 2014 batch—they are now more assertive, often sharing prime slots with established players and HFT majors as many edge toward initial public offering (IPOs). Mint's review of their job descriptions to the IITs shows that these firms lure candidates with stocks, bonuses, rapid career growth, and generous Esops that promise quicker rewards than slower paths at legacy companies.
Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal's Navi is among the major recruiters from the IITs this season. Bansal, an alumnus of IIT Delhi and the poster boy of Indian startups, is seeking to hire for multiple roles in fintech, offering salaries in the range of ₹38.2-45.2 lakh, along with additional perks including bonuses, relocation allowances, and Esops.
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