Engineering Schools to Turn Down Start-ups Due to Bad Experiences

Unable to make good offers to the students, many e-commerce companies will now face problem in recruiting students from leading engineering institutes.

Until last year, there was no background checks conducted by the institute for companies coming for recruitment. Whereas, this has been started at institutes such as Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani and Delhi Technological University from this year. This same method has been adopted by the following institutes as well:

• Delhi Technological University
• National Institute of Technology (NIT) Surathkal
• NIT-Trichy
• Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT), Allahabad

Regarding the same, NIT official said that this would also hinder many top companies like Amazon and Paytm to recruit students during placements.

Earlier this year, 42 students from BITS Pilani University faced problems due to deferral and revoking of offers by companies including Flipkart and Grofers.

This made the institute cautious and reacting to this, the institute has now allowed only 5-6 recruiters to participate in the placement drive.

Another step taken by the institute is that it has made signing of an agreement of compulsion. According to the agreement, if a company revokes the offer, they will have to pay a compensation of six months and experience certificate to the affected students.

G Balasubramanian, chief placement officer (India and Dubai) at BITS Pilani University said that only those companies will be allowed to participate in the placement drives which agree to the above statement. Also, some of the engineering institutes also commented that those companies who did not honour their commitments are banned to enter during the placement drive.

About 6 startups were banned by the all-India placement committee at the IITs last year as they were not able to fulfill their commitments. Also, about 20 students have filed a case against the leading e-commerce company, Grofers for revoking the job offer.

On similar lines, Delhi Technological University has also banned startups from participating inthe placement drive. Amazon is the only e-commerce company allowed for recruitment till now. This decision came after companies like Flipkart, Grofers and Nearbuy were unable to fulfill thier commitments which affected about 17 of the university students.

According to Rajeev Tripathi, department of training and placement at MNNIT-Allahabad, says that the institute is very cautious this time as they don’t want such an incident to happen with the students.

The colleges are not allowing any company without checking their background and for this they are also contacting and taking help from their alumni to know about the company before hand.

Similarly, NIT-Trichy will also not invite any startups as their students also had to deal withGrofers not honouring its commitment.

At NIT-Surathkal, Myntra opened the slot with an offer of Rs 20 lakh a year. But the students were very cautious in accepting offers this time.

NIT-Warangal's placement head G Amba Prasad Rao said that he knows the whereabouts of start ups as most of them only have financial capital ready but do not have a proper business idea.

However, on the other side, Vinod Murali, managing director of InnoVen Capital India says that the final decision should be in the hands of the students, not the institute.