Start ups and e-commerce firms are driving increase in salary packages being offered to students in campus placements this year going by the first round of placements in the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS).

As per the placements data obtained by the Business Line, companies visiting BITS annually had upwardly revised compensation packages from 9.56 per cent to 50 per cent. They included Microsoft, Amazon, eBay and Directi among others.

Though BITS is unwilling to share the salary details, according to reliable sources, Google has offered Rs 52 lakh CTC for a girl student, making it the highest offer for students of BITS campus here. Second highest was Rs 32.19 lakh which has been offered to a boy by Works Application.

When asked on the likely factors that contributed to this increase, Balasubramanian Gurumurthy, Chief Placement Officer - India and Dubai for BITS Pilani University. said: ``This increase has been driven by rather aggressive hiring in terms of compensation by start ups and ecommerce firms.’’ This has also indirectly forced the regular IT biggies also to revise their packages.

For instance, e-commence firms Zomato, Amazon, e-Bay, PayPal offered annual packages ranging from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 27 lakh. There is significant traction in the start up hiring as well. Many companies, including Zamato, Procto, Grofers and Grey Orange India dolled out many offers with packages ranging from Rs 14 lakh to Rs 22 lakh.

This is only the first round of placements for the 300 graduating engineers in the campus which began in August and got just completed. The second round will commence in second semester during January – April 2016.

``There are over 250 companies which are participating in this year’s campus placements out of which 90 have already come. The placements for 200 students out of total strength of 300 have already been completed,’’ Gurumurthy said adding that the same trend is expected to continue in the second round too.

The median salary has grown from Rs 5.5 Lakh last year (for 2015 recruitment) to Rs 9.2 lakh this year for 2016 hiring registering 67 per cent growth.

The maximum offers are in the computer sciences though there are candidates belonging to other disciplines like electronics, electricals, chemical, mechanical and civil engineering.

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