Facebook picks up four IIT-Kharagpur students

Social network giant Facebook seems to 'like' IIT-Kharagpur. It has picked up four students from this institute while it took only one each from the other three "big" IITs - Kanpur, Delhi and Powai

Computer science and engineering students Radhika Mittal, Vignesh Avadhani, Arun Dobriyal and Ashish Yadav have bagged annual packages worth Rs 65 lakh and postings in foreign shores. This is said to be best campus offer so far this season. "It is unbelieveable but true. Our parents are really happy," Radhika said. "I hope I will be able to add value to this networking firm, which is already making giant strides in technology," Ashish said.
Though Facebook has created ripples with its salary offer, Microsoft is not far behind. It has offered Rs 60 lakh packages to two students. Close on its heels is Epic, an IT firm. Google, Yahoo and Adobe have also recruited from the IIT-Kgp rolls.

"The average salary this year has been an impressive Rs 14.5 lakh annually, which is markedly better from last year. A total of 1,659 students will be appearing for the campus placements that would be spread over 10 days," said faculty member in charge of placements, Suneel Srivastava.

Companies from a variety of sectors like, IT (Microsoft Redmond,EPIC, Google, yahoo, Adobe), financial (Worldquant, Deutsch bank, Bank bazaar, Namura), Exploration (Oil and gas) (Rio Tibnto, Australia; Schlumberger, TransOcean, British gas), Analytics ( Goldman Sachs) Consulting (Opera solution, Essex lake, Boston Consulting group), Core Sectors Hindustan Unilever, Texas Instruments, Brocade Communication) have already visited the campus. Some has hired in bulk. Oracle, for instance, has picked up 24 students and Rio Tinto and Sclumberger 17 each.

"We are confident of placing the entire batch. There is already a 40% growth in the speed at which students are getting picked up," Srivastava added.