Honour first offer or face boycott, IITs to tell firms

The Indian Institutes of Technology have decided to blacklist about half-a-dozen companies that participated in placements this year but failed to honour their commitment, withdrew their offers entirely and left students in a lurch. Companies like Simply, healthcare startup Portea, grocery portal PepperTap are some that cancelled their offers,
as reported by TOI exactly a week ago (‘IITs mull safety net for students as startups withdraw job offers’). They will now not be able to participate in placements this year.
Then there are those that made offers and later negotiated with candidates and cut the compensation they had promised to pay. These organizations will be asked to stick to their earlier commitment or face boycott for one year.
The All-IIT Placement Committee (AIPC), which met in Mumbai on Friday, decided to take a firm stand against dithering companies. “There are three kinds of companies: the ones that withdrew offers completely, those that have cut compensation after their initial offer and the ones that have deferred joining dates. There are five to six companies in each category,” said IIT-Madras training and placement adviser V Babu.
It is not that we don’t have other options for our students; we do. But in this meeting, we have taken a stand so that such instances do not occur again. All this causes a lot of anxiety among our students,” he added.
At IIT-Guwahati, Zimply did not honour the job offers it had made to five students, and the candidates had to be accommodated for placements again. At IIT-Bombay, seven students who had accepted offers from Portea and PepperTap too had to be permitted to participate in the second phase of placements as the two companies cancelled their offers in the middle of February.
Now, the IITs plan to write to companies that, after making their offers, have negotiated and reduced the compensation they had promised to pay. “We will write to them and wait for a week. If they do not offer the same pay that was earlier offered, they will also be blacklisted from participating in our placements next year,” said another placement officer.
Companies like Flipkart that have deferred joining dates will be requested to take students onboard as soon as they can. “We understand that companies go through various cycles and sometimes some calculations may falter. We will write to these companies and ask them to take the students as soon as they can in view of the financial losses that students have to face. If they don’t do so, the AIPC will meet again to discuss what action can be taken.”