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Post Flipkart debacle, IITs hesitant on startups in campus interviews?
The heads of placement committees across the Indian Institutes of Technology will hold an emergency meeting on Friday with one agenda: a strategy for startups and ecommerce companies after Flipkart postponed the hiring of campus recruits. \"Our AIPC (all-IITs placement committee) meeting was scheduled for October. But we are having to convene this out-of-turn meeting in light of recent developments
The heads of placement committees across the Indian Institutes of Technology will hold an emergency meeting on Friday with one agenda: a strategy for startups and ecommerce companies after Flipkart postponed the hiring of campus recruits. "Our AIPC (all-IITs placement committee) meeting was scheduled for October. But we are having to convene this out-of-turn meeting in light of recent developments," professor Kaustabha Mohanty, convenor of the panel, told ET.
The meeting will take place in Mumbai and those who won't be able to make it, will log in via Skype. The placement heads will discuss, among other things, the slotting of startups, which ones to invite and which to refuse during campus interviews. They may decide on action against Flipkart, which delayed the joining dates of all new campus recruits by six months and offered to pay Rs 1.5 lakh as joining bonus.
Even after several requests from IITs and the Indian Institutes of Management, Flipkart hasn't changed its stance on reducing the delay or increasing the compensation. India's largest online retail platform maintained that it is committed to taking all trainees on board in December. ET reported last week that Flipkart may lose its day 1slot in the placement programme across leading IITs.
Brand strategy expert Harish Bijoor, CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults, said the student community weighs the worth of a company's word as reputation and if it postpones joining dates, its standing is suspect.
"Flipkart is a bellwether client of the current era of ecommerce companies. What Hindustan Unilever is to FMCG and what Infosys was to IT services, Flipkart is to ecommerce," said Bijoor.
"I do believe the brand is already affected by this furore. What's worse is that it is not Flipkart alone, but the entire industry of ecommerce and the startup world that bears the brunt of this image drubbing. It's temporary for sure and life will go on, but the scar is left behind for sure." Even other startups including Road-Runnr, Zimply Home Shopping, Click Labs and PepperTap have delayed joining dates or withdrawn job offers across IITs because of cost pressures and in some cases, closing of operations. Hopscotch and CarDekho have deferred offers at IIMs. "There are also instances of some startups reducing pay packages from what was initially promised," said Mohanty.
IITs have now told students to go ahead and consider job offers and interviews with other companies that have approached them including commerce firms Amazon, Paytm and Voonik.
At B-schools, the process is already under way. "We have had 30-35 companies approach us across sectors as diverse as consulting, FMCG and startups. Students have already started interviewing with them," said Sapna Agarwal, head of career development services at IIM Bangalore.
