NEW DELHI: The Make in India campaign dominated the first phase of placement season at the leading Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the country.Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative along with the efforts of the institutes to give core companies early slots coupled with a conscious choice made by students to pick core companies over fat pay packages offered by non-core ones ended up with more engineering students joining core companies this year.At IIT-Delhi, for instance, about 510 students of the 850 who took the placements this year preferred core companies compared with last year’s 350 students who joined such organisations. What’s more, four of the eight students at IIT-Delhi who got crore-plus salary offers from international companies opted to work for companies in India, mostly in the core sector.This year, for the first time, two IITs —Bombay and Roorkee — pushed core companies to early slots. So far, most of the engineering institutes used to give early slots on the basis of the size of pay packages.“The higher the salary offer, the better the slot, but this year we decided to change this,” said professor NP Padhy, IIT-Roorkee’s placement-incharge. It has received 225 core job offers so far compared to 150 till December last year.Many core sector companies visited campuses for the first time this year.At IIT-Kharagpur, companies such as Bajaj Auto , Mercedes Benz Research and Development, Wrig Nanosystems, Rolls-Royce India and Toyo Engineering Corporation made their debut visits.While at IIT-Bombay, core companies including Triveni Turbines, Sony Energy Devices Corporation and KLA Tencor visited for the first time. General Motors Godrej , App-Dynamics, Mercedes-Benz , Bajaj Auto, Escorts Group were some of the key recruiters who came for the first time to the Kanpur campus.“Students are surely bitten by the Make in India bug, as one can see from the kind of offers they are accepting. Core companies are popular this placement season with almost 60% of them opting for core,” said IIT-Delhi’s professor-in-charge for training and placement Shashi Mathur.The institute also tried to sensitise students about core companies instead of jumping at big offers from non-core ones which did not provide good job profiles.This time, the institute also spoke to core companies about sponsoring students for higher studies after a year or two of their joining. “Most core companies are ready to sponsor students for higher studies,” said Mathur.Typically, it is the size of the pay packets that help students to decide on a job offer. Traditionally, consulting, finance, technology and ecommerce companies form majority of the companies that come on Day 1 and offer upwards of Rs 20 lakh per annum.Professor Sudhir Kumar Barai, head of Career Development Centre at IIT-Kharagpur, said, “The remuneration in the core sectors initially may seem less but evens out in the long run. We are seeing many students investing their initial time at core companies.” Last year, in the entire placement season till May, a total of over 80 core firms visited IIT-Bombay, while this time (in only a month), in the first phase of placement, over 90 core firms have paid a visit.“We are expecting more core firms to visit in the second phase,” said a person in the placement cell. The jump in the number of core companies visiting this IIT is likely to be over 40% over last year. The salaries offered by core companies range anywhere between Rs 7 lakh and Rs 15 lakh per annum.“We have promoted core firms and tech core firms this year as we have upgraded their slots for recruitment. For instance, Tata Steel Airbus came on Day 1 and made 20 offers, and students have shown great response,” said a person at IIT-Bombay placement cell.Students at IIT-Kharagpur received about 400 offers from core companies in phase 1 against 300 last year. The number of core companies also jumped from 21 last year to 65 this year.At IIT-Kharagpur, five students from the department of Aerospace Engineering gave the Day 1 placement a miss. “All 5 of them got placed in core function of aerospace in Airbus, Honeywell and Rolls-Royce,” said Barai.Komal Kumari, one among the five students who got placed in a core company, said, “I was at one point swayed by lucrative prospects of noncore offers. I tried preparing for consultancy, but in less than two days I was sure that I would never get the same amount of satisfaction in this job as I would in a core job.”Core companies such as Bajaj Auto, Mercedes Benz Research and Development, Kepler Cannon came for the first time among other core firms. IIT-Kanpur received the highest offers of 570 from core companies this time from 210 companies.“This year, we had specifically focused on a few industry segments like automobile, and consequently there has been a 100% rise in number of firms from this sector compared to last year,” said a person at the IIT-Kanpur placement cell.“Make in India dovetails perfectly with our goals, future expansion plans are being aligned as per this initiative, thereby promoting the national agenda of infrastructure development, 100 smart cities and housing for all by 2022.Infusing fresh talent from Indian engineering campuses will ensure a robust mix of millennials to balance our experienced engineering talent base,” said Rachna Mukherjee, chief human resources officer, Schneider Electric India.