BENGALURU: IIT, MBA or engineers – who will steal the show this time?

This financial year, startup and e-com companies such as Flipkart, Ola, Oyo Rooms, Jabong, CarDekho.com, Shopclues and Bewakoof are in plan to hire more engineers.

Openings for engineers are presumed to be seen in operations, marketing, business finance, procurement, etc. Though MBAs are generally favored for these areas, but keeping cost cutting in preview this is a take from the company’s end.

Companies can save upto 5-6lakh every year if they hire an engineer in place of a MBA, reports Economic Times.

Also, in this tech bound startup culture, IITians are better options over MBA confirms HR managers.

Ola is in plan to hire almost 125IITians for non tech roles. Last year the same had hired only 20. The non tech roles include data analytics, corporate functions such as marketing and HR, business finance and procurement.

Amit Mathur, director and head of talent acquisition at leading taxi aggregator Ola Cabs shares, "IIT graduates are strong analytically and good with numbers. Hence, we approach them for non-tech roles, too."

Cardekho.com will double its number of recruitment from 20-30 last year. Umang Kumar, president of CarDekho comments, "The IITs have a lot of smart folks who do not want to get into coding and are looking for a different career path. Besides coders, we hire analysts. The numbers will double this year."

The scene at Jabong as explained by Ashu Malhotra comments, "We will need more engineers this year in non-tech/managerial functions like operations and marketing."

Prabhkiran Singh, co-founder of Bewakoof.com said, "I would anytime prefer an engineer fresh from an IIT or with two years of work experience than an engineer with two years of MBA."

Co-founder of Shopclues, Radhika Aggarwal confirms hiring of double IITians this year in non tech roles like analytics, site merchandising, monetisation, and category.

Snapdeal employed 50-75 IITians last year. This year, VP-HR Saurabh Nigam confirms "We will continue to hire students for analytics this year as well."

Flipkart did not share any comments about its employment plans.

Placement coordinator at IIT Bombay commented, "Startups are looking for people with good managerial skills in non-tech roles."

Babu Vishwanath, advisor - placements at IIT Madras said, "Start-ups have been telling us this year that they want to increase the number of hires in non-tech/managerial roles. We also expect an upward revision in the compensation being offered for these roles."

READ ALSO: 66 Percent Indians Keen To Work Abroad: Study
India Needs Rapid Expansion in Higher Education: Arvind Panagariya