New Delhi: India's premier engineering institutes, the IITs, have managed to place on an average 200 across seven campuses, an increase of around 100 percent compared to same time last year. "Last year, when companies were cutting down on jobs, despite faring the best amongst other institutes we were able to place one-and-half times less the number of students placed this year till now," says Prof. Ravi Sinha, Chairperson, Placement, IIT-Bombay, according to Economic Times. If IIT-Bombay has placed 250 students(that's one-and-half times more than last year), IIT-Kanpur has placed 200 students in 30 companies, IIT-Roorkee's 150 students got job offers this season compared to just 70 students in 2008 while IIT-Madras has placed 170 students compared to 130 in the corresponding period last year. The major recruiters from these campuses were Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu which recruited an average of 20 students from across the different IITs, Oracle and Credit Suisse, 15 and 13 students respectively and Indian Oil Corporation signed on around 10 students. Till now highest payer has been Tower Research Capital which recruited nine students and has paid a CTC of 22 lakh (this can go up to 43 lakh if performance bonus is added). Schlumberger which has been the highest paymaster till last year ( 36 lakh CTC) is yet to come on campus. At IIT Kharagpur, which has gone into placements with some 1,341 students across undergraduate and post graduate streams, over 200 students have been made job offers so far. Of these, 103 have been bagged by B.Tech and B.Arch students. "Over 25 percent of them have been placed so far," says IIT Kharagpur Prof-in-Charge Training and Placements SK Srivastava. In 2008 when the market was going through a slowdown phase, all these institutes were able to place around 70-80 percent students by the end of the placement process which ran into June this year(2009) despite being among the best technology schools in the country. IIT-Madras has seen 40 companies visiting and a major recruiter has been Credit Suisse. The highest package offered till now at IIT-Madras is 26 lakh and the lowest 7 lakh which is higher than last year's average package of 5 lakh. This year a new profile that students are interested in is clean energy and efficient technology and hence companies like NTPC and Modile Thermal are expected to get good response when they visit the campus in the coming days. Prof. PK Jain, Chairperson, Placement, however explains the trend with a cautious approach. "This year its been really good, still we have not reached the levels of 2006-07 when students had several options to choose from." Last year about 10 percent of the students opted for start-ups. This year the figure might dip as lot of large companies have made a comeback to the campus.