Rs 1.2 crore salary for IIIT-B graduate, 95 per cent placed

Bengaluru: Students from the second graduating batch of the integrated MTech programme at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) stole the show with various achievements and lucrative placements in global companies. The 18th Convocation Ceremony of the Institute was held here on  Sunday.

While the All-Rounder of the Year medallist Kumaresh Krishnan is flying to Harvard University to pursue his doctorate in computational biology, Paliwal Aditya Sanjay has hit the headlines after getting placed at Google’s AI research wing with an annual package of Rs 1.2 crore.

A trained mridangam artist and a basketball and badminton player, Kumaresh Krishnan, told Deccan Chronicle that handling academics and his interests was never a problem, as he had been doing it since his school days. “Playing any sport and practising mridangam has been a daily activity which keeps me refreshed, helping me to stay focused on my studies,” he said. A resident of JP Nagar, with his roots in Madurai of Tamil Nadu, Kumaresh said that he developed interest in computational biology during the course at IIIT-B, though he was not a biology student at school. “The buzz over artificial intelligence and machine learning, which inspires systems to think like humans, and the scope of modelling, formulising and mathematising human thought and behaviour fascinated me and encouraged me to take up research in this field,” he said.

While 95% of students from the graduating batch have already been placed, 22-year old Paliwal Aditya Sanjay, who was awarded the Institute Medal for Contribution to IIIT-B Professional Life, is the highest paid graduate from the 2018 batch. Sanjay, who hails from Mumbai, said that he is looking forward to learning more at Google, New York, where he’ll be working from July 16. He landed the job as the team from the institute, which included Simran Dojania and Shyam K.B., was one of the finalists at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest(ICPC), which had over 46,000 students representing 3,098 varsities from 111 countries.  

Devarsh Umashankar and Suvarna Krishnakumar to get jobs at Daimler AG Headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany to work in the R&D wing of Mercedez-Benz. The duo was part of the team which represented the country at the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona. Devarsh from Ballari was also selected for an internship at the University of Konstanz during his third year. He hoped that he could be an entrepreneur providing jobs to others after getting the right exposure in cutting edge technologies from global leaders. “I am lucky enough to get exposed to tech aspects of the industry. But to become a successful entrepreneur, getting exposed to the business side of it is equally essential and that is what I’m looking forward to,” he said.

Krishnakumar, who hails from Karimnagar, Telangana, had a piece of advice for aspiring professionals. “Keep trying hard, applying for various internships and opportunities. The process of getting through is as important as the final result. Only perseverance, strong self-belief and continued effort can let one taste success,” he said.