21-year-old IIT Hyderabad student gets job offer worth Rs 2.5 crore, highest ever for the institute
A final year student of IIT Hyderabad has created history at the institute by securing an international job offer worth Rs 2.5 crore amid a cautious recruitment season. Here are all the details.
At a time when campus hiring has slowed down and packages at top engineering colleges are being closely monitored, the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad has quietly rewritten its own placement record. The 21-year-old computer science student from the institute has bagged an annual package of Rs 2.5 crore, the highest ever given to an IITH graduate since the establishment of the campus in 2008.
IIT Hyderabad student gets job offer worth Rs 2.5 crore, highest for the institute
The offer has come to Edward Nathan Varghese, a final year B.Tech in Computer Science Engineering student, who will join global trading firm Optiver as a software engineer. Varghese will start full-time in this role based in the Netherlands from July this year. What makes this offer even more interesting is that it has come through a pre-placement offer followed by a summer internship rather than a long list of campus interviews.
According to the institute, this is the largest package any IITH student has received so far, surpassing the previous record of nearly Rs 1 crore set in 2017. Till now, offers in the range of Rs 60-90 lakh were considered extraordinary for a relatively young IIT.
After going through a short training phase following a project, Varghese converted a two-month internship at Optiver into a PPO. While two IITH students were selected for the internship programme, he was the only one to receive a full-time offer. The work will be based at the firm’s Netherlands office, making it another international placement for the institute.
Describing the moment he found out about PPO, Varghese told TOI, “It was the first and only company I interviewed for. I was very happy when my mentor indicated that the company would make me an offer. My parents were also happy.”
Born and brought up in Hyderabad, Varghese later moved to Bengaluru for his schooling from class 7 to class 12. He credits a mix of early preparation and campus exposure for helping him navigate the process, even in a year when hiring sentiment has been cautious. “I knew that the IIT tag would attract companies to our campus and the current job market impact would be minimal,” he said, adding that his long-standing interest in competitive programming played an important role. “Right from the first year of engineering, I was into competitive programming and was among the top 100 in the country. This also helped me crack interviews.”
The result has not only thrown light on an individual student but has also raised the overall placement narrative at IIT Hyderabad this year. Another computer science student from the institute bagged a package of Rs 1.1 crore, further exceeding the upper limit of offers on the campus.
Beyond the headline packages, the 2025 placement season has marked a strong rebound for IITH in the broader context. The average package has reportedly increased by nearly 75 percent compared to last year, from Rs 20.8 lakh in 2024 to Rs 36.2 lakh this year. In the first phase of placements, which concluded in December, students received 24 international offers.
Institute officials say the focus has been on ensuring consistent results across branches, rather than simply chasing record-breaking numbers. “More than the package, our aim is to ensure that any student who wants to get a job gets a good offer,” said Mayur Vaidya, faculty-in-charge of the Career Services office. He said the institute is giving early slots to PSUs and core engineering firms to improve opportunities for non-technical students.
Placement activity is expected to continue in the second phase as well, especially for postgraduate students. So far, 196 out of total 650 PG students have received an average package offer of Rs 22 lakh. Among the graduates, about 62 per cent of the 487 students registered have got jobs.
