IIT Madras conducts campus internship drive online

For the first time in its history, the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) has successfully conducted its Campus Internship Drive online, featuring several top Indian and global companies.

The first day of the internship drive was conducted online due to Covid-19 restrictions. The participating companies interviewed students over video conferencing platforms and offered internships for the summer of 2021.

An official release from IITM said 2020 also saw two international profiles for Internships - Rubrik’s Software Development, based in the U.S., and Jane Street’s Quantitative Researcher, Hong Kong, which provide the highest compensation.

Day One of this Internship Drive, conducted on August 11, alone saw the participation of 20 companies who made as many as 152 offers to Undergraduate Students.

“The last year’s figure was 147 offers made on Day One of 2019. The total number of internships offers made during the last academic year (2019-2020) was 554. Students get paid a stipend during their internship,” the statement said.

Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd. extended the maximum number of offers, 21 offers during Day One, while other top recruiters that offered internships include Google, Jane Street and Rubrik.

“We had requested companies to be flexible considering that several of our students were in remote and far-flung locations where Internet connectivity may not be as good as in urban locations. The collective efforts of internships student heads and their teams in collaboration with the companies who participated in this approach resulted in positive outcomes,” Prof. N.V. Ravi Kumar, Advisor (Internship), IIT Madras, said.

Kunal Gupta, Sourabh Thakur, and Omkar Thombre, Students’ Heads of the Internship Team, IIT Madras, said organising Day-1 was about overcoming the challenges imposed by the limited infrastructure of the students spread out in the various regions of the country and providing them with fair opportunity to secure an internship in their dream company.

“It took us months of planning, but we made it, and not only did we provide a seamless experience, but we also added new companies to our repertoire. We are glad that the online Day-1 was a huge success, and we thank all those made it possible,” they said.