Bangalore-based hotel booking platform Stayzilla could soon be facing a ban from the recruitment platform of IITs after it revoked nine job offers from IIT Kharagpur.
13 students were selected by Stayzilla from IIT Kharagpur during the campus recruitment. Four students were selected for technical and design roles and nine for non-technical roles.
The All IITs Placement Committee (AIPC) is looking into the matter and may take action against Stayzilla. Prof Debasis Deb, the chairman of career development centre at IIT Kharagpur, stated that any action against the company will be a unanimous decision by all IITs. It may even include banning the company from placements across IITs.
“Stayzilla has not honoured its commitment. They have informed us that they are revoking the offers, but have not given the reason. We have sought an explanation from them and will discuss the issue at the next AIPC meeting in August,” added Professor Deb.
Recently, Flipkart and Roadrunnr have also delayed the joining of campus hires. While Flipkart gave an assurance to provide internship with a stipend of INR 50,000 per month, Roadrunnr agreed to provide joining by September.
Initially, the offer included a fixed compensation of Rs 12 lakhs and performance-linked the variable pay of Rs 2 lakhs. They were also eligible for employee stock ownership plan (ESOP)s worth Rs 6 lakhs. However, on March 31, four months before joining, Stayzilla revised the offer by cutting 30% from fixed and variable pay.
When the students contacted the company asking for accommodation and other formalities, they were informed that the offer has been revoked and that the CDC has been informed. It was recognised later that it has revoked offers of non-technical roles.
Anitha Ravindra, HR manager at Stayzilla, however, explained the revoking decision as a consequence of a recent reorganisation.
Ravindra said, “During this reorganisation, we found that the proportion of product manager to engineers to designers was much skewed towards the product. We also had a lot of freshers and near freshers with not enough senior level experienced people to guide them. Therefore it was decided not to exacerbate the condition by getting more freshers as product managers.”
Stayzilla is not alone as other e-commerce ventures like Babajob, Nearbuy, Hopscotch and Ivis International, have also delayed the induction of at least 50 students from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad (ISB). The ISB director of career advancement services, Uday Virmani, had even sent a letter to the class of 2016 stating that such firms will be blacklisted for at least a year and will need to pay students.
Following repeated instances of delayed campus hirings and revoked joining offers, placement heads of 16 IITs decided to blacklist 6 startups from participating in campus placement for the academic year 2016-17. The list includes companies like etailer Zimply, healthcare startup Portea and grocery portal PepperTap. Last year, Zomato was kicked out after a spat with IIT Delhi on denying day one slot as the recruiter.
