IITians with entrepreneurial ambitions skip campus placements

There are IIT-Bombay students who would jump at the chance to work with Facebook, Oracle and Microsoft, for crore-plus packages. But Vaibhav Antil is not one of them. The mechanical engineering student chose not to sit through IIT's campus placements, and is now preparing to launch his own start-up. His idea is to bridge the gap between the music the customers want and the music that businesses like pubs, bars and restaurants play. With BC Jukebox, his undertaking, customers can use a cellphone app to select what songs to play from a library of lakhs of songs at the venue itself.

Antil is part of IIT's deferred placement programme (DPP), which has registered 12 students who wish to set up their own enterprises this year.

Meritorious pupils can get themselves enrolled with DPP, which allows them to step into entrepreneurship. If the venture misfires, the students are eligible for placements in the next two years.

Another DPP student, Mechanical Engineering student Abhijit Patil did the same, and is working in the field of 3D printing and 3D scanning.

"We saw students applying last year and that is when we decided to really strengthen and define a pro-student system," said Mohak Mehta, placement manager, IIT-B.

The DPP applicant is still a rarity at IIT, which saw 700 campus placements so far, and is expecting a thousand by December 18. The students however will be required to furnish testimonials, standard statement of purpose, viable product prototype and recommendation letters from professors, investors and incubation centers to back their proposal.