IIM-A Lock Horns With Flipkart Over Delay In Campus Placements; The relation between India’s premier educational institutions like IIT, IIM and ecommerce startups have always been dicey. After Zomato was blacklisted by 6 IITs over their campus placement policies, its the turn of Flipkart to get some bad karma over their hiring policies.
This time, it’s IIM-Ahmedabad vs Flipkart, and the fight is turning uglier.
IIM-A’s Harsh Letter To Flipkart
Flipkart recently informed all newly hired IIM-Ahmedabad recruits that their joining dates have been postponed from June to December. Such sudden 6 month delay in joining has certainly shocked the students, and IIM-Ahmedabad has not taken it lightly.
IIM-Ahmedabad’s chairperson has written a strongly worded letter addressed to Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and human resources head Nitin Sethi.
The letter minced no words in criticizing Flipkart’s decision to postpone joining date by 6 months. The letter said, “Talented students fresh out of campus, on the eve of starting successful careers, now feel cheated.”
As per IIM-A, the students chose Flipkart over several other MNCs for placement, and this is certainly no right for them to ditch the students in the middle.
The letter said, “Our students hired by Flipkart rejected multiple opportunities that the campus had to offer and chose Flipkart over other well-reputed recruiters because of the strength of its brand.”
Rs 1.5 Lakh Compensation Is Unacceptable!
Flipkart has offered a compensation of Rs 1.5 lakh for this delay in joining; and this has again angered the management of IIM-A.
They are seeking full salary from day 1 of the promised joining date, and have literally rejected the compensation.
The letter also said, “The compensation of Rs 1.5 lakh being offered is utterly unacceptable. Compensation should be in the form of a monthly payment starting June and not as a lump sum as joining bonus or arrears.”
In a way, IIM-A has actually threatened Flipkart that this attitude will sour their relations with all B-schools in India, as they said, “Future engagement of Flipkart with B-school campuses is bound to get affected as a relationship based on mistrust and lack of transparency can never be mutually beneficial,”
As per available reports, Flipkart has promised to hire all recruited graduates in December, but has allegedly refused to increase the compensation.
If Flipkart is attempting to disrupt recruitment procedures by hiring developers based on their Nanodegree projects and Udacity profiles; they are also being accused of breaking promises made to the freshers, and delaying the advancement of their fresh careers due to ‘corporate restructuring process’.
Now, the question arises, is this delay due to rumors of a possible investment by Alibaba? We will need to wait till December for that.