When placement season opened this year, the mood across engineering campuses was cautious. Recruiters were selective, students were pragmatic and conversations revolved more around stability than stratospheric pay. Then a Rs 2.5 crore package from IIT Hyderabad cut through the uncertainty.
Until now, the institute’s highest package hovered around Rs 1 crore, achieved in 2017. This year, another computer science student secured an offer of Rs 1.1 crore.
Who is Edward Nathan Varghese?
Edward Nathan Varghese, a 21-year-old final-year computer science student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IITH), has landed the highest package in the institute’s history. The offer came from Netherlands-based trading firm Optiver.
Born and raised in Hyderabad, Varghese later moved to Bengaluru, where he completed his schooling from Class 7 onwards. The confidence he carried into placements, he said, was built over years rather than weeks. From his first year at IIT Hyderabad, he immersed himself in competitive programming, eventually ranking among the top 100 coders in the country, a report by Times of India stated.
“That made a big difference. Along with that, the curriculum here allowed us to explore a wide range of courses. I always felt the IIT tag would bring companies to campus and that the market slowdown wouldn’t affect top profiles as much,” he further said.
Both his parents are engineers. During the Optiver internship, Varghese underwent two weeks of training followed by a six-week project designed to test both technical depth and decision-making under pressure. Of the two IITH students selected for the internship, he was the only one to receive a PPO.
Varghese will join Optiver as a software engineer at its Netherlands office from July. His entry point into the firm was a two-month summer internship, which he converted into a pre-placement offer. In fact, it was the only company he interviewed for this season, Times of India reported.
“This was the first and only interview. When my mentor told me they were extending an offer, I was thrilled. My parents were just as excited,” Varghese told TOI.
Overall placement metrics at IITH
Beyond headline numbers, overall placement metrics at IITH also showed a marked improvement. According to a Hindu Business Line report, average annual compensation rose by about 75% compared to last year, increasing from Rs 20.8 lakh in 2024 to Rs 36.2 lakh in 2025. In the first phase of placements, which concluded in December, students secured 24 international offers.
Among postgraduate students, 196 of the 650 registered candidates have been placed so far, with an average package of Rs 22 lakh. At the undergraduate level, around 62 per cent of the 487 registered students received job offers.
Highest domestic offer
The contrast over three years is stark. The highest package stood at Rs 90 lakh in 2023-24, dropped to Rs 66 lakh the following year and then surged to Rs 2.5 crore in 2025-26.
While Optiver topped the list of international offers, Databricks made the highest domestic offer at Rs 1.58 crore. Other prominent recruiters included Uber, Oracle, D. E. Shaw and Accenture, HBL reported.