Startups
StartupsReuters

Campus hiring by e-commerce firms at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) has fallen this year. The e-commerce firms have made only 54 job offers to students at IIM-B, compared to 68 last year.

Surprisingly, Snapdeal, one of the top three online retailers in India, did not recruit any student at IIM-B this time. Last year, it had given 17 offers, emerging as the top recruiter at the institute in the e-commerce space.

India's largest online retailer Flipkart made 11 offers this year and Amazon hired 16 students, The Financial Express reported.

"The frenzy that was there for the last couple of years in this sector is definitely getting moderated and it is visible. Companies would try to cut down cost in every possible aspect, as cost becomes an important driver when they look at profitability at this stage," Raja Lahiri, partner at consultancy Grant Thornton India, told the daily.

Uber, Ola Cabs, Paytm, Urban Ladder, AskmeBazaar, Hopscotch, and CarTrade were the other major e-commerce firms that conducted campus recruitment at IIM-B.

However, an IIM official, requesting anonymity, told the FE that students at the institute were cautioned over accepting offers from consumer Internet firms. In the December quarter last year, firms like FoodPanda, Tinyowl, Housing.com and others had cut jobs massively amid escalating costs and poor demand for their services.

"Earlier we were very excited about the new opportunities coming up, but after recent examples of how start-ups tackled employees while winding up has left us thinking. Not that we are averse to working with e-commerce companies, but we are treading cautiously," he said.