Chennai, October 29: Indian Institute of Technology-Madras has recorded a gradual increase in number of pre-placement offers for the past three years with 130 students receiving it in the 2018-19 academic year. This was against 114 received last year.

Pre-placement offers (PPO) are offers that students receive after summer internships, while the actual placement season at most IITs begin December 1 every year.

During 2015-16, PPOs were 69, it was 73 in 2016-17 and 114 in 2017-18, according to an institute release. The trend has been attributed to the institute's "robust" internship programme and "excellent" performance of students during the programme. Institutes of Eminence: IIT Madras, Disappointed Over Denial of Tag, Writes to HRD Ministry.

Institute's Training and Placement Advisor Manu Santhanam said, "The good number of PPOs is hopefully indicative of a strong placement season. The steady increase over the years in PPOs also points to the value placed by recruiters on the internship programme."

The release said among 130 PPOs for this year, 61 per cent of offers are from core and R&D sector, while analytics, consulting and finance offered 19 per cent, Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) - 14 per cent and 6 per cent from information technology.

The companies that offered the highest number of offers are Qualcomm - 19 PPOs and Samsung Research (Noida, Delhi, Bangalore combined) - 16 and Microsoft - 9.