IIT boy Abishek Pant from Pune lands Rs 2-crore dream job in Google

PUNE: City youth Abhishek Pant, a final-year computer science student of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, has bagged a job with a whopping Rs 2-crore annual package, including stock option, at Google Inc.

The 22-year-old, who finished a three-month internship at Google California earlier this year, went through another rigorous round of interviews before being absorbed into the design solutions cell. A city topper in the CBSE Std X exams, Pant was born and brought up in the US before his family shifted to Pune in 2006. He will now return to the US to pursue his career. 

When the family moved to Pune, his parents were quite worried about how he would adapt to the Indian education system. Their main challenge was to convince Pant about the need to sit through three-hour exams. Pant, however, responded well to his parents' efforts and focused on his studies. The result was evident when he secured 97.6% marks in Std X to make his parents and his teachers at Delhi Public School proud. Pant said, "The journey from Pune to Kharagpur and Kharagpur to Google Mount View in California has been quite exciting. I had a great experience working there as an intern. A job offer is the icing on the cake." 

He had to initially clear two rounds of technical interviews over the phone for the internship. "As part of the process, I had to do coding in a Google document. I was further interviewed by the project manager. I cleared the third interview as well, and my internship began in May." At the end of the internship, Pant was offered the job, for which he had to go through another set of interviews. He will join the company in September next year. 

He has not been assigned any project as yet, but will work with the design solutions team on the best way to solve problems raised by users. "I am looking forward to working on new and interesting engineering challenges, and to working with a smart and talented team," he said.

Besides work, Pant is also looking forward to the great variety of food on offer on the company's premises. He said, "Google offers employees tasty, healthy and free breakfast, lunch and dinner from a wide variety of cuisines such as American, Mexican, South American, Japanese and Italian. They even have a dedicated Indian cafeteria. One of my activities during the internship was to try out all of these cuisines."

Shantanu Das, assistant registrar at the career development centre, IIT-Kharagpur, said this pre-placement offer was a great opportunity for Pant. "We have had placements from Google and Microsoft this year, besides other placements in Amazon, Deutsche Bank and AdHoc, among others. There have been offers in the range of Rs 19 lakh to Rs 30 lakh per annum," Das added. 

Sources in IIT-Kharagpur said that it would not be possible to say whether the package offered to Pant was among the highest offered to their students. They said the institute has stopped looking at the annual package amounts students receive, as it tends to shift students' focus from education to the remuneration instead.