Meet Edward Nathan Varghese, IIT Hyderabad Student Who Landed the Institute’s Highest-Ever Rs 2.5 Crore Package

• Edward Nathan Varghese gets IIT Hyderabad's highest placement offer of Rs 2.5 crore
• He will join Optiver in the Netherlands as a software engineer from July
• IIT Hyderabad's average placement package rose 75% to Rs 36.2 lakh in 2025.

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Edward Nathan Varghese, a final-year computer science engineering student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IITH), has secured a job offer worth Rs 2.5 crore during the 2025 placement season. This is the highest placement package recorded by the institute since it was established in 2008.

The offer was made by Optiver, a Netherlands-based global trading firm, where Varghese will join as a software engineer from July. The appointment came after he converted a two-month summer internship into a pre-placement offer (PPO). According to IIT Hyderabad, the previous highest package at the institute stood at around Rs 1 crore, offered in 2017.

Varghese, 21, told The Times of India that Optiver was the only company he interviewed with during placements. “This was the first and only company I interviewed for. I was ecstatic when my mentor indicated that the firm would be extending me an offer. So were my parents,” he said.

Born and raised in Hyderabad, Varghese later moved to Bengaluru, where he completed his schooling from Class 7 to Class 12. Despite a broader slowdown in hiring across sectors, he said he remained confident about placement outcomes. “I knew that the IIT tag would draw companies to our campus and that the effect of the present job market would be minimal,” he said.

He also credited his early interest in competitive programming for his success. “Since first year of engineering, I was into competitive programming and among the top 100 in the country. That too helped me crack the interview, along with the curriculum that gave us the option to do a wide range of courses. I was lucky to get a PPO,” Varghese said.

As part of the Optiver internship programme, two students were selected, but Varghese was the only one to receive a full-time job offer. The internship included two weeks of training followed by a six-week project. He will be based at Optiver’s Netherlands office.

Apart from academics, Varghese has taken on several leadership roles at IIT Hyderabad. As per his LinkedIn profile, he served as Overall Head at the Office of Career Services, where he led a team of eight student managers and nearly 250 student coordinators. Before that, he worked as an Internship Cell Coordinator for close to 11 months.

In terms of academic achievements, Varghese secured an All India Rank (AIR) of 1100 in JEE Main and AIR 558 in JEE Advanced in 2022. He also appeared for the Common Admission Test (CAT) in 2025 and scored a 99.96 percentile, securing rank 120.

The 2025 placement season has shown improved results overall at IIT Hyderabad. The average package rose by around 75 per cent compared to the previous year, increasing from Rs 20.8 lakh in 2024 to Rs 36.2 lakh in 2025. During Phase 1 of placements, which concluded in December, students received 24 international offers.