Hi,
It's a great course to have in, and chance to join the strongest Alumni network of IIT Madras which comprises of nearly 45000+ successful people who graduated from India's top notch engineering institute.
It's a perfect blend of programming and mathematics. You would be having chance to learn Machine Learning from India's Machine learning champ Prof. Balaram Ravindran.
Believe me once you have done courses like Python, Machine Learning, Statistics , Deep Learning, Data Structures and Algorithms from IIT Madras than I can strongly say no one is going to stop you to become a Software Development Engineer or a Data Scientist at some of the leading software companies.
Although it's a new course so on campus opportunities will be less and even if You tries to get from on campus than competition is going to be very intense. As there are various talented students and Engineering degree is given weightage.
But if You try off campus than You will have so many opportunities as a Software Development Engineer. I have seen people with MCA, BCA degree from normal college working with top Companies like Microsoft. So don't worry it's IIT Madras degree so You will be having great opportunity to grow and connect to network.
Various Software Companies that hires are :-
the list is very long, etc etc.
As for the placements, its highly unlikely and with negligible chances that IIT Madras will allow online degree students to sit in regular placement process of regular students. They will create a separate process for placements, and as per IITM, its in developing phase.
But be sure that placements process of online students will cater sufficiently. In my opinion, it will be an online portal where students can upload their CV/resume and companies will call the students for interview by shortlisting, similar like online job portal but only available to online degree students.
Hope this helps.
Good luck.
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