InterviewBit, a Surge 01 start-up, that recently launched a very successful advanced online computer science program for college graduates and young professional software engineers, called Scaler Academy, has raised $20M in one of the largest Series A financings in the education sector. The funding was led by Sequoia India, Tiger Global and Global Founders Capital among others.

The company will use these funds to scale up their enrollment and launch in new markets, while also investing in their curriculum and their live teaching product to enhance the student-teacher experience.

The program was massively over-subscribed - receiving over 200,000 applications in the nine months since launch. 2,000 students are currently enrolled in the program – and they have already graduated and placed several hundred software engineers at top tech companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Samsung, among others. 

Anshuman Singh, Co-Founder, InterviewBit said, “A lot of young engineers don’t always have access and exposure to the relevant technical skills or recruitment processes of global companies. Our mission is to bridge that gap and help them grow in their careers.”

A recent National Employability Report Engineers 2019 report highlighted that the employability of Indian engineers continues to be as low as 20%. With that in mind, Scaler Academy’s meticulously structured 6-month online program effectively enhances the coding skills of professionals by creating a modern curriculum with exposure to the latest technologies. The students enrolled in Scaler Academy are mentored and taught by tech leaders and subject matter experts working with leading organisations including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix, among others. 

“Scaler Academy was incubated earlier this year inside InterviewBit to help young professionals and students learn advanced programming skills. Within a short period of time, it has made a huge impact on the capabilities of our students, who spend, on average 4-5 hours/day on our online and live learning platform. We are very excited that our work results in a step function change in the careers of our students - and so we have rebranded it to Scaler Academy, a platform for pursuing excellence in software programming”, said Abhimanyu Saxena, Co-Founder, InterviewBit. 

More than 4 million students get enrolled in engineering colleges in the country in a given year. Out of this, only 3.4% of engineers are considered employable for software engineering product roles and between 1 to 5% are deemed employable in AI, mobile app development (android and iOS) and web development. In such a scenario, Scaler Academy is adept at providing the perfect platform to software engineers, connecting them with industry leaders who can help them bridge the gap between their theoretical knowledge base and industry-specific skills.

“There is a huge global scarcity of high-quality software talent, and we have experienced it firsthand across the portfolio. As a result, we were very excited about Anshuman and Abhimanyu’s vision to build an advanced online computer science program”, said Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore. “We were very fortunate to work closely with them to launch Scaler Academy during Surge 01 and are thrilled with the early results. Sequoia India is excited to partner with them to help realise Scaler’s full potential”, he added. 

“We are excited to invest in and partner with Interviewbit. We believe the company helps students learn skills that can enable them to achieve greater professional success.” Scott Shleifer, Partner at Tiger Global.