iCollege’s acquisition of The Hacking School will enable it to introduce its programs to India, and scale The Hacking School’s bootcamps globally
India-based coding bootcamp services provider The Hacking School has been acquired by Australian education company iCollege, according to a statement released by the company yesterday.
The deal, negotiations for which were underway for about a year, will enable iCollege to enter the Indian education market through Australian-accredited programs, as well as scale The Hacking School’s bootcamp-style training to its global locations, the statement said.
A listed Australian education company, iCollege had commenced operations in India in 2019 through its student recruitment agency iStudy Australia.
With this acquisition, The Hacking School’s bootcamps will be added to iCollege’s program portfolio, and bootcamp graduates will receive a diploma certification in addition to international job opportunities, the statement added.
“This partnership will help us expand our reach and deliver our expertise to regions who have been asking for this for a really long time,” The Hacking School CEO Sadiya Sabera said in the statement.
The Hacking School is a coding bootcamp founded by Meraj Faheem in 2013. The company offers a flagship 13-week intensive full-stack web development programs, in addition to programs in full-stack digital marketing and blockchain.
The company provides training in coding, web development, mobile development, blockchain, UI/UX, and growth hacking through both offline and online modes, the statement noted. The Hacking School caters to the Indian market as well as 15 cities across the Australia, the U.A.E and the U.S.
“By the time an engineering student graduates, a bootcamper from The Hacking School would have already gained 3+ years of experience, delivered not just ROI, but also value for time and money, and would likely be making the decision to hire an engineering graduate or not,” Faheem noted in the statement.
The Hacking School had earlier announced plans of extending its bootcamps to colleges and engineering institutes for an integrated curriculum targeted at developing an industry-ready workforce, the statement noted.
The company also plans to grow its school-level programs through its kids.code.in initiative, a real-time hands-on learning platform, the statement noted.
“With all the buzz around deep tech like AI, ML, Blockchain, coding forms the basis. Without coding, all of that will be a far-fetched dream. As most things are not born from luck or savant level talent, it all comes down to training if you want to compete with the pace of the world,” Sabera noted in the statement.
“We believe there will be a huge shift in demand from degree to skills and we need to focus on that and prepare our masses, i.e. focus on things that matter. With all this, one thing seems super clear–degrees are going to be the new age dinosaurs – extinct,” Sabera added.
Coding has received added focus in the Indian education landscape of late, after the country’s newly announced National Education Policy mandated that coding be taught to students starting from Grade 6.
India continues to face a shortage of qualified coders, with one study finding that less than 5% of the country’ engineering graduates could meet minimum requirements for a programming job.
While this represents a significant need that bootcamp operators such as The Hacking School can address, coding bootcamps are still to be formalized in the Indian education system through regulation and pedagogical benchmarks.
Header image by Christopher Gower on Unsplash
