iCollege acquires majority stake in Hyderabad-based The Hacking School

TheHackingSchool.com, India’s First Coding Bootcamp, announced merger with iCollege Ltd, an Australia based education company. TheHackingSchool.com is founded by Meraj Faheem, a Hyderabad based serial entrepreneur. 

This merger will bring iCollege to India and also take the bootcamp style training to multiple sectors in the majority of the locations worldwide where they operate. TheHackingSchool.com is known for their flagship 13 week long intensive classroom program on web development.

Speaking about the startup, Meraj Faheem, Founder, The Hacking School explained, “In less than 4 months, our graduates go on to build products that an average engineering student doesn’t in 4 years of college. 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.”

“iCollege and The Hacking School is a perfect combination to future proof careers for the millions of young Indians who graduate every year without an employable skill set,” added Ashish Katta, Managing Director, iCollege Ltd.

“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,” commented Sadiya Sabera, CEO, The Hacking School.

Ashish Katta, Managing Director, iCollege calls this collaboration, “A big win towards eliminating the back row in higher education.”

Founded in 2013 by Meraj Faheem, The Hacking School is an immersive, modern approach to teaching full-stack web and mobile software development via code.in. The number of The Hacking School powered programs have skyrocketed from a single course offering at their Hyderabad location to Australia, UAE and USA, the Company said.

“As technology becomes more important in our lives, just having a diverse group of tech people isn’t going to be enough, it’s about having a say in the future of technology. I want to give India what it actually needs. We need creators, product developers. If you don’t create product developers, you will only have people who will imagine products created by someone else and until then you’ll never be a superpower. For you to become a superpower you have to create something! Having worked with the Government of Telangana as an Innovation fellow and that sense of giving our country, our state, it’s own product that will make the country proud – that sense has become stronger,” said Meraj, Founder at The Hacking School.

Meraj proclaimed in an interview with The Indian Express, “Online bootcamp was on the cards always- lockdown or no lockdown. Modern day problems require modern solutions, the way we learn is going to change regardless. All the changes we see are simply being accelerated as a result of this pandemic. The flexibility to schedule your class, choose the program of your choice and 1:1 live interaction with a mentor, is ensuring the outcomes look great. The COVID pandemic crisis has additionally proven to be rather an opportunity to remind ourselves of the skills students need in this unpredictable world such as informed decision making, creative problem solving, and perhaps above all, adaptability. To ensure these skills remain a priority for all students, Flexibility must be incorporated with our educational systems. While we have learned in the recent weeks that social distance is a decent method to flatten an infection curve, virtual interaction/collaboration could be the key to powerful yet effective online pedagogy. Online could be the new normal, only time could tell.”

“India is a country of more than a billion people. To ensure our talent is well respected on the world map, and not just treated as cheap labour, we need to lace them up with skills that are not just future proof, but inventors of the future. 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.” emphasized Sadiya Sabera, CEO. 

Sadiya commented: “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. Meraj adds ” I aim at creating an enormous pool of employable, national and international tech talent. Coding is the new literacy, it’s the language of the present. I just want a coder in every home. Is that a lot to ask? I don’t think so.”

“Developers play a key part in growing the tech ecosystem, innovation and economy at large,” says Mohammed Afzal, Head of Products at The Hacking School. “We take a different approach. We engage with their existing interests and help them make something they want to. We aim to give them the tools they need to launch their programming careers and release them back to the local community.” 

AN

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