Andela Now Aims To Invest In Andelans’ Startups

Andela, a company working to showcase the untapped potential in African tech talent and placing them in top tier US companies in need of experienced and skilled developers, is now going to be investing in its graduates’ startups.

When one might think Andela is just an home grooming place for developers and programmers and then get a job for their survival. Andela’s co-founder and COO, Christina Sass noted “the company has a broader agenda beyond simply connecting businesses with African-based tech talent — it eventually wants to inspire an entire tech ecosystem to spread across the continent”. This means fostering its developers choice of finding a successful path after wrapping up their course, which could include starting their own businesses, taking a more senior role at another tech company, or even coming to work for Andela itself, during the just concluded TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco event.

However, if starting a company is the developer’s next stop unlike getting a job, Andela is keen on joining in that train. Getting into Andela is competitive and selective just like a camel that wants to pass through a needle eye, which made CNN tagged Andela as “the startup that’s harder to get into than Harvard.” Sass said 45,000 applications had been received to gain access to its 200 software development positions. And making the by product of getting into Andela a four year commitment to the program, where engineers are paired with a company in need of remote workers.

Nowadays, Andela engineers have got to work with companies like IBM, Microsoft, Udacity and a host of other businesses. Looking at the competitiveness of finding ones way into Andela’s software development position, one might need to know the pros and cons of being selected into that position. In response to that, Sass stated that “from some 1,000 applicants in one of its recruitment cycles, only 75 are brought in for an in-person interview following their completion of a take-home test meant to showcase their logic, reasoning, and problem-solving skill, in the interview, candidates are vetted for things like their soft skills and how well their values’ match up with Andela’s mission”.

These businesses contract with Andela, which takes a cut of the fees, then uses the rest to pay the developers’ salaries. (And yes, that means its clients are gaining access to low-cost tech talent.) And as its developers complete their fellowship, the company will begin preparing them for what comes next. According to Sass, that could include moving on to start their own businesses. If the latter, Andela plans to invest, Sass noted. “We fully expect a subset of our developers to be launching their own companies, and we intend to help them incubate and invest in them,” she stated. “The long-term goal is that, after those four years, for them to be unleashed, to really spread and lead the spread of technology across the continent,” Sass said.

As the tech scene grows in Africa, Iyin’s former venture seems primed to have a close connection with some of the continent’s next startup entrepreneurs and founders. It already has tech campuses in Lagos, Nigeria and Nairobi, Kenya, and plans to expand to other regions like South Africa and Uganda in the future, Sass said.

It seems Andela is now re-inventing itself after Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder of Andela bid farewell to start a payment company called FlutterWave. Well, all the best for Andela and FlutterWave, besides much is expected from who much is given while ruminating on Mark Zuckerberg investment so far.