Business of the Month: CODED

An interview with the first coding academy and bootcamp in Kuwait

Khadeeja Narangoli
Nov 3 · 4 min read

This month we are excited to introduce our business of the month for November: CODED- the first coding academy and bootcamp in Kuwait. We had a chance to talk to Hashim Behbehani, one of the founding partners of CODED and Tareq Al Salem, the Operations Engineer, to talk about CODED and their experience working with Tap payments for their payment needs.

Founded in the summer of 2015 by Hashim Behbehani and Ahmad Marafi, CODED introduces people in the MENA region and beyond to the world of programming through their offline bootcamps and online platform- Barmej- that features different coding courses in Arabic. Since launching CODED has already raised $1.3 million in Pre-Series A funding and we, for one, were very excited to see what’s next for CODED?

‘CODED’ is the first coding bootcamp in Kuwait. What was your inspiration behind setting up CODED?

CODED was started out of a personal need to learn coding. However when we saw a larger than anticipated interest from the market in Kuwait, we decided to start CODED as a way to spread and advocate the importance of learning coding in Kuwait and the Arab world. We started CODED in 2015 and kept expanding over the years with a range of products and objectives that would help us get to our goal of reaching a wider audience.

Do you have any advice for beginners looking to learn coding?

The current century can be described as the century of information. As we enter its third decade, access to all sorts of information, educational or otherwise is becoming easier by the minute. There are no longer any excuse for not looking up anything on the internet whenever needed, from historical facts to cooking recipes. The same applies to education and learning new things; akin to learning a new language in the age of technology- everyone in the region has the resources to go online for 30 minutes to an hour a day to learn a new programming language. My advice is for everyone to take advantage of how easy it is to go online and gain access to new knowledge and coursework, whether it be in coding or something else. From there you can know whether programming is for you or not, and if so, you can take yourself to the next level with our intensive bootcamps!

What challenges did you face when you first set up CODED?

The biggest challenge we faced, especially in the early days, was trying to convince people who had an interest in learning coding as to why the Bootcamp is ideal for them. Especially since a Bootcamp takes over your life, for a good 3–4 months. This was and continues to be a challenging feat because even if someone was interested in learning programming, they tend to get intimidated by the format. We were able to overcome it by educating people about the benefits of such an intensive program through our marketing and communication. A bootcamp format is ideal for someone looking to go from a beginner to a professional coder in a short period of time; especially since momentum in the world of code is critical.

What made you choose Tap payments as your payment processor?

What do you use goCollect for?

As a private academy, CODED provides the service of educational programs and bootcamps around the world of tech, with a focus on coding and programming. To collect payments for these programs, we use goCollect on a continuous basis with invoices ranging from smaller amounts all the way to the thousands, depending on the program and the audience.

How did goCollect simplify the payment process for you?

In 2019, it is imperative to have the ability to streamline all of your B2C transactions. Tap provided us this service with very satisfactory results. Being able to mass-send bills to multiple people at the same time and being able to easily request refunds are just two of the simple features that make the day to day operations a lot easier for us.

One of our favorite features in the Tap platform is the ability to check the status of a payment link- knowing when the payment link was sent, when it was opened for the first time by the customer, whether the payment transaction failed and how many times the client tried to process their payments are very useful to learn the habits of our customer base.

What’s next for Coded?

In the short term, CODED’s future plans include expanding our mission and offering educational services to a wider audience in Kuwait, both in terms of kids through CODED Juniors and other age segments including high-schoolers, fresh university graduates, young professionals and beyond. We want to provide them with the best platform to learn coding.

Some of the brilliant minds involved in CODED

If you’re considering learning to code yourself, you can check out their different bootcamps and workshops available on their website for CODED, CODED Juniors and you can also check out their online courses at Barmej.

Tap Payments

Tap Payments is in the business of simplifying online payment acceptance for businesses and consumers in the MENA region.

Khadeeja Narangoli

Written by

International business graduate turned teacher turned business development strategist @ Tap Payments. A contextual chameleon. Always craving something sweet.

Tap Payments

Tap Payments is in the business of simplifying online payment acceptance for businesses and consumers in the MENA region.

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