ImpactAlpha, February 26 – Budapest-based coding school Codecool has raised €3.5 million in Series B funding from Lead Ventures and Portfolion.
Forty percent of the European workforce has no digital skills, even though “in the future, nearly all jobs will require digital skills,” according to a European Union labor report. That includes the 756,000 job vacancies anticipated by 2020.
Codecool provides digital training and teaches coding, then helps graduates get placed in partner companies. Its focus is not just training a workforce for jobs at tech firms, but in “all industries be it manufacturing or services,” Codecool’s founder Balázs Vinnai said. The institution has graduated 400 students and placed them in jobs with roughly 100 corporate partners. It currently has 500 students enrolled in four campuses in Hungary and Poland.
Its Series B round will be used to train 10,000 students across 10 campuses by 2023, starting with expansion to Romania.
Education ventures worldwide are trying to prepare the global workforce for increasingly digital, technical and automated jobs through coding schools, online training, and bootcamps. A long roster have secured investor support, including: U.S.-based Lambda School and Holberton School, Argentina’s Digital House, Mexico’s Holacode, Peru’s Crehana, U.K.-based Freeformers, and Nigeria- and Kenya-based Andela, which just closed $100 million in funding.
