Software developer trainer Andela secures $100m to boost engineering teams

Andela, a company building distributed engineering teams with Africa’s top software developers, on Wednesday, said it had secured a $100 million Series D funding, toward distributed engineering teams.
The Series D round funding was led by Generation Investment Management with participation from existing investors like Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google Ventures (GV), Spark Capital and CRE Venture Capital.
The Co-founder of Andela, Jeremy Johnson, said that the Series D financing brought Andela’s total venture funding to $180 million.
Andela was founded in 2014 to connect Africa’s engineering talents with the demand for software developers worldwide.
In four years, Andela has assessed more than 100,000 applicants, hired 1,000 software developers and integrated them into hundreds of companies, such as Safaricom, Percolate, and InVision.
Johnson said that with the Series D funding, Andela would accelerate the development of its technology platform to identify, develop and match talents at scale.
He said that by doing so, Andela would provide its customers with the data they needed to understand developers’ performance and better manage distributed teams.
According to him, the company would also expand its presence across Africa, to meet the global demand for high-quality engineering talents.
“It is increasingly clear that the future of work will be distributed in parts due to the severe shortage of engineering talents.
“We have access to incredible talents across Africa and have learnt from scaling hundreds of engineering teams around the world,
“So, Andela is able to provide the talents and the technology to power high-performing teams and help companies adopt the distributed model faster,” Johnson said in a statement.
Country Director at Andela Nigeria, Omowale David-Ashiru, said that the company had been a critical player in Nigeria’s technology revolution.
“Due to our unwavering commitment to our mission throughout the last four years, Andela has grown into a thriving platform for hundreds of technologists in Nigeria.
“With this investment, Andela will accelerate the development of Africa’s best technology talents in Nigeria and beyond,’’ David-Ashiru said.
Lilly Wollman, Co-Head, Growth Equity at Generation Investment Management, said that the company’s investment in Andela resulted from deep research into the future of work.
Wollman said that the company believed that Andela was a transformational model to develop software engineers and deploy them at scale into the future enterprise.
“The global demand for software engineers far exceeds supply and that gap is projected to widen.
“Andela’s leading technology enables firms to effectively build and manage distributed engineering teams.
“We are great admirers of the outstanding team, mission and culture Andela has built across two continents and five countries,’’ Wollman said.
With technology campuses in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, Andela has been recognised as “The Best Place to Work in Africa, ’’ Wollman said.
In 2019, Andela is projected to double in size, hiring another 1,000 software developers and investing heavily in data, engineering and product development.