CodeChef - Competitive Programming Community

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The educational platforms are growing like never before, with their impressive results after the Covid-19 outbreak, the mark that these startups are leaving is prominent on the startup ecosystem. Coding or computer programming is now turning into an essential skill and has been rising in demand, the like of which was never witnessed earlier.

CodeChef is one of the online coding platforms that has been quite popular and though owned by Unacademy, CodeChef still is growing in its own way. Founded in 2009, Codecheck organizes algorithms, computer programming, and programming contests for programmers. It hosts programming competitions and contests for students and software professionals.

CodeChef, headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra also helps organizations connect with developers, brand their products in the developer community, and recruit them. It’s a non-profit educational initiative of Directi, whose aim was to provide a platform for students, software professionals to practice, to build their programming skills through online contests. Apart from this CodeChef also has a ‘CodeChef for schools’ program that aims to reach students and start a culture of programming in Indian schools.

Knowing more about CodeChef, the company owned by Unacademy will not be challenging anymore with this StartupTalky article where you discover all about CodeChef, its Founders, Codechef headquarters, Codechef Owners and key people, Business and Revenue Model, Mission, Growth and Revenue, Logo and its Meaning and more.  

CodeChef - Company Highlights

CodeChef - About and How it works?
CodeChef - Logo and its meaning
CodeChef - Founder and Team
CodeChef - Mission
CodeChef - Business Model and Revenue Model
CodeChef - Competitors
CodeChef - Growth and Revenue
CodeChef - Future Plans

CodeChef - About and How it works?

CodeChef is a competitive programming community of programmers from across the globe. CodeChef was started as an educational initiative in the year 2009 by Directi, an Indian software company. The CodeChef headquarters are in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Apart from its monthly coding contests for the community, CodeChef has many initiatives for Schools, Colleges and Women in competitive programming. CodeChef is credited with hosting the India regionals of the prestigious ICPC for college students, as well as for IOI for school students in India. In 2020, CodeChef’s custodianship was changed from Directi (founded by Bhavin Turakhia) to Unacademy (Gaurav Munjal, CEO). CodeChef and its various initiatives have been managed and run by its Business Unit Head Anup Kalbalia.

It is a global programming community that fosters learning and friendly competition, built on top of the world’s largest competitive programming platform along with building a large community of problem curators. They host three featured contests every month and give away prizes and goodies to the winners as encouragement. Apart from this, the platform is open to the entire programming community to host their own contests. On average, 30+ external contests are hosted on their platform every month. They also help organisations connect with developers, brand their products in the developer community and recruit. Presently, the CodeChef community has grown to over 10,00,000+ programmers from different parts of the globe.

CodeChef - Logo and its meaning

The CodeChef logo comes very much from the name of the company. The icon can be seen wearing a chefs hat.

CodeChef - Founder and Team

Bhavin Turakhia

Bhavin Turakhia is the founder of CodeChef.

Bhavin is a serial tech entrepreneur, who has a special interest in collaboration and payments. Bhavin first co-founded Resellerclub, Logicboxes, and BigRock in 1998. He eventually exited all of them in a $160 mn transaction in 2014. Turakhia then founded Radix in 2012, before founding Flock in 2014, and Zeta in 2015.

He has been the co-founder of Directi from August 1997 to December 2014. He was also the founder of Ringo.co, and still is the Founder and CEO of Ringo, Radix, Flock, and Zeta.

I have always believed that "it is our moral obligation to make an impact that's proportionate to our potential". During the last two decades, I have worked with an amazing team of people and continue to do so in our quest to make a difference.

In the year 2009, Directi, an Indian software products company, launched CodeChef to help programmers improve their problem-solving skills through active participation in programming contests. The goal was to help Indian programmers in honing their problem-solving skills by fostering friendly competition and community engagement.

In the year 2020, the custodianship of CodeChef was handed over to Unacademy from Directi. After the transition, CodeChef is led by Bhavin Turakhia, Gaurav Munjal, and Anup Kalbalia.

CodeChef - Mission

CodeChef's mission is to provide a reliable, valid, and fair method of assessing the skills and knowledge needed to become better programmers and develop a community of highly skilled certified professionals who are good problem solvers.

CodeChef - Business Model and Revenue Model

The CodeChef business model operations are entirely non-commercial. They do not make any revenue at CodeChef as it is a non-profit educational initiative. All of CodeChef's operations, technology, infrastructure, and management costs were sponsored by Directi. Over time they intended to subsidize some of these costs through strategic partnerships with other companies as well.

CodeChef - Competitors

The top 3 CodeChef competitors are:

• TopCoder, Inc.
• Services Sunrise Mentors Private Limited
• LeetCode

Together they have raised over 16.5M between their estimated 416 employees. CodeChef's revenue is ranked 3rd among its top 10 competitors.

CodeChef - Growth and Revenue

Bhavin Turakhia, the CodeChef owner said "All our existing programs, contests, etc. will continue to remain exactly as they are, and will only grow better in our new home. This change in custodianship will mean that we have access to greater resources, teams, technology, platforms, and capital.”

It indicates that the contests will always remain free, and we will always be a community-focused and community-driven organization.

Moreover, CodeChef is going to launch a new product, and that is a paid product. CodeChef started making revenue long before Unacademy came into the picture. They already had a certification program and corporate offerings before Unacademy took over the custodianship.

Unacademy has announced the acquisition of CodeChef, in June 2020. The acquisition is likely to help the Facebook-backed firm to launch coding skills vertical for school kids.

“Codechef is one of the best platforms in the world for programmers and their vision is aligned to what we do here at Unacademy Group,” said Gaurav Munjal, co-founder, and CEO of Unacademy while announcing the development on Twitter.

“All our existing programs, contests, etc. will continue to remain exactly as they are, and will only grow better in our new home. This change in custodianship will mean that we have access to greater resources, teams, technology, platforms, and capital,” said Anup Kalbalia, CEO of CodeChef.

The Unacademy learning program is another method of said revenue-generation. However, there have been other free initiatives that CodeChef has launched after coming under the custodianship of Unacademy. They have already added 30+ video editorials to different problems. And all of this has been possible only because the company now has larger access to resources that this collaboration with Unacademy has provided CodeChef with.

CodeChef is no longer a not-for-profit, and have thus removed that phrase from the website’s footer, and the CEO said that it will subsequently, remove it from other parts as well. Again, to reiterate the CEO also said that each and every existing feature/initiative will continue to be free, and they will support all our programs as we have always done.

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CodeChef - Future Plans

CodeChef announced the Go for Gold Project in 2010. The goal of the Go for Gold Project is ambitious as the CEO said that "we want an Indian team to win the ICPC contest, one of the biggest competitive programming challenge in the world."

He also said that the change won't happen overnight, so their plan is to support learning and reward improvement. They're providing ongoing scholarships, incentives, promotions, tech assistance, and training for Indian students. With a little push to get started, their mission is to change the world and give Indian students a little more exposure.

"We are committed to being completely transparent about our activities, motives, and finances. You will find details on our allocated budgets, the manner of our budget allocation, and a list of activities that we will conduct under the Go for Gold project this year" he said.

FAQs

What is CodeChef?

CodeChef is an online platform that organizes algorithms, computer programming, and programming contests for programmers. They host programming competitions and contests for students and software professionals.

Where are the CodeChef headquarters?

The CodeChef headquarters are in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Is CodeChef owned by Unacademy?

Yes, in 2020, Unacademy acquired CodeChef and the CodeChef parent company was changed from Directi (founded by Bhavin Turakhia) to Unacademy.

Is CodeChef free?

Yes, participation in the contests was fully free and so was their Youtube channel. However, it is now unclear how CodeChef is serving under the ownership of Unacademy.

What are Codechef key people?

Bhavin Turakhia is the founder of CodeChef and its previous parent Directi, who was the key people of CodeChef, along with Anup Kalbalia, who was the CEO of CodeChef. Now, the Unacademy founders and its key executive are also among the key people of CodeChef.