Scaler Academy - An Edtech to Learn Programming & Prepare for Interview
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It is an undeniable fact that the Indian education system has undergone a radical change over the last few decades. While there have been concerted efforts at making education more accessible, what is still lacking, especially in higher education, is the much sought-after connection with the industry.
Instructors and mentors aside, who would not only equip pupils with new skills but also guide them in their careers, there is the necessity to have a curriculum that is vetted by industry veterans. That’s exactly what led to the launch of Scaler in 2019.
An upskilling platform by InterviewBit, Scaler enables aspiring students and working professionals in tech to unlock their potential. At this moment, Scaler’s upskilling offerings, Scaler Academy and Scaler Data Science & Machine Learning (DSML), have over 35,000 working professionals cumulatively enrolled in its program since 2019.
In terms of outcome, Scaler has already found resounding success. 94% of the placed learners have already bagged jobs with aspirational companies as software engineers and developers. Scaler learners have witnessed a mean salary of ₹21.6 LPA, a median salary of ₹17.5 LPA and a placement rate of 93.5 per cent. The highest domestic salary achieved by Scaler learners stands at ₹3.03 crore. The average salary for learners who had 6-10 years of work experience is ₹31.9 lakhs, while learners with more than 10 years of experience received packages averaging ₹57.1 lakhs, while the highest salary offered to a Scaler learner was a whopping INR 3.03 crore per annum.
StartupTalky interviewed the founders of Scaler (by InterviewBit) to learn about the Success Story of Scaler and take a glance at Scaler's Products, Business Model, Funding, Growth & more.
Scaler - Company Highlights
| Company Name | Scaler |
|---|---|
| Founder | Anshuman Singh, Abhimanyu Saxena |
| Founded | 2015 (InterviewBit), 2019 (Scaler) |
| Sector | Edtech |
| Headquarter | Bangalore |
| Total Funding | $76.5 million+ (2022) |
| Valuation | $710 mn (2022) |
Scaler - About
Scaler - Founders and Team
Scaler - Startup Story | How it Started?
Scaler - Name, Tagline and Logo
Scaler - Business Model and Revenue Model
Scaler - Startup Launch
Scaler - Challenges Faced
Scaler - Growth and Revenue
Scaler - Funding and Investors
Scaler - Competitors
Scaler - Acquisitions
Scaler - Recognition and Achievements
Scaler - Future Plans
Scaler - Community and Reviews
Scaler - About
Scaler was incubated inside the InterviewBit in 2019 - a platform where people could learn new programming skills and practice interview questions in order to scale up in their careers.
Scaler is an upskilling platform by InterviewBit that enables both students and working professionals to unlock their talent. Scaler's offerings cater to -
- Young working professionals (Scaler Academy, Scaler DSML and Scaler Neovarsity)
- Students graduating from 12th grade (Scaler School of Technology)
Scaler's meticulously structured programs vary in duration from 9 months to 24 months. These act as career accelerators by enhancing the skills of the students by offering them a modern curriculum with satisfactory exposure to the latest technologies. Scaler's students have access to over 1000 working professionals from top software companies across the globe, including Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and X (Twitter), among others, who act as instructors, teaching assistants, mentors and career coaches.
Cumulatively, Scaler has had over 35,000 students and working professionals enrolled in its various programs. The Scaler programs are being developed as an inclusive ecosystem of engineers and mentors to help talent scale and build the next generation of global tech leaders. Scaler has been designed to help and guide students from engineering colleges to prepare and learn skills that they would require for top technology jobs.
Scaler helps to polish skills and get its students ready for prospective jobs with big-tech companies, whether they are fresh college graduates or working professionals looking to advance in their careers.
Scaler's goal is to ensure that the talent is recognised regardless of the student’s background. The platform aims to create a benchmark for software engineers in the recruitment space so as to ensure that they receive the best opportunities in the industry to further their careers.
Himaya Presthitha
Scaler - Product/Services Offered
Scaler is a tech education startup that offers courses on computer science which train and upskill software developers to find meaningful employment in India’s burgeoning tech industry. It offers several in-depth and intensive programs that are taught through live classes delivered by tech leaders and subject matter experts. The curriculum is systematically and specifically created in order to provide students with sufficient exposure to the latest technologies.
Here's a list of Scaler's offerings -
Scaler Academy
For all the tech professionals who want to accelerate their careers, Scaler Academy has designed a flexible program for you. It is a program to master Problem Solving & System Design. One can choose the curriculum based on the level of knowledge one already entails & the type of specialisation needed, i.e., Backend Specialisation or Full-Stack Specialisation.
- Thoughtfully designed learning aspects, topics & concepts
- Hands-on Projects and assignments to implement concepts
- Personalised topics, peers & pace of learning are optimised for one's needs
- Industry-tested curriculum to make one job/career-ready
Scaler DSML
The program is for engineers looking to specialise in Data Science and Machine Learning, The course will start by building a strong foundation in Data Structures and Algorithms. Then, learners will dive into Mathematics, followed by Data Mining, Statistical Analysis, Data Science, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Big Data. More than 45 critical tech tools will also be taught during the length of the course.
- Live class
- Industry projects
- 1:1 mentorship
- Secure Placement Assistance
Scaler Topics
Scaler Topics is a gamified free learn-to-code platform that can provide quality technical content for anyone interested in software-related subjects. The platform provides streamlined technical content across all fields related to tech, data science, and machine learning for individuals passionate about learning and building a career in many in-demand domains with assisted videos from mentors, even those with no prior knowledge in their chosen field. In addition to the video courses, the platform provides a wide range of free material to software enthusiasts through interactive challenges, events, contests, and detailed article threads by industry experts.
- Courses
- Contests
- Articles
- Reading Tracks
Scaler School of Technology
Established in 2023, the Scaler School of Technology stands out as India's leading institution for engineering education. The school presents a 4-year residential undergraduate program in Computer Science, delivered by eminent tech leaders from major industry players like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, and more. Distinguishing itself with an industry-validated curriculum, an esteemed teaching faculty comprising top tech professionals, and an innovative 1:1 mentorship model, Scaler operates from a cutting-edge campus located in Bangalore's Electronic City, in close proximity to major tech firms. Going beyond conventional education, the program provides specialised tracks in high-demand technologies coupled with a groundbreaking one-year paid internship. Successful program completion rewards learners with a 3-year BSc in Computer Science from BITS Pilani and a one-year Master in Computer Science from the globally accredited Woolf University.
Scaler - Founders and Team
Both Scaler and InterviewBit have been founded by IIIT (International Institute of Information Technology) Hyderabad alums Anshuman Singh and Abhimanyu Saxena.
Anshuman Singh
Anshuman previously worked at Facebook, where he led the team to build and scale the Messenger feature. Anshuman was also part of the four-member landing team to set up the London office of Facebook. He is a competitive programmer and a two-time ACM ICPC World Finalist.
Abhimanyu Saxena
Abhimanyu led a team that designed NYC-based retail marketplace Fab.com’s entire front end. A seasoned entrepreneur, Abhimanyu co-founded his first enterprise while still in college.
Rishabh Rathi
Scaler - Startup Story | How it Started?
Abhimanyu Saxena started his career with Progress Software as a Programmer and later moved to Fab.com as a Software Architect, where he worked for over three years. During his days at Fab.com, he had to recruit new talent for projects, which turned out to be a tedious job. Even after screening hundreds of resumes and conducting interviews, they were only able to find the right talent in single digits. Anshuman faced a similar challenge in his role at Facebook (Meta), where he was setting up the London office and was looking to recruit tech talent for Facebook’s expanding footprint.
Almost 90% of the candidates interviewed did not have the necessary tech skills that were required for the job. This was when he experienced the scarcity of skilled tech talent in the industry and realised the gap that exists between the university curriculum and the skills that are required to succeed as a software engineer.
In 2015, together, they started InterviewBit as an online platform providing interview prep to aspirants to make them job-ready, thereby also addressing the challenge faced by recruiters in hiring the right talent for the job.
InterviewBit.com is a free coding practice platform for developers. The platform helps college students as well as working professionals to polish their programming skills and get job-ready. The companies that hire from the programmer community on InterviewBit.com pay the company hiring fee. All Scaler by InterviewBit courses have prepaid Scaler course fees that students need to pay to be part of the program.
Scaler's first two paying customers were Amazon and Facebook. "They started helping Amazon hire quality engineers back in 2015, and to date, they are super proud that we’ve helped Amazon hire a lot of top tech stars. They built an interview warm-up tool for Facebook Careers called CodeLab, which was exceptionally popular amongst the FB applicants," Says Scaler Founders.
The majority of private organisations, both large and small, claim that while graduates might possess theoretical knowledge, they usually lack the skills that are required to complement entry-level jobs. They realised that most people they engaged with were capable of achieving even greater things given the right guidance. That’s exactly what led to the launch of Scaler in 2019.
At Scaler, the pedagogy of the courses has been created, and the structured interaction with recruiters and industry leaders (CXOs) has been set up, as it helps understand what companies are looking for in candidates and then train their students with those skills accordingly.
Ashwini
Scaler - Name, Tagline and Logo
Scaler means scale - scale your career, scale your skills, scale your life to be bigger, and better. It’s also a play on a mathematical term - Scalar.
The logo shows the process of scaling, from the small cube, becoming bigger, to the white space resembling a diagonal arrow pointing upscaling.
The colour blue was chosen, as it’s commonly associated with trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, and intelligence. These are the qualities that Scaler wants to inspire in others when looking at the brand.
Scaler - Business Model and Revenue Model
InterviewBit.com is a free coding practice platform for developers. The platform helps college students as well as working professionals to polish their programming skills and get job-ready. The companies that hire from the programmer community on InterviewBit.com pay the company hiring fee. All Scaler by InterviewBit courses has prepaid Scaler course fees that students need to pay to be part of the program.
PV Vyshnavi
Scaler - Startup Launch
Scaler's first two paying customers were Amazon and Facebook.
"They started helping Amazon hire quality engineers back in 2015, and till date are super proud that we’ve helped Amazon hire a lot of top tech stars. They built an interview warm up tool for Facebook Careers called CodeLab, which was exceptionally popular amongst the FB applicants" Says Scaler Founders.
Scaler - Challenges Faced
Fixing the problem of talent scarcity is a rather hard problem, with fixes needed on both the supply and demand side. Lack of awareness among students and archaic ways of hiring at businesses, which have gotten established over the years, are two problems that need behaviour change. However, Scaler does see a positive change coming on both fronts at a rapid pace.
Rishabh Rathi
Scaler - Growth and Revenue
Post the phenomenal growth Scaler saw in 2021 and 2022, the edtech brand is now focusing on maintaining its top line and profitability. Scaler has been EBITA positive over the last few months and is hoping to hit annual profitable figures by the end of the year. Here are some growth highlights that Scaler has witnessed to date:
- Scaler has expanded its operations to the US in January 2022
- Scaler is adding 2,500 learners monthly, and since April 2019, it has onboarded & helped 35,000 learners cumulatively.
- Scaler has a very active community on Discord where students and teachers (mentors) discuss various tech and digital skills topics, clarify doubts instantaneously, and discuss assignments, projects, etc. With over 130,000 members, it is the largest tech community in the country.
- Scaler is positive for both cash flow and EBITDA.
- Scaler's courses offer 4.5X RoI (return on investment) for the students
- Thousands of Scaler alumni are placed in companies like Microsoft, Google, Uber, Amazon, Paypal, Adobe, VMWare, Intuit and McAfee.
Ashwini
Scaler - Funding and Investors
Scaler (by InterviewBit) has raised a total of over $76.5 million in funding to date. The recent round of funding came in from Lightrock, Sequoia, and Tiger Global, which helped the company raise $55 mn, as of 1st February 2022.
Scaler's Funding and Investors details are as follows:
| Date | Series | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 1, 2022 | Series B | $55 million | Lightrock India, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global |
| January 28, 2020 | Series A | $20 Million | Sequoia India, Tiger Global, Global Founders Capital and Rocket Internet |
| - | - | $1.5 Million | Sequoia Surge Program |
Scaler is backed by marquee investors like Peak XV Ventures (Sequoia Capital India), Tiger Global, Global Founders Capital, and Lightrock India, along with several high-profile individual investors. Lightrock India has stepped in as a new investor, leading the recent round of Scaler on February 1, 2022, where the company raised $55 million.
Scaler - Competitors
Some of the top competitors of Scaler Academy include -
- Unacademy
- PhysicsWallah
- Masai School
- Upgrad
- Simplilearn
- Masters Union
- Vellore Institute of Technology
- i-Nurture Education Solutions
- Indian Institute of Technology
- Indian Institute of Information Technology
- National Institute of Technology
Chayanika Goswami
Scaler - Acquisitions
Scaler acquired Coding Elements and Coding Minutes in 2021. Followed by Applied Roots in 2022 in a deal worth $50 million. All the founders of these companies and their respective teams joined Scaler as full-time employees. Recently, Scaler made its fourth acquisition of a Delhi-based education platform, Pepcoding, for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition will accelerate growth and support across various business units, including strategy, product design, B2B enterprise, operations and instructor org.
Here's a glimpse into the 4 acquisitions that Scaler made so far:
| Name of the company acquired | Date of acquisition | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Applied Roots | March 2, 2022 | $50 mn |
| Coding Minutes | October 21, 2021 | $98.82 mn |
| Coding Elements | August 30, 2021 | $1.05 mn |
| Pep Coding | May 31, 2023 | Undisclosed amount |
Scaler - Recognition and Achievements
- InterviewBit was recognised by LinkedIn as one of the 25 hottest Indian start-ups to work for in 2019
- InterviewBit was one among the 17 startups from India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Bangladesh that have made it to the inaugural cohort of venture capital firm Sequoia’s Surge program
- Scaler was recognised as a Great Place to Work® by the GPTW Institute in 2021
- Recognised by AmbitionBox as "The Best Place to Work in India 2022" among tech startup companies with more than 500 employees in India
- The startup's parent firm, InterviewBit, is featured on the Financial Times's Asia Pacific High Growth Companies 2021, 2022 and 2023 ranking.
Scaler - Future Plans
For the near future, Scaler plans to sustain a substantial revenue growth range of 30-40% from FY24 to FY25 with a focus on not just the financial progress but also a consistent delivery of high-quality education and essential skills for their learners.
"At Scaler, they believe execution is equally essential for success in online learning. Towards this end, they continuously experiment with and incorporate new methodologies for teaching and learning to ensure an effective outcome," added Scaler team
Besides this, the team is also focusing on building Scaler School of Technology with admissions open to welcome the second batch of students to the campus.
Ultimately, their goal is to bridge the demand-supply gap in the tech industry.
Scaler - Community and Reviews
Scaler's community on Discord currently comprises around 130,000 members. It is the largest tech community in the country, comprised of like-minded individuals, where members discuss various tech and digital skills topics, share job openings, and engage in games and competitions.
The reviews of Scaler by many people say...
- "People teaching you are either a world-class competitive programmer or have cracked interviews in companies which take world-class hard interviews"
- "The doubt support time is mentioned as 30 minutes, but it is wrong, He must say. It’s less than that. Anytime He felt doubt, He messages his community of batch mates or even to the teacher who taught him that concept, and they clarify instantly"
- "You will have a Student Success Manager who will be guiding you through every step of your journey. In my case, My SSM even got to the extent that He was not solving problems in the middle of the course, so she contacted me and asked me to make a Google doc and share it with her and update daily on that doc the questions He do"
- "If you succeed in a job interview - they will call and congratulate you and talk about the next opportunities. If you fail in one - they will call and say it’s normal and will discuss areas of improvement you can make."
FAQs
How are InterviewBit and Scaler related?
Scaler was incubated inside the InterviewBit in 2019 - a platform where people could learn new programming skills and practice interview questions in order to scale up in their careers.
What is Scaler?
Scaler is a competitive online accelerator program that offers a course on computer science that trains software developers to land jobs with top tech companies. It offers an intensive 6-12-month computer science course.
How much is Scaler Funding?
Scaler (by InterviewBit) has raised a total of $76.5 million in investment to date.
Who are the founders of Scaler?
Scaler and InterviewBit both are founded by IIIT Hyderabad alums Anshuman Singh and Abhimanyu Saxena.
What is Scaler Academy?
Scaler Academy is an online tech-versity for the top 1% of software developers in the country. They offer an intensive six-month computer science course through live classes delivered by tech leaders and subject matter experts.
Who does Scaler Cater to?
Scaler caters to:
- Tech-enthusiasts in university (Scaler Edge)
- Young working professionals (Scaler Academy)
- Those looking to transform into future CTOs and entrepreneurs (Scaler Plus)
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