The regional venture capital PortfoLion has provided Codecool programming schools with an investment of 2 million euro. Thanks to this capital, Codecool will be able to continue its international expansion. Their first step towards scaling up internationally will be the opening of a school in Warsaw, scheduled for autumn of 2017. It will be Codecool’s second foreign outpost; the first one has already been established in Cracow.
Tt is estimated that the Hungarian IT sector currently requires around 22 thousand additional qualified IT professionals. In Poland, this deficit has reached 50 thousand; its scale for the whole Europe is estimated to reach a million. Experts agree that the acute problem of recruiting IT workers will be a long-term phenomenon. Qualified programmers have become the most important factor in the success and growth of any business – not only in Hungary or Poland but in any country around the world.
In 2015, a group of experienced Hungarian IT managers recognized this problem and founded Codecool, a company providing specialized training in programming. Until today, Codecool has opened educational centers in Budapest, Miskolc, and Cracow. More than 300 students work under the supervision of experienced mentors to gain programming skills necessary for working in the IT field. A Codecool course encompasses 12 months of school and six months of IT internship. Most of the students are between 18 and 40 years old; they either are at the start of their professional life or wish to change their career path.
“The strategy of Codecool that guarantees you a workplace and allows for paying course costs after graduation is particularly attractive for applicants,” explains Jerzy Mardaus, Codecool Regional Manager. “Codecool doesn’t require any previous programming experience. Students learn the programming languages that are most demanded by the market, so we can guarantee them the first job after graduation. This innovative model complements the traditional higher education system, provides companies with many valuable employees, and can be tailored to the specific needs of every company.”
The regional venture capital PortfoLion invests mainly in medium-sized companies in Hungary. They choose mature startups with solid and realistic business plans, which can promise an international growth.
Over the next 12 months, Codecool intends to open two new schools abroad and hence increase the number of students to a thousand. According to their long-term plans, Codecool schools will be present in 24 European cities by 2022.
