AcadGild, the online technology education start-up founded by Vinod Dham – popularly known as the ‘Father of the Pentium’ – and serial entrepreneur K Ganesh’s GrowthStory, is set to announce its first round of external funding.

With this, the venture, which offers software programming courses through personalised mentoring to students in India and the US, will be able to expand in the US. The video courses are conducted out of India with experts in the field.

AcadGild started by offering courses in the US and India, but decided to focus more on India to build the venture. “We found doing business in the US very expensive. Therefore, we focussed on scaling it in India,” explained Dham, CEO, in a recent interaction in Bengaluru.

Even the initial three months of presence in the US had created enough awareness about AcadGild that students were coming in, even though “we are not going out to actively market ourselves,” he said.

Part of the reason, he explained, was that the company did not have the required money.

“It was the promoters’ money being used to build the company to this stage. Now we have some external funding that has come and are reconsidering the US again in a more selective way,” said Dham.

“The promoters had put in “about a quarter of a million dollars,” he said. There are three investors and once all the money is in the bank, AcadGild will announce the fund-raise.

Course fees In the few months that AcadGild has been in operation, it has enrolled a few thousand students in India and has on board 70 teachers – or mentors, as Dham refers to them – to conduct online video classes.

The mentors virtually hand-hold students in each class, made up of five to 10 students. AcadGild’s 12-week course will cost $500-1,000 here, whereas in the US, it would cost $5,000-10,000.

AcadGild’s courses will be better than a brick and mortar classroom, in the sense that the lower number of students per class will make it is easier for mentors to pay greater attention.

The analytics will enable mentors to distinguish between the better performing students and those needing more attention.

Software significance Why software programming? According to Dham, there is a huge shortage of software programmes with respect to the kind of skills required.

The demand for software programmes in the US alone is about 120,000 a year while US universities produce at the most about 70,000 computer science graduates a year. He estimated a shortage of 1 million programmers by 2020.

Vikalp Jain, President of AcadGild, said the courses are meant for three categories of students. The first is of those working in an IT role in companies and are looking to upgrade their programming skills.

The second category is of fresh graduates all set to enter the job market with the view that programming skills will give them an edge over those who don’t have them.

The third, interestingly, will be of those still in school but intelligent enough to learn programming.

Nearly 60 per cent of the students belong to the first category, 30 per cent to the second and the balance to the third. “The youngest student we have is nine years old,” Jain said.

Dham said software programming was similar to learning a language; the earlier you learn the better. The only difference was for computer science programming, as for this, understanding of logic is required to make sure the code is written efficiently.

AcadGild will initially focus on the US and India and a version 2.0 will move into other English-speaking countries.

After that, the firm will venture into other countries like the Philippines.

AcadGild will consider China after covering all these markets, according to Dham.

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