To lower the entry barrier into the world of coding, Masai School, a career-focused alternative education start-up, has launched a living allowance program for its students, called the Glide Programme.

The programme recognises the top 50 performing students of the Masai School’s full time 7-month course, who are then eligible for a monthly living allowance of ₹15,000 for the entire duration of the course. In alignment with its model of investing in students’ careers, the start-up expects to invest ₹50 lakh per month towards the programme.

Masai School follows the unique ‘study now pay later’ model by integrating the Income Sharing Agreement (ISA) which allows students to pay the course fees after they get a high paying job. Similarly, the Glide Program aims to enable students and support their learning in a risk-free environment, without having to worry about ongoing financial commitments. Students will have the option to pay back the allowance amount after securing a job.

“More than a year ago, Masai School set out on a journey to democratise access to quality education by integrating the ISA model, creating a fair and accessible programme for coding aspirants. Glide is a unique, one-of-its-kind initiative that we have introduced to reduce entry barriers to attending our coding courses,” Prateek Shukla, co-founder and CEO of Masai School told BusinessLine .

Elaborating, he said, over 70 per cent of our students come from economically weaker sections of society, who typically live in 1BHK homes with 5-6 other family members. They don’t have a desk or space to study in, neither do they have high quality laptops for coding. Some of them work at night as security guards and cannot quit their jobs due to financial constraints. With Glide, students have bought laptops on EMIs, some have moved to nearby cities to stay in PG accommodation and work out of co-living spaces, some have bought headphones and others have quit their jobs to concentrate on studying.

Masai School, began operations in June 2019, in Bengaluru and after Covid-19 switched to running operations online with plans to graduate 1000+ students in the coming months. The school offers 7 month long intensive coding programs including Android Development, Full-Stack Development and Backend Development and are planning to launch Data Science, User Experience design (UX), Frontend and UI Development, Product Management and more over the next few months. In addition to coding, soft skills and analytical thinking is also imparted keeping in mind the requirements of employers.

Masai School has trained 200+ students across 6 batches, with more than 50 per cent of students from non-Computer Science and non-metro backgrounds to date. Masai School’s hiring partners include Samsung, Sharechat, Urban Company, Instamojo, Propelld, Vyapar, Revv.so, Lendingkart, NoBroker, Smallcase and PayTm Money.

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