Two years after its Series B round, Budapest-based Codecool has just received another investment of €7 million to open a new campus in 2021, adding to their existing 5 campuses spread across Budapest, Miskolc, Krakow, Warsaw and Bucharest in the CEE region. The funding round was led by Integral Venture Partners, and earlier investors Lead Ventures and PortfoLion Capital Partners.
In the EU there were about 825,000 vacant positions in the IT sector in 2020, based on data provided by the European Commission. More than half (58%) of the businesses in the sector claimed that it was challenging for them to find IT professionals with the right skills. Labour shortage in the tech industry may jeopardise the competitiveness of businesses, and therefore, overall economic development, as well.
A solution to this problem is to improve and support alternative IT training programmes, besides traditional university courses. The opportunities created by demand for new forms of education have already been recognised by investors, too. Based on an analysis by Dealroom, the value of new capital investments in EdTech increased by 94% in 2020, reaching $13 billion (around €10.9 billion).
Now Codecool, with its €12.5 million capital raised so far in total, matches up with investments of top European actors in the IT education market (Ironhack: €22 million, Le Wagon: €16 million). Plus, over 1000 of their graduates from Hungary, Poland and Romania work already in tech across Europe.
“The investment enables us to continue our European expansion. We’re planning to enter two new markets this year – we consider Austria, Serbia and Bulgaria. Our target is to operate more than ten Codecool campuses by 2025,” said CEO of Codecool József Boda. “Expansion, however, does not only mean increasing the number of our schools. Further developing our corporate re- and upskilling courses are also in our focus. Our experience shows that executives are increasingly open to train or reskill their existing employees, as it is often time-consuming and costly to find new experts with appropriate skills on the labour market.”
“Codecool’s 12-month, intensive, practice-oriented programming course is a unique proposition, there is no other course like this at competitors on the local market at the moment. The method is proven: 98% of the more than 1.000 Codecool graduates have already landed an IT job”, highlighted Ábel Galácz, CEO of Lead Ventures, operator of MOL and MFB invest (Hungarian Development Bank), and founder of Enter Tomorrow venture capital fund.
Last year, the achievements of Codecool were also recognised by a top IT foru. The Amsterdam-based The Next Web listed Codecool among the 20 most exciting European companies on its Tech5 list, consisting of the most promising scale-up companies.