Cape Town-based ed-tech startup HyperionDev has raised ZAR50 million (US$3.5 million) in Series A funding to help it expand its offering to thousands of students globally.
Launched in 2012 as a small grassroots movement of Computer Science students working towards a single goal, HyperionDev is an online course platform for computer science education, which enables anyone to take online courses in coding with a personal computer or mobile phone.
The startup’s goal is to build and deliver better technical education for anyone who wanted to learn digital literacy and programming skills.
Previously backed by the likes of Facebook and Google, the company has banked a ZAR50 million funding round for further growth, the majority of which was raised via crowd investment platform CrowdCube. HyperionDev more than doubled its original target to secure ZAR37.2 million (US$2.6 million) using the platform.
“This incredible milestone will directly benefit thousands of students across the globe who are looking for an accessible and affordable way to learn job-ready, practical developer skills in months rather than years. In the past 12 weeks, we’ve welcomed over 1,500 new stakeholders,” said Riaz Moola, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of HyperionDev.
HyperionDev will use the funding to usher in the next stage of its planned expansion into United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) markets on the back of its success in Africa, where it has seen 640 per cent revenue growth since 2018. It saw 254 per cent growth in active users during the COVID-19 lockdown.
“We believe that our coding bootcamps are the best way to close the growing global tech skills gap, and with this wave of support we are one step closer to fulfilling our mission in the US and UK markets,” said Moola.
