Codingal Launches National Coding Olympiad 2021, India’s Largest Coding Competition for Kids

Supported by GitHub and Navars, the National Coding Olympiad 2021 will offer a platform for young coders across India to take part in hackathons and coding challenges, and win exciting prizes worth over 3 lakh

Codingal, India's leading coding platform for K-12 students, today announced the dates for National Coding Olympiad (NCO) 2021 with registrations scheduled to open from September 29, 2021. The event, which will be India's biggest coding competition, is supported by the world's leading software development platform GitHub for 13+ years category and astronomical sciences edtech startup Navars Edutech for 5+ years category. Over 10,000 students from across India are expected to take part in the Olympiad.

Codingal's National Coding Olympiad 2021, which commences from September 29, 2021, is a two and half month-long online event that will offer K-12 students a platform to take part in hackathons and coding challenges to build websites, apps, games, and more. NCO 2021 will also act as a stepping stone for students who wish to participate in the International Olympiad of Informatics — the premier annual global programming olympiad for secondary school students.

The Olympiad will have two types of challenges namely Hackathons and Code Battles. Hackathons will see young coders build projects around themes specific to their age groups. Code Battle, an online coding competition lasting three hours, will have coders solving problems through code. The winners will be given prizes worth over INR 3 lakh.

"The National Coding Olympiad will allow young coders to test their coding and problem-solving skills and will allow them to discover the level of their skills on a national scale. Participants will also learn how to efficiently solve coding problems in a competitive setting," says Vivek Prakash, CEO and Co-Founder of Codingal.

"Participation in the NCO will help strengthen algorithmic or analytical thinking along with mathematical and coding skills among students, which will go a long way in preparing them for the careers of tomorrow," says Satyam Baranwal, COO and Co-founder at Codingal.

"It is exciting to see student developers get involved and build some amazing projects, as part of this National Coding Olympiad. This competition will help students explore coding and apply their coding skills to solve real problems. GitHub will support by providing them with access to the best developer tools and open source code that will help them build these solutions." says Maneesh Sharma, General Manager, GitHub India.

Sravan Datla, Founder & CEO of Navars, said, "We at Navars are excited to partner with Codingal for National Coding Olympiad 2021 as a bridge to coding in astronomy and space education. Enabling astronomy education at the K12 level creates the required R&D atmosphere for India's future and we are excited to drive a research mindset among students at an early age."

NCO 2021 is open to school students from grade 1 through 12. Participants will have the opportunity to explore the exciting world of hackathons and competitive coding and apply their coding knowledge to solve real-world problems. The registration for this year's NCO will open on September 29, 2021. Interested students can register at https://www.codingal.com/national-coding-olympiad-2021/.

Codingal will also be organizing online workshops and webinars on Python, Scratch and Thunkable to help students prepare for the NCO 2021.

Codingal has organized 100+ coding competitions in partnership with reputed educational institutions and technology companies including IIT Roorkee, IIT Guwahati, BITS Pilani, DPS, BGS National Public School, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and many more to promote coding culture among school students.

"We believe that children ought to be prepared and trained for the digital age right from the school level. NCO 2021 will not only prepare K-12 students for future careers involving coding, but also equip them with the right skills and capabilities to come up with innovative solutions to some of the most pressing global issues including climate change and food, water and healthcare for all," adds Vivek.

About Codingal

Codingal (www.codingal.com) is the #1 coding platform for K-12, with a mission to inspire school students to fall in love with coding at a young age. Launched in September 2020, Codingal has already empowered 100,000+ students by motivating them to start learning coding via competitions and high-quality coding education. All classes are taught live 1:1 by vetted and trained teachers who are experts at programming and only from a Computer Science background. The coding curriculum is based on a standardized K-12 Computer Science Framework, which students find very fun & engaging.

Today, schools and traditional education systems are not equipped to provide the proper coding education to children. Codingal is here to change that and empower every student with the tools, content, competitions, and live coding classes to start learning to code and build anything they imagine. Codingal is also backed by top industry advisors and investors, including Rebright Partners and Y Combinator.

YC-backed Edtech Platform Codingal Raises $1.2 Mn in Seed Round, Aims to Sign Up 500k Students Within a Year

The startup will use funds to further develop its proprietary platform to provide students an improved and more personalised learning experience

Bengaluru, September 1: Edtech startup and a leading coding platform for K-12 students Codingal today announced that it has raised $1.2 million in its latest seed funding round, led by Y Combinator, Summer Capital, Day One Syndicate, and Rebright Partners. Prominent angel investors Nate Lipscomb (Senior Product Counsel, Youtube), Ganesh Rengaswamy (Managing Partner, Quona Capital), and Peter Weck (Co-founder, Simply Hired and StoryJumper) also participated in the round.

Other key angel investors in the latest funding round include Ashish Toshniwal (Founder, Y Media Labs), Viral Bajaria (Co-founder, 6Sense), Shashank Kumar (Co-Founder, Razorpay), Karthik Ramakrishnan (Senior Leader, Alexa), and Hiro Mizhushima (Angel investor and Japanese actor).

The edtech will utilise the latest fundraise to grow, nurture and empower the company’s rapidly growing community of K-12 students and coding teachers. The funds will also be used to further develop their proprietary platform for an improved and personalized learning experience. The startup aims to add 500,000 new students on its platform in a year’s time.

Nate Lipscomb, Senior Product Counsel, Youtube says, “Education technology is not only bringing much-needed digitalization to the education sector but it is also facilitating remote learning for thousands of children in nooks and corners of the country. I believe it is the future. Codingal has made an impressive impact in the less than one year since its inception and it is already showing its strong potential to create transformational opportunities for students and teachers across India. I'm excited to support mission-driven startups like them and I look forward to working with them as they grow along their journey.”

Vivek Prakash, co-founder & CEO of Codingal says, “Our mission is to inspire school kids to fall in love with coding, and we are building Codingal to deliver high-quality computer science education combined with world-class coding competitions. Codingal plans to build a robust passion economy marketplace for coding education that brings together the best-in-class educators and students who are eager to learn to code. We believe that we are just getting started and this fundraiser will help us realise our true ambitions. We are thankful to our investors for supporting us in our journey.”

Codingal has grown 30% month-on-month since its launch and currently generates over 20% revenue from international customers.

Satyam Baranwal, co-founder & COO of Codingal adds, “In less than a year of its launch, Codingal has offered over 100,000 students from over 5,000 schools a platform to learn coding via community-led coding competitions and live 1-on-1 classes with its highly trained Computer Science teachers. We have also hosted over 100 coding competitions so far and received over 100,000 project and code submissions by students on the Codingal platform. It is heartening to witness the inception and growth of a thriving community of students, parents, and highly trained teachers interested in coding."

The startup has partnered with reputed educational institutions and technology companies to host coding competitions and promote coding culture among school students. The partners include the likes of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IIT Roorkee, IIT Guwahati, BITS Pilani, DPS, BGS National Public School, and many more.

Codingal was launched in September 2020 and raised an angel round of $560K soon after in November 2020. Early in 2021, Codingal was accepted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch.

About Codingal

Codingal is the #1 coding platform for K-12, with a mission to inspire school students to fall in love with coding at a young age. Launched in September 2020, Codingal has already empowered 100,000+ students by motivating them to start learning coding via competitions and high-quality coding education. All classes are taught live 1:1 by vetted and trained teachers who are experts at programming and only from a Computer Science background. The coding curriculum is based on a standardized K-12 Computer Science Framework, which students find very fun & engaging.

Today, schools and traditional education systems are not equipped to provide the proper coding education to children. Codingal is here to change that and empower every student with the tools, content, competitions, and live coding classes to start learning to code and build anything they imagine. Codingal is also backed by top industry advisors and investors, including Rebright Partners and Y Combinator.

IIT Madras and Online Coding Platform Codingal Collaborate to Improve Computer Science Education in Schools

Codingal trains schoolteachers in Scratch Programing Language under IIT-M’s ‘UpSkill’ Initiative

Chennai, March 17, 2021: Online coding platform Codingal today announced that it has collaborated with IIT Madras (IIT-M) to improve the quality of Computer Science education at school level. As part of IIT-M’s ‘Upskill’ program under its annual technical festival, Shaastra 2021, Codingal trained school teachers in Scratch Programing Language. The Codingal-IIT Madras collaboration aims to equip schoolteachers with new teaching methodologies and tools that can be used in the classroom to enhance their students’ Computer Science learning.

Codingal conducted a six-session course in Scratch Programming Language to train 100+ teachers from 78 schools. Once trained, these teachers will in turn be able to teach Scratch Programing to their students as part of their computer science education.

Scratch language skills will allow school-going students to make their own interactive games and animations, which would allow them to nurture and demonstrate their creativity via online games development.

IT education in School curriculum across India needs to be at par with global standards. Equipping more teachers with coding knowledge will go a long way in making India the software powerhouse. This is also in line with GOI education policy adding coding at school level.

Chetan Reddy, Co-ordinator, Upskill Shaastra, IIT Madras said, “Shaastra 2021’s Upskill initiative is borne out of the necessity of transforming the Computer Science education at school level in India. We believe that Codingal’s expertise in imparting coding education is well-suited for training schoolteachers in Scratch programming and we are therefore glad to collaborate with them to run this training program. Together, we are aiming towards making Computer Science learning more fun for school going children.”

Venkatesh Sarvasiddhi, Senior Head, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) said, “With the world acknowledging and benefiting from the advancements in the field of IT and Computer Sciences, including basic understanding of coding language in the school curriculum is the need of the hour. Initiative like Shaastra Upskill equips teachers with new teaching methodologies, which in turn helps students understand coding at an early age.”

Vivek Prakash, cofounder of Codingal said, “From day one, our mission at Codingal has been to inspire school children to fall in love with coding. Learning to program in Scratch is ideal for school-going children as it allows them to build simple games and animations that give full expression to their creativity. We are therefore thrilled to support IIT-M’s Upskill initiative with a specially designed course on Scratch programming for school teachers, so they can in turn get their students to learn coding in a fun and enjoyable manner.”

Codingal has developed the world's first coding curriculum with BIDE Model (Broad, inspiring, Deep, Efficient), integrated with Bloom's Taxonomy and a dedicated focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Maths) learning methodology. School kids love the Codingal platform for its teachers, curriculum, and competitions.

About IIT Madras, Shaastra 2021

Shaastra 2021 is IIT Madras’s flagship annual Technical festival. Being the first in the world to be ISO 9001:2015 certified, wholly student run tech festival, Shaastra stands out from the rest in being the largest and one of the most unique tech festivals ever celebrated in India and the world. All of this fuelled by our seamless passion for the ‘infinite possibilities’. The world saw Shaastra for the first time in 2000. Our fest was born with one goal in mind: to create and sustain a society of inquisitive minds, who learn and innovate by interacting with each other and industries.

About Codingal

Codingal is an online coding platform for K-12 (school) kids, with a mission to help children fall in love with coding at a young age. Launched in September 2020, Codingal has already empowered over 50,000 kids by motivating them to start learning coding via competitions and delivering quality coding education with all-star teachers – only from Computer Science background. Codingal has developed the world's first coding curriculum with BIDE Model integrated with Bloom's Taxonomy and a dedicated focus on STEM learning methodology.

K-12 EdTech start-up Codingal Raises $560K in a Seed Round Led by Rebright Partners, Java Capital, and GSF Accelerator

BANGALORE, India , Dec. 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the company statement, Codingal will use the seed fund to build a 1M strong coding community of school kids by introducing STEM-related courses, competitions, and hackathons in the K-12 segment.

Bangalore -based Codingal - an online coding platform for K-12 kids on Monday announced that it has raised US $560,000 (INR 4.2 Cr) from Rebright Partners, Java Capital, and GSF Accelerator.

Launched in September 2020 , this fully remote start-up has been clocking in revenues since day one. With a mission to inspire school kids to fall in love with coding, Codingal is aiming to become the topmost online coding platforms in the nascent K-12 coding segment with 30% month on month growth.

What sets Codingal apart in the highly competitive online coding landscape is the founding team's expertise in teaching coding and building communities around computer programming.

Codingal is dedicated to providing computer science education to children with a vision of building a community of students who want to learn how to code. At Codingal, learning and competition go hand in hand. Codingal platform fosters community-building activities within school kids with engaging coding competitions and hackathons that help children learn and showcase their projects from the get-go. It has already partnered with IIT Roorkee's E-Summit to run a nation-wide hackathon. Such initiatives motivate kids further to learn coding through peer interactions and collaboration.

Brij Bhasin , General Partner at Rebright Partners said, "Coding education should evolve into a collaborative environment where community-based peer to peer learning provides a more holistic space to students. We are excited to back Codingal to build on this vision."

They are also very selective in curating their pedagogy; with carefully selected Computer science experts as teachers and a unique curriculum that is built on BIDE, STEAM, and Bloom's taxonomy model for enhancing cognitive, logical, and computational skills; Codingal makes each session personalized, informative, and engaging for their students. The learning path is customizable for every child depending on their skills, abilities, and interests. The platform also offers a specialized Robotics course, where students can learn hardware-software interfacing and application of coding in Robotics.

Codingal provides an integrated learning experience to K-12 students via a best-in-class, in-house developed proprietary virtual classroom. The teachers and students participate in a fun & engaging virtual classroom which gamifies the learning process to further motivate students for continuous learning. The platform provides teachers with the ability to manage their availability and gives the students lifetime access to a dashboard to track their progress and learnings.

Karteek Pulapaka, Co-Founder & Partner at Java Capital said, "21st-century learning is about acquiring the necessary Job skills of the future. And, coding remains the most important of them all. Naturally, parents see coding as an extremely relevant & important skill for their kids to acquire. But, it is just not enough to reimagine what is taught. It is also equally important how it is taught. Students thrive when learning is experiential & when it engages peer-community. Vivek & Satyam have deep expertise in building cutting edge Computer Science curriculum & proven ability in building massive community-driven platforms. Codingal's community engagement through gamification, quizzes, and hackathons will be crucial not only in imparting up-to-date coding skills but also in making learning fun and exciting again."

Founded by Vivek Prakash and Satyam Baranwal with a commitment towards increasing access to coding education to school kids all over the world, the Codingal team brings over fifty years of combined experience in the EdTech and Computer Science industry.

Having successfully built path-breaking products in the coding education space, this duo of second-time founders was clear about their goals while founding Codingal from the get-go. Their focus was on creating a differentiated product that is best in class and providing a lifelong learning experience by making school kids fall in love with coding.

Rajesh Sawhney , Founder & CEO of GSF Accelerator commented - "I was fortunate to find Vivek when he was still in college at IIT Roorkee when GSF Accelerator incubated HackerEarth (one of the largest community of developers in the world). Over the years, Vivek has flowered as a leader and innovator. With Codingal, he is renewing his mission to bring the joy of coding and building products for young children. This mission is the common bond between Vivek and GSF Accelerator."

About Founders

Vivek Prakash is an alumnus of IIT Roorkee with B.Tech. & M.Tech in Computer Science and founder of HackerEarth - one of the largest developer community platforms.

While talking about Codingal, Vivek said, "Teaching coding to kids becomes a necessity as the technology around us keeps evolving at a rapid pace. Coding just becomes any other language that a child needs to be fluent in, to keep up with changing landscapes and better understand the world of technology all around us.

With Codingal, we are trying to inculcate a passion and love for coding in children. We are focused on building a holistic learning platform, where the kids have fun and are engaged while learning the most basic 21st-century skill."

Satyam Baranwal is an IIT Dhanbad alum. He has been committed to teaching children from an early age and before founding Codingal, has successfully built one of the first Indian coding education companies, Skillovate, which has taught over 40,000 students.

While talking about his vision for Codingal, Satyam commented,

"There are 270 million school kids in India , but less than 1 million of them have been exposed to new age Computer Science education. Understanding how the world of technology works at a young age is more important than ever before not just as individuals but as a society.

Kids are generally curious and coding is a very constructive channel for them to translate that curiosity into creativity. We want to help children build the future of tomorrow by prepping them with the necessary knowledge today. We believe that learning to code is not about going to Mars or Moon or becoming Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg , but about empowering children at multiple levels starting at a young age."

About Codingal

Headquartered in Bangalore, India , Codingal is an online coding platform for K-12 kids with a mission to help children fall in love with coding at a young age. Codingal has empowered over 40,000 kids by motivating them to start learning coding via competitions and delivering quality coding education with all-star teachers only from Computer Science background. It has developed the world's first coding curriculum with BIDE Model (Broad, inspiring, Deep, Efficient) integrated with Bloom's Taxonomy and a dedicated focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Maths) learning methodology. School kids love the Codingal platform for its teachers, curriculum, and competitions.

For More information, visit www.codingal.com