Meet the Makers, A Bootcamp for the Brightest Entrepreneurs in India

Global brand and customer experience agency VMLY&R, and Startup Réseau, a start-up ecosystem facilitator announced the launch of a virtual 30-Day Bootcamp program for emerging tech startups working in MediaTech.

The bootcamp, entitled Meet the Makers, will provide high-potential, emerging tech startups with insights and resources from VMLY&R’s senior leadership, including access to VMLY&R’s suite of tools, the agency’s global operation, and eventually, partners, clients and Fortune 500 companies. For start-ups, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. For the agency, it’s a chance to innovate with some of the freshest minds in India building solutions to change the future.

To kick things off, Meet the Makers is looking for start-ups that have innovated in the AdTech, MarTech, AR/VR/MR, Immersive Technologies, Gaming, Data Aggregation or Content & Publishing domains. Start-ups who fit the bill are then selected for 30 days of hands-on mentorship by industry experts, offering a chance at a network of Fortune 500 clients, partners, and mentors.

The selected entrepreneurs will be mentored by VMLY&R’s experts in product innovation, UI/UX, brand + technology convergence and much more. They will also get to collaborate with a global media agency, impressive peers and become part of an alumni network over a period of time.

Commenting on the launch of Meet the Makers, Anil Nair, CEO, VMLY&R India said, “The pandemic has required businesses to be nimble in their plans and purpose, and the mantra 'innovate or die' has never been more relevant. The crisis highlights how important it is to match digital capabilities and products with agility and seamless integration, with an equal focus placed on continuity, scale, and scope. Meet the Makers is an effort to help startups realize their potential, grow and stabilize, which simultaneously helping create connected brands that live in their consumers' lives through innovative solutions. We’re thrilled to be facilitating this connection and look forward to more seasons to come.”

"We are pleased to partner with VML Y&R to co-create a 30-Day bootcamp program for emerging tech startups in the MediaTech domain. The objective of this MediaTech Bootcamp is to help high-potential mediatech startups with insights and resources from a “creative capital” perspective, and access to an industry network of Fortune500 clients and partners of VML Y&R. Selected entrepreneurs will learn about product innovation, UI/UX, Digital & mobile marketing, brand + technology convergence and more. We believe that the practitioners insights will enable the selected entrepreneurs in creating massive new opportunities in a growing market." - Sweta Tiwari, Co-Founder & COO, Startup Réseau.

For details on sessions, workshops, program takeaways, the proposed methodology, selection criteria, program phases or to apply, please visit: www.startupreseau.com.

VMLY&R is a global brand and customer experience agency that harnesses creativity, technology, and culture to create connected brands. Made up of more than 11,000 employees worldwide, the agency has principal offices in Kansas City, New York, Detroit, London, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney. VMLY&R India works with client partners including Colgate Palmolive, Marico, Ford, ICICI Bank, Kraft Heinz, Future Group, PepsiCo, Abbott Pharma, and Swaraj Tractors For more information visit www.vmlyr.com. VMLY&R is a WPP company (NYSE: WPP).

iCollege Australia acquires majority stake in Hyderabad based The Hacking School - India's first coding bootcamp

The Hacking School will launch new Australian accredited programs in India with iCollege and scale up the existing ones in new geographies.

TheHackingSchool.com (Bootcamp Innovations Private Limited) announced merger with iCollege Ltd, an Australia based, listed education company. The deal was reportedly in the works for about a year now. TheHackingSchool.com is India's first coding bootcamp, founded by Meraj Faheem, a Hyderabad based serial entrepreneur. This merger will bring iCollege to India and also take the bootcampstyle training to multiple sectors in the majority of the locations worldwide where they operate. TheHackingSchool.com is known for their flagship 13 week long intensive classroom program on web development.

Six years and hundreds of bootcamps later, The Hacking School has mastered the art of teaching software engineering. Answering the question how this coding bootcamp tallies in comparison with an engineering degree course, Meraj Faheem, Founder, The Hacking School explained, "In less than 4 months, our graduates go on to build products that an average engineering student doesn't in 4 years of college. By the time an engineering student graduates, a bootcamper from The Hacking School would have already gained 3+ years of experience, delivered not just RoI, but also value for time and money, and would likely be making the decision to hire an engineering graduate or not."

iCollege and The Hacking School is a perfect combination to future proof careers for the millions of young Indians who graduate every year without an employable skill set added Ashish Katta, Managing Director, iCollege Ltd., "This partnership will help us expand our reach and deliver our expertise to regions who have been asking for this for a really long time," commented Sadiya Sabera, CEO, The Hacking School.

The Story:

We'll get going with a snapshot of Zero- It's 2012, Meraj Faheem and his team at Money Messenger are zooming precariously through the streets of the country, to locate the rarest resource i.e, Good developers. Fast forward 6 years later, Meraj scaled up, growing exponentially over the years, capturing majority market share in the coding bootcamp industry, worldwide as The Hacking School joins iCollege Australia (ASX: ICT).

The Hacking School provides in-person and online training programs in coding, web development, mobile development, blockchain, UI/UX, growth hacking in India and more than 15 cities worldwide. This move adds those bootcamps to iCollege's mostly university level portfolio extending its reach farther outside traditional brick and mortar classrooms. Also, the coding bootcamp graduates will now be awarded with diploma certificates in Software Engineering and will have an opportunity to get placed internationally.

Ashish Katta, Managing Director, iCollege calls this collaboration, "A big win towards eliminating the back row in higher education."

Founded in 2013, Hyderabad based, The Hacking School is an immersive, modern approach to teaching full-stack web and mobile software development via code.in. The number of The Hacking School powered programs have skyrocketed from a single course offering at their Hyderabad location to Australia, UAE and USA.

"As technology becomes more important in our lives, just having a diverse group of tech people isn't going to be enough, it's about having a say in the future of technology. I want to give India what it actually needs. We need creators, product developers. If you don't create product developers, you will only have people who will imagine products created by someone else and until then you'll never be a superpower. For you to become a superpower you have to create something! Having worked with the Government of Telangana as an Innovation fellow and that sense of giving our country, our state, it's own product that will make the country proud - that sense has become stronger," said Meraj, Founder at The Hacking School.

The Hacking School has revealed in one of their interviews with dot tech domains about its plans of expanding its bootcamps at the collegiate level and working with the engineering institutes and universities to create a curriculum that will generate an industry-ready workforce, right after college. "We also expect to expand our education and learning programs at a school level with our new initiative kids.code.in, It's a hands on learning platform with real- time mentor interaction and zero time & geographical constraints. Our futuristic curriculum gives children an edge in virtually every modern industry and can set them up for a lifetime of success. For a new generation of students growing up in a digitally-connected century, all roads lead to code. Need of the hour is to empower children to bring their imaginations to life," according to the documents.

The concept "Coding for kids" has been proliferating at an enormous rate in the past few years. While it might be difficult to imagine a young mind studying something so seemingly complex, it's unquestionably an attainable reality and thanks to such programs and websites, Coding can be fun and digestible.

What makes The Hacking School really stand out and ahead of the curve in the game is their ever ready, proactive attitude to deal with the uncertainties the world has to offer. This year is, as we all know, anything but normal, the current Global pandemic has hit all of us in the gut (no-doubt) and it's an all world crisis.There's been a socio-economic, political, environmental paradigm shift and like every other company even The Hacking School had to figure out how to adapt.

Meraj proclaimed in an interview with The Indian Express, "Online bootcamp was on the cards always- lockdown or no lockdown. Modern day problems require modern solutions, the way we learn is going to change regardless. All the changes we see are simply being accelerated as a result of this pandemic. The flexibility to schedule your class, choose the program of your choice and 1:1 live interaction with a mentor, is ensuring the outcomes look great. The COVID pandemic crisis has additionally proven to be rather an opportunity to remind ourselves of the skills students need in this unpredictable world such as informed decision making, creative problem solving, and perhaps above all, adaptability. To ensure these skills remain a priority for all students, Flexibility must be incorporated with our educational systems. While we have learned in the recent weeks that social distance is a decent method to flatten an infection curve, virtual interaction/collaboration could be the key to powerful yet effective online pedagogy. Online could be the new normal, only time could tell."

"India is a country of more than a billion people. To ensure our talent is well respected on the world map, and not just treated as cheap labour, we need to lace them up with skills that are not just future proof, but inventors of the future. We believe there will be a huge shift in demand from degree to skills and we need to focus on that and prepare our masses, i.e. focus on things that matter. With all this, one thing seems super clear- degrees are going to be the new age dinosaurs - extinct." emphasized Sadiya Sabera, CEO. Adding more to it, Sadiya says, The Hacking School has focus like no one else on empowering be it inside the office or outside. And we believe that Sadiya taking over as the CEO is a testament to it.

"The Hacking School believes in opening gates to the majority of India, targeting those who are intimidated by coding and not just the experienced lot. They call themselves, "India obsessed and not just India focused."

Sadiya commented: "With all the buzz around deep tech like AI, ML, Blockchain, coding forms the basis. Without coding all of that will be a far fetched dream. As most things are not born from luck or savant level talent, it all comes down to training if you want to compete with the pace of the world. Meraj adds " I aim at creating an enormous pool of employable, national and international tech talent. Coding is the new literacy, it's the language of the present. I just want a coder in every home. Is that a lot to ask? I don't think so."


"Developers play a key part in growing the tech ecosystem, innovation and economy at large," says Mohammed Afzal, Head of Products at The Hacking School. "We take a different approach. We engage with their existing interests and help them make something they want to. We aim to give them the tools they need to launch their programming careers and release them back to the local community." Prashant, Head of Program added, "Our curriculum has always been evolving, one of the first ones in the industry to take the lead and empower the future of tech.


"We still have a lot of work to do but we're super excited about the momentum we have going into the year 2021. We are absolutely thrilled about starting the new leg of growth both locally and internationally, excited to see what this year brings! Code has been an unparalleled force and a powerful tool from its inception. Technology has changed the world and now code fuels it. We take extreme pride in what we've been doing and are happy to be the torch-bearers of this in the country," added Sadiya Sabera.


Over a period of 6 years,The Hacking School has evolved into this giant machine churning industry-ready developers. The right mix of diversity, long-standing experience, and technical expertise makes their community unique and so efficient. It's sprouting to be the New age supplier of tech talent.

Analytics Vidhya announces Data Science Bootcamp in Gurgaon

Analytics Vidhya, India’s leading Data Science & Analytics community has launched an innovative and first-of-its kind “Data Science Immersive Bootcamp” in Gurgaon. This 9-month intensive bootcamp will offer participants a practical learning experience by combining classroom training and on-the-job internship. During these 9 months – a select group of 30 participants will get to learn data science, get trained and groomed by expert instructors and mentors, do real life projects and finally get their dream jobs. The exhaustive curriculum of this program has been specifically designed by Data Science experts at Analytics Vidhya, keeping in mind the rigorous demands of the industry. 

Talking about the need for such an immersive and focused classroom program in Data Science, Kunal Jain, (Founder & CEO – Analytics Vidhya) says, “There is no dearth of Data Science Trainings in the market today. Millions of people are upskilling themselves in Machine Learning and Data Science, but are unable to get their dream jobs. On the other side, the industry is struggling to find good professionals for data science roles. The reason for this lockdown - people do not get relevant real life experience during these trainings. To bridge the gap between the current skills of Data Science aspirants and what employers really want, we have launched this full-time (9 month) Data Science Immersive Bootcamp – where participants will undergo full-time training and gain practical experience through an internship while working on data science projects”. 

Kunal Jain further adds, “The bootcamp’s curriculum, developed by data science experts from Analytics Vidhya and Industry, will cover the latest data science techniques and also provide a personalized practical learning environment to candidates. The curriculum will help participants master the concepts of Data Science, Python, Data Visualization, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, NLP, Computer Vision, Big Data and more. By the end of this classroom program, the participants will be able to apply their learnings to solve real life data science problems.”

• This Bootcamp comes with a Paid Internship from Day 1. The participants will learn on the job while also earning stipend during this period along with the Classroom Training.
  
  


• Participants will get training from experienced Data Science professionals from Analytics Vidhya and Industry. 

• The bootcamp will provide an opportunity to participants to work on more than 10 real-life projects to fine tune their data science skills.

• At the end of the bootcamp, participants will get placement offers. They can also apply for jobs on their own or through our Industry Partners.

Studies suggest that in India, there are more than 60,000 vacant jobs in Data Science and Machine learning. The bootcamp will provide learning & employment opportunities to aspiring data scientists, connect them with industry leaders and also help them to build their professional network. 

Interested candidates have to take up an online fit test to show their eligibility for the bootcamp. The last date to fill the application form is 10th January 2020. For more information, please visit https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/data-science-immersive-bootcamp/

Analytics Vidhya:

Analytics Vidhya is India’s Largest & world’s leading data science community with more than 4,00,000 data science enthusiasts from 150+ countries across the world. Analytics Vidhya serves all the learning & career needs of data scientists through latest blogs & articles, machine learning hackathons, data science trainings, online courses & programs, conferences, meetups and a job portal. Our aim at Analytics Vidhya is to provide the community with a structured approach to pursue and build a career in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning or Data Science through state-of-the-art engagement and learning platforms.