US coding school raises funding to solve Singapore’s engineering woes

Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmuragatnam (second from left) visiting Byte Academy’s New York office. Photo credit: Byte Academy.

Budding coders in Singapore will have one more place to turn to for training and education by the end of this year. New York-based programming school Byte Academy will open its doors in the Lion City in late 2016.

Byte Academy aims to train 2,000 programmers in Singapore in the next 5 years.

It’s doing that with the help of a US$2.2 million series A round by Singapore-based investment fund Tri5 Ventures. The investment comes from the firm’s Education Growth Fund, which focuses on deals with programming schools in Singapore.

The Singapore-based subsidiary is an international first for the school. It will launch a series of courses on Python programming, fintech, and data science. There will be 12-week full-time courses and four-week part-time courses available.

It aims to train 2,000 programmers in Singapore in the next five years.

The school will also hold, and participate in, events and community initiatives. For example, it’s working with the Monetary Authority of Singapore on the latter’s Fintech Festival in November. In the US, Byte Academy has worked with Microsoft, Google, and JP Morgan, as well as startups and incubators there.

Additional locations in Southeast Asia and India are also planned.

Smart move

Byte Academy co-founder Rak Chugh says that Singapore’s potential was driven home by the visit of the country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, to the company’s New York headquarters. The DPM explained Singapore’s Smart Nation ambitions and the opportunities therein.

“I was further convinced of this in my recent visit to Singapore, where there is a growing finance community of programmers and startups, similar to New York in its early stages,” Rak adds.

Byte Academy is working with MAS on the latter’s Fintech Festival in November.

“Singapore needs 30,000 trained programmers by 2020 in the Information-Communication Technology (ICT) sector, with major focus on verticals like fintech and data science,” says Christopher Quek, managing partner of Tri5 Ventures.