(Left to right) Riza Fahmi and Ronald Ishak, Co-founders of Hacktiv8
Jakarta-based developer school Hacktiv8 today announced that it has raised a US$3 Million Pre-A series round led by East Ventures with participation from Sovereign’s Capital, SMDV, Skystar Capital, Convergence Ventures, RMKB Ventures, Prasetia, and Everhaus.
Hacktiv8 plans to use this newly acquired funds to build more schools and offer what they dubbed as the first Income Share Agreement (ISA) programme in Indonesia, an alternative to traditional student loans.
An ISA contract allows students to raise the money they need to pay for their education in exchange for a percentage of their future post-graduation income. ISA provides a unique “profit-sharing” approach that aligns institutions with getting their graduates hired.
With ISA, students are allowed to pay back money if they earn over a certain amount, and those who are successful will never pay back more than a capped limit. This means that the incentives are aligned between the student and the institution.
“If our graduates get a well-paying job, we will earn a good return on our investment,” said Ronald Ishak, CEO of Hacktiv8.
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Started in 2016 by co-founders Ronald Ishak and Riza Fahmi, Hacktiv8 provides a solution to turn absolute beginners into job-ready web developers in 12 intensive weeks.
As both experienced frustrations of developer poaching practice that is rampant among tech companies at that time, Ishak and Fahmi came up with the programme that helps students learn JavaScript, Node.js, Vue.js, and Facebook’s React framework through hundreds of hands-on lab exercises.
Hacktiv8 offers a “Bootcamp” model that lets students spend upwards of 10 to 12-hour days, five to six days a week, for 12-18 weeks. This model is claimed to enable only the best participants to graduate from the programme.
It claims to have close to 8,000 applicants, but only “a portion” is able to be admitted as they put forward quality.
The company also notes that on average, job-seeking graduates at Hacktiv8 are commonly offered multiple jobs offers with an average salary of IDR11 million (US$900) gross within two to three weeks after graduating.
It also stated that graduates with honours distinctions are commonly hired within days of completing the programme, as corroborated through CIRR, an international student-outcomes reporting group that audits outcomes of code-schools globally, in which Hacktiv8 is the first participating school in Asia.
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Hacktiv8 works with 250 hiring partners who have signed agreements to employ its graduates, as well as participate in a curriculum advisory board to help keep Hacktiv8’s curriculum relevant and up to date. Hiring partners include Tokopedia, Gojek, Bukalapak, Midtrans, Payfazz, Xendit, and KoinWorks.
For scholarships, the company partners with big corporations such as CIMB Niaga, Hana Bank, and Siloam.
According to a survey by McKinsey in 2018, 15 from 20 Indonesia tech company executives reported struggling in hiring local tech talent, while 10 of them having trouble retaining local tech talent.
Google and Temasek projected there will be around 200,000 skilled professionals employed in Southeast Asia’s internet economy by 2025. Currently, this gap is still filled by senior professionals from banks, retailers, and global technology companies.
Willson Cuaca, Managing Partner of East Ventures explained, “Indonesia is one of the countries with a low number of engineers per million population. Not only because Indonesia has a large population, but Indonesia produces a small number of STEM-related programme graduates.”
“To fill the talent gap of Indonesia’s digital economy, developer bootcamp such as Hacktiv8 is a quick solution that addresses the problem and works closely with all industry players for the placement,” Cuaca continued.
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Image Credit: Hacktiv8
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