Andela takes a Deep dive to the Unicorn World

Andela, the global network for remote engineering talent, today announced $200 million in Series E financing that values the company at $1.5 billion.

The round was led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 with participation from new investor Whale Rock and existing investors including Generation Investment Management, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Spark Capital. Lydia Jett, Founding Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers and one of the most respected consumer technology investors in the world, will join Andela’s Board of Directors.

Andela helps companies build remote engineering teams by providing them with access to the best software engineers in the world. Launched in Africa in 2014, the Andela network today represents engineers from more than 80 countries and six continents. Through Andela, thousands of engineers have been placed with leading technology companies including Github, Cloudflare and ViacomCBS.

“Andela has always been the high-quality option for those building remote engineering teams. Now that the world has come to embrace remote work, Andela has become the obvious choice for companies because we can find better talent, faster,” says Jeremy Johnson, CEO and co-founder of Andela. “If you are a talented engineer, Andela opens up a world of possibilities for you, no matter where you are based.”

With a successful placement rate of 96%, Andela has mastered the ability to evaluate the technical skills and soft skills of engineers to match them to the teams they’ll be most successful in. With the new capital, the company will invest in developing products to simplify global hiring and make engineers’ lives easier. In addition, Andela will continue to expand its talent offering beyond software development to include new verticals such as design and data after launching Salesforce development earlier this year.

“Hiring remote technical talent is one of the top challenges that companies face today. We believe Andela will become the preferred talent partner for the world’s best companies as remote and hybrid work arrangements become the norm,” said Lydia Jett, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We are delighted to support Jeremy and the Andela team in their mission to connect these companies with brilliant engineers, and in the process, unlock human potential at scale.”

Most of Andela’s technology is still from Africa, and the company continues to grow in Nigeria, the CEO added. It is less of a shift there and more of a “natural evolution of the company” into more of a marketplace to be able to expand quicker around the world.

The marketplace model is also used in niche regions like Africa, where Andela arguably pioneered tech talent matching. Now, tech talent matching sites — Gebeya, TalentQL, eWorker, GetDev among others — deploy similar tactics but with different business models and operations to pair engineering talent with those needing of them within and outside the continent.

Other platforms like Semicolon and Decagon have tweaked Andela’s previous model to work for themselves and continue to train engineers before releasing them into the market.

That said, now that Andela is a unicorn, Johnson sees more competition coming into the tech talent space to enable global hiring, but says the company is out in front, particularly with a 96% success rate in placing engineers where they will be most successful. He doesn’t see Andela competing with Toptal at all, looking at his company as a hiring alternative rather than a gig economy marketplace.

Exciting day at @Andela I’m so pleased to finally share this BIG news.

Led by @SoftBank, this investment allows for real & rapid progress to be made in expanding the reach of our global talent marketplace for skilled remote technologists.https://t.co/GX5XpebhcH#ThisIsAndela

— Jeremy Johnson (@JeremyJ) September 29, 2021