Andela, a Nigerian firm that connects African software engineers with multinational companies, has raised $200 million from investors.
Softbank Vision Fund 2 led the round, which included new investor Whale Rock as well as current investors such as Generation Investment Management, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Spark Capital.
The New York-based company is now valued at $1.5 billion.
Andela is a worldwide talent network that links organizations with certified, remote engineers in emerging and developing economies. It was founded in Africa in 2014 by Jeremy Johnson, CEO and co-founder. Engineers from more than 80 nations on six continents are now part of the network. Thousands of engineers have been placed with top technological firms including as GitHub, Cloudflare, and ViacomCBS, among others, thanks to Andela.
Mr. Jeremy Johnson, CEO and co-founder of Andela, commented on the news, saying, “Andela has always been the high-quality alternative for those developing remote engineering teams.” Andela has become the natural choice for corporations because we can locate better talent, faster, now that the globe has embraced remote work.
Lydia Jett, a founding partner of SoftBank Investment Advisers and one of the world’s most well-known consumer technology investors, will join Andela’s board of directors.
“Hiring remote technical talent is one of the top difficulties that businesses confront today,” she said. As remote and hybrid work arrangements become the standard, we believe Andela will become the chosen talent partner for the world’s greatest firms.
“We are ecstatic to join Jeremy and the Andela team in their aim to connect these firms with outstanding engineers, thereby unlocking human potential at scale.”
After launching Salesforce development earlier this year, the business will use the new funds to spend in building solutions to make global hiring easier, as well as continuing to extend its talent offering beyond software development to cover new verticals such as design and data.
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