Philippines-based edtech startup Avion School has announced in February 2021 that it has bagged an undisclosed amount of funding from Y Combinator after being accepted into the global startup accelerator programme.
Avion School feels that being accepted into Y Combinator permits it to tap into a comprehensive network of companies employing software engineers.
Victor Rivera (CEO) and John Young (COO) founded Avion School in 2020. Avion is an e-school that teaches Filipinos to become remote software engineers. Students can register for a 12-week course to learn the engineering subjects and skills required for software developer roles. The startup also offers employment support to make sure students can secure jobs upon completion of the course.
The online school aims to solve the fundamental problem of the aftermaths of a traditional computer science degree. Students are made to pay an enormous amount of tuition fee every year for something that doesn’t prepare them for real-world skills that can help them get high-salary jobs. Eventually, many students change their career course and find alternatives outside of software development, which the startup claims pay more.
Since Avion’s inception, it has taught seven batches of students and collaborated with over 80 companies worldwide, including Xendit, PayMongo and Pulley. The edtech startup also claims that its graduates have been paid at least 40 per cent more than the average figure, with some students getting salaries as much as 5x times the average ones.
Avion stated its syllabus includes the latest engineering subjects required by startups and other companies and traditional instructional design. The school also has an Income Share Agreement where the student participants do not need to pay the course fees until they are employed.
Victor Rivera was quoted to have said, “The reality is that hiring engineers is difficult because not enough people are trained with the skills required to build tech products. This is a huge opportunity to solve, considering there are 3.5 million people in Southeast Asia trained in technical software development skills”.
He further added that they believe in Filipino developers’ capability and want to showcase that to the world. In essence, he states that they are building ‘Call Centre 2.9′ but with software engineering talent. He believes that focusing on finding and upskilling the Philippines’ talent pool is also ideal because they have a population of 100 million that are mainly English speaking and a service-based economy.
Avion had previously secured funding in a pre-seed funding round from angel investors, including Justin Mateen (co-founder of Tinder).
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