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  • January 2021
  • Case
  • HBS Case Collection

Andela: Africa's AWS for Talent

By: Caroline M. Elkins, Tarun Khanna and Joyce J. Kim
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:21
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Abstract

Five years after the company’s founding, Andela, a company that built and trained remote engineering teams, became arguably Africa’s greatest technology unicorn. By January 2019, Andela raised $100 million in Series D funding. As Andela looked to scale in an increasingly competitive landscape, its goal was to democratize trust and become an “Amazon Web Services” (AWS) for software engineering talent. With their windfall investment and the advent of COVID, Andela had to figure out their “2.0 model” to permit scaling. How would Andela stack up in a growing landscape of global remote talent companies? Could Andela become not just Africa’s, but the world’s AWS for trusted software engineering talent?

Keywords

Education In Africa; Entrepreneur; Remote Work; Software Engineering; Edtech; Entrepreneurship; Education; Software; Engineering; Growth And Development Strategy; Africa

Citation

Elkins, Caroline M., Tarun Khanna, and Joyce J. Kim. "Andela: Africa's AWS for Talent." Harvard Business School Case 321-113, January 2021.
  • Educators

About The Authors

Caroline M. Elkins

General Management
→More Publications

Tarun Khanna

Strategy
→More Publications

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More from the Authors
  • Judging Foreign Startups By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Rembrand Koning and Tarun Khanna
  • iOpenEye: Theater and #MeToo in Nigeria By: Caroline M. Elkins, Tarun Khanna and Joyce J. Kim
  • Women Entrepreneurs and Tech Ecosystems: One City, Two Realities, and Four Diverse Women By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim
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