HYDERABAD: With the vision of bridging the skill gap that keeps Indian engineering graduates from getting good jobs, a serial entrepreneur from Hyderabad has starting a coding bootcamp called The Hacking School. Meraj Faheem, who studied biotech engineering from Bharath University in Chennai, started to learn coding when he found that job prospects were lean in his field. “When I was working for a company, we had a tough time finding skilled product developers in India. The number of such graduates was high and they could not be ignored. That is why, I started researching about how this issue is being resolved in countries like the USA. That’s when I came across the concept of coding bootcamps. Back then, in 2013, I found that there was no such bootcamp in India. That is why I started The Hacking School in Gachibowli.”
When asked how his programme is different from the plethora of courses being offered in places in Ameerpet, he says: “The model we follow at The Hacking School is different where you learn things by doing them. It is based on 100 per cent hands-on experience. In week one, the students have to decide what they want to build over the three-month programme. They end up spending 7-10 hours daily in the camp, and nothing is taught through PowerPoint or other forms of presentation.
The trainers have market experience in product development. They know how to build things. At the end of 13 weeks, the students end up making product clones of their own. The idea behind the bootcamp is not training only, but to create product developers.” So, do they teach hacking computers too at their school? Meraj clarifies: “In this context, the term hacking in the name of the bootcamp means getting a job done faster and in the easiest way possible. We do not teach how to hack computers.” Students who do not have technical background can join the school. It has a part-time programme for working professionals. The programme costs one lakh nine thousand rupees.