Andela

Andela connects tech companies with vetted and trained remote engineering teams from Africa. The company launched in 2014 with physical hubs in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda where it has its trained and vetted applicants. 

Since then, Andela has cut down its junior engineer freelancer pool by 420 across Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria and subsequently in May 2020, it also laid off 135 employees driven by the initial impact of the pandemic. At this point, the company had an annual revenue run rate of USD 50 million. In the meantime, it shut down its physical hubs and pivoted to a more sustainable remote model and set sights on global expansion. The move has been successful and the platform has experienced a 750% uptick in applicants outside of Africa from November 2020 to April 2021.

In October 2023 , Andela introduced Andela Talent Cloud, an integrated platform connecting technologists with companies seeking talent which includes key features such as  AI-powered talent matching, predictive performance assessments, streamlined global payouts, and integrations with popular HR systems. 

As of September 2021, the company offers engineers from over 80 countries on its platform including Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and Europe. The platform serves over 200 customers including GitHub, ViacomCBS, Cloudflare, Coursera and InVision. 

Andela announced its acquisition of Qualified in March 2023, a platform that assesses and certifies top engineers based on their technical skills. The acquisition will enable Andela to expand its global talent community by adding over 3.6 million engineering users from Codewars, an online community that uses Qualified to offer gamified challenges to technical talent.

In June 2021, Toptal filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of New York against Andela and its employees. Toptal accused Andela of cloning its business model. Adding another twist to the plot is the fact that Andela’s employees previously worked at Toptal. Andela’s employees were accused of violating confidentiality, non-compete, and non-solicitation agreements with Toptal. Furthermore, it's accusing Andela of poaching its platform talent, clients, and top personnel.