HyperionDev has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding through crowd investment platform CrowdCube to help expand to thousands of students globally. The South African online courses platform was founded in 2012 as a small grassroots movement of Computer Science students working towards a single goal to build and deliver better technical education, typically for digital literacy and programming skills learners.

The funding that was mostly raised via the platform CrowdCube will be used to lead the next stage of expansion into foreign markets such as the United States and the United Kingdom. With its previous backers, Facebook and Google, the company has now raised more than its original target to secure ZAR37.2 million (about US$2.6 million) using the platform.

“This incredible milestone will directly benefit thousands of students across the globe who are looking for an accessible and affordable way to learn job-ready, practical developer skills in months rather than years. In the past 12 weeks, we’ve welcomed over 1,500 new stakeholders,” said Riaz Moola, founder, and CEO of HyperionDev.

While the company is looking at expanding across borders, the South African government is focused on growing its best prospect industry sector for the country. According to the International Trade Administration's last publication, the Government, through its programs and agencies will embark on extensive skills development program geared towards training one million young people by 2030 in Robotics, Coding, Cloud computing, and Networking.

Solange Che