11 Indian Unicorn Startups that hire from Masai

Experts all over the world were once skeptical about the idea of coding bootcamps and their role in the software industry.

But it all changed when big tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple turned the tide and started hiring grads from coding bootcamps.

In a way they declared – “We prefer skills over degrees any day.”

And so, gone are the days when companies only looked at a person’s degree credentials to even consider them in their hiring pipelines.

When not having a college degree meant you were simply not in the discussion.

Today is the age of skills. A plethora of new companies have stormed into the Indian market and they’re not shying away from changing the norms of the Indian corporate sector.

The rapid boom of tech startups in India can be calculated by the fact that 8 new companies have entered the unicorn list (Valuation = $1 billion) in 2022 itself.

And these companies need a skilled workforce for exponential growth.

Who would they prefer?

• Students having Computer science degrees with no practical experience or
• Trained developers from bootcamps who can build web applications from the get go

A good number of companies today are taking the latter route.

That’s how coding bootcamps like Masai School are playing a significant role in the country’s development, acting as growth engines for these unicorns and soonicorns.

In this article, we’ll discuss 11 such Indian unicorn startups that hire industry-ready developers from Masai School on a regular basis. 

From their origins to their turbo-powered growth and valuations, we’ll cover it all.

OLA

Ola needs no introduction. Founded by Bhavish Aggarwal back in December 2010 as OlaCabs, it is the first Indian cab aggregator company.

It partners with a huge number of taxi drivers and owners to provide a smooth travelling experience to people via the ‘Ola app’.

After raising its first angel investment in 2011 by Kunal Bahl (founder of Snapdeal) and other investors, the company has never looked back. In the meantime, it has also ventured in other areas including their 2-wheeler service called Ola Pedal and most recently launching a new product in Ola Electric scooters.

Ola, owned by ANI technologies Pvt. Ltd. was valued at a staggering $7.3 billion+ in December 2021.

Looking to strengthen their IT team, Ola first arrived at Masai School in 2021 during the placement cycles for the Ninjas 2 batch. Since then, the unicorn has hired 8 Masai graduates in Software Developer roles and we look to continue this partnership further.

BYJU’S

One name that can’t be missed in any discussion regarding Indian Unicorn Startups – BYJU’s.

The world’s most valued ed-tech company was founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran, an engineer with a passion for teaching.

It’s an online tutoring firm with the motive of providing coaching through online video lectures for students of class 1 to 12, and also for people preparing for competitive exams like IIT-JEE, NEET, CAT, etc.

The company has a huge network of teachers and a system that focuses on personalised learning.

Having aspirations of scaling big on a global scale, this Ed-tech Unicorn has shown trust in the quality of training at Masai, hiring multiple graduates in software developer roles.

DREAM11

The love for sports is crazy in India. By giving the young fans a chance to select their own players and teams and win rewards in return if they perform well, Dream11 tapped into the fantasy sports market back in 2008.

With an interesting idea and a perfect timing (coinciding with the rise of IPL), Dream11 kept pushing new heights, feeding the sports’ fanatics brains what they needed.

The company is an old member of the Indian Unicorn club and was valued at $8 billion in November, 2022.

Dream11 has also hired multiple graduates from Masai School as an SDE-1, one of them being Chandan Gupta from the Ninjas 2 batch.

Swiggy

Do you feel like having a spicy biryani for lunch but don’t feel like moving out of the house? Or do you want a bite of delicious gulab jamun in the middle of your office hours?

No worries. Swiggy is here.

This hyper local food delivery application has revolutionised ordering food in India. Founded in 2014 by Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy, and Rahul Jaimini, Swiggy is one of the fastest growing Indian startups.

What’s more?

The company also started general product deliveries under Swiggy Stores in 2019 and looks to build into other ventures.

With a $700 million fund raising in January 2022, Swiggy became one of the very few companies to achieve the decacorn status, currently valued beyond $ 10 billion.

To maintain and build on it’s huge infrastructure, Swiggy has time and again employed graduates from Masai in high paying developer roles.

NoBroker

Any real estate rent/purchase is a hectic affair for customers. From searching to on & off communication to the nagging middlemen, buying a property becomes a huge task at hand.

The trio- Akhil Gupta, Amit Agarwal, and Saurabh Garg addressed this problem statement and founded NoBroker in the year 2014. Now, the buyers could search for property, connect directly with owners and sellers, and finalize the deal without having to pay any brokerage, all through the NoBroker app.

The company has a particular liking for Masai students hiring more than 25 graduates to date in software engineering roles, a very recent one being Rohan Patel from the Web11 batch.

NoBroker has recently joined the unicorn list after raising a whopping $210 million in Series E funding in November 2021.

Meesho

You’ve most certainly heard of the number 1 reselling app in India – Meesho

Want to establish your own online E-commerce business but don’t have the funds to manufacture products, handle the inventory and several other tools required in the process? Meesho has got you covered. Anyone can easily resell on Meesho by acting as a bridge between a supplier and buyers.

This revolutionary idea came into existence in 2015 and has till now amassed a hub of more than 2.6 million resellers and 20,000 suppliers.

Earning a commission of 10-15% per sale on its platform, and raising funds from mega investors, Meesho has skyrocketed to a valuation of almost 5 billion as of September 2021.

A pool of Masai graduates were hired by the company at a high end package of 19LPA from the Samurai 2 batch. Meesho arrived again in December 2021 hiring for Android developer roles.

BharatPe

Founded by the trio of Ashneer Grover, Bhavik Koladiya, and Shashvat Nakrani, with a mission to make online payments free for all users, BharatPe has come a long way since its inception in 2018. 

They first tapped into the huge offline retail marketplace in India, providing the shop owners an interoperable QR code to receive UPI payments effortlessly. Payments can be accepted from all popular transaction apps such as PayTm, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Freecharge, etc. with absolutely zero charges.

The company also offers credit services for small scale merchants at cheaper interest rates.

To build, maintain and optimise its huge portal, BharatPe has been hiring multiple graduates from Masai as Software developers.

ShareChat

It’s fair to say that social media has completely taken over the planet. Every other person is obsessed with it all over the world.

However, most of these channels have English as the base language.

ShareChat decided to do something different.

In 2015, Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Singh launched an indigenous social networking platform which would cater to the Indian masses. The channel comes loaded with 14 different languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Haryanvi, and Bihari among others.

This is their unique selling point, the reason they could stand up to big social media giants like Facebook or Twitter. They provide Indian audiences that “Desi flavour” that we had all been craving for.

Owing to the increasing number of users on the channel, ShareChat has seen tremendous growth over the years, valued at 3.7 billion in December, last year.

ShareChat has also been a regular hiring partner for Masai School since the very start, offering upscale packages to students like Mohammed Hassan and Aayushi Shah to name a few.

MPL

Another one of the ESports giants, MPL was founded in 2018 by Sai Srinivas Kiran G and Shubham Malhotra.

You can play a rich pool of games on MPL such as chess, quiz, free fire, rummy, Ludo, etc. and not to forget fantasy sports.

What’s more? You get real cash awards from the app if you win in these games. Mobile game lovers were obviously going to be inclined towards MPL as they had the opportunity to monetize their gaming skills.

As a result, MPL has achieved a user base of more than 700 million in India alone. The company reached a valuation of $2.45 billion in October 2021 and has only been growing since.

In their future plans, MPL is looking to expand their workforce by hiring over 1500 employees. And surely, Masai School is going to play a big role there, providing skilled developers for its growth.

CoinSwitch

If you have ever done crypto trading, you’d know that the price of crypto varies across exchanges depending on the supply and demand. Choosing the right exchange is paramount to get better returns, and that’s where CoinSwitch tapped into building an aggregator of the different exchanges. Having it all at one place gives real-time data which helps users get better deals.

Founded in 2017 by Ashish Singhal, Govind Soni and Vimal Sagar, CoinSwitch offers dealing in over 300 coins using Indian rupees.

The startup arrived at Masai during the Web10 batch placement cycles, and has continued partnering for the next batches as well.

Junglee Games

Another gaming startup on this list, Junglee Games was brought to existence in 2012 by Ankush Gera. Though he’d been living in San Francisco, Gera decided to target the Indian Gaming landscape going against the experts’ advice.

Started with skill-based gaming, the company has developed 4 games in different categories including Junglee Rummy(skill-based), Howzat (fantasy sports), and Eatme.io, Junglee Teenpatti in the social category.

On the business front, it boasts of over 50 million active users in several countries to date.

Like many other rising unicorns, Junglee Games doesn’t mind hiring even non-CSE students from coding bootcamps. The company hired a bunch of Masai graduates including Rohit Gupta, Rajat Shet and others from the Ninjas 2 batch in SDE-1 roles.

Conclusion

So, these were the 11 Indian unicorn startups that happen to be Masai’s hiring partners.

But, how come these tech companies prefer grads from Masai over other colleges?

The answer is simple- they want people with hands-on coding experience and not just theory. Students at Masai learn to build websites from scratch, and they are practically coding most of the time. Moreover, these students are equipped with proper job skills and industry experience.

And that’s why these companies are ready to pay huge salaries(as much as 36 LPA) even to freshers coming from different educational backgrounds. 

Want to be a high-earning developer and be an active part of this meteoric rise of the tech ecosystem in India?

Start by checking out these courses and see your life turn around for good.

Cheers.