Recruitment business Andela raised $100m series D round featuring Alphabet

US-based recruitment company for IT professionals Andela received $100m in a series D round, which included GV, one of the corporate venturing subsidiaries of internet technology conglomerate Alphabet. Investment firm Generation Investment Management led the rounds that was also backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the investment holding company owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. Previous corporate backer of Andela is also Salesforce Ventures, a subsidiary of enterprise software producer Salesforce. In addition to developing its training platform, the company plans to expand further across Africa.

Founded in 2014, Andela provides coaching and training to Africa-based software developers and assists them in finding employment in the US. Andela operates training campuses in the capital cities of Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. It claims to have hired some 1,000 developers from a pool of over 100,000 applicants.

Andela is a business from the dynamic space of HR tech, which has been raising corporate-backed rounds in recent years, as the historical bar chart from GCV Analytics below shows. Last year that space registed a total of 50 corporate-backed deals, worth an estimated total of $974m.