WebStack Academy (WSA) is an IT finishing school that offers hands-on training programs in web application development and mobile technologies. As a company, primary goal of WSA is to bridge the industry-academia gap and make entry-level engineers employable with a hands-on approach towards education. With more than 1.5 million engineers graduating every year, hardly 15% of them having employable skills. WSA is offering a high-quality industry oriented training program to address this gap. The founding team is from the same educational background. They all are engineers and have worked with various MNCs with local and global exposure. With their years of experience, they exactly understand methodologies to address the industry-academia gap.
Mr. Jayakumar Balasubramanian is the Director of WSA. He has more than 15 years of working experience with companies like HP and Huawei. His realization of becoming an entrepreneur has many factors. The roots lie during his time inNIT, Warangal for his engineering. During his studies, he understood what quality of education to do for individuals and how many of them are still under-served. The same problem of skill shortage continued when he started working with companies like Hewlett-Packard and Huawei Technologies and this with other things combined made his start the journey of entrepreneurship that too in the field of education.
Mr. Mubeen J is the Technology Head of WSA. As a versatile technologist Mubeen has more than 15 years of hands-on technology experience in building products in the areas of Industrial Automation, Printer Output Management, Consumer IoT, EDA and Smart Cards. He has worked with companies like HP and Novell, where he was part of technology teams that launched live products to global markets. Mr. Mubeen also has a keen interest in imparting technical education in the right way by maintaining a fine balance between content and delivery methodologies. He is a frequent speaker at local and global Open Source conferences, mainly around Linux ecosystem.
The name of this company has been chosen as WebStack Academy because they take an end-to-end, full-stack approach towards in training programs that include in the front-end, back-end, and database developers. The same full stack approach in embedded system domain has been carried out by Emertxe which is been in business for over a decade. WSA is a spin-off from the parent company Emertxe.
They thrive on this mission statement: “Drive Technology by creating a platform to constantly drive technology education to make life easier, leading to a technology-aware country” The amount of thankfulness that is seen in the eyes of participants and the positive impact that this academy has on Individuals, their families, corporate organizations and a technology-aware country is what keeps the team motivated in spite of all challenges.
WebStack Academy is facing following challenges in the finishing school space:-
Challenge-1: Customer understanding
The first challenge was to understand and handle student’s mindset, which constitutes the major chunk of customers. Because more than 90% of the students come from tier-2 and tier-3 places they not only lack in terms of technical skills but also require a lot of behavioral coaching. WSA solves this problem by taking a holistic approach towards learning. The mentoring team not only delivers the subject but they ensure that their students really learn in a right way. This requires hand-holding students when they face both technical and non-technical issues, clarifying doubts, organizing 1:1 counseling/coaching sessions and making them interact with industry experts in form of guest lectures. These combined set of activities in an inspired and positive environment improves both their skills and confidence.
Challenge-2: Balancing latest technologies with foundations
Things change rapidly in web and mobile technologies. Say for example today there are many programming languages for web development like Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby etc. These languages even come up with frequently updated versions. Having said that, these technologies have strong fundamentals (ex: OOPS, Class Design, Design patterns etc.) which won’t change even after few decades. To stay updated with changing tech WSA strikes a healthy balance where not only latest technologies are taught but also learning of sound fundamentals is ensured.
Mr. Mubeen and Mr. Jayakumar told us that the company has recently launched MEAN stack based, full stack web developer programs. This is due to the latest trend in the field. They also have weekend workshops for working professionals on Android. Going forward they see WSA launching courses in Data Science, DevOps, Artificial Intelligence, IoT and Virtual Reality (VR) / Augmented Reality (AR) domains, targeting similar segment.
Overall WSA is headed by Maaz Jukaku, Managing Director. The core team of WSA consisting of Maaz, Jayakumar, and Mubeen looks forward to maintaining a fine balance between sound foundations with latest technological advancements. After all, this is what the company see it as ‘Forward-looking IT finishing school’. Mr. Jayakumar and Mr. Mubeen signed off with a small advice for upcoming start-ups – Teamwork. In start-ups, it’s very important to have highly aligned team members having complementary skill-sets, who share the company vision. With so many challenges start-up face, this team-work is what eventually differentiates successful one from others. “
For any queries or assistance, you may contact WebStack Academy at:
Email: training@webstackacademy.com
Phone: +918095557333
Website: http://www.webstackacademy.com
Location: Bangalore, Karnataka, India
