Matrix Partners India invests in Pesto

New Delhi, 2nd May, 2019: Matrix Partners India announced today that it has invested in Pesto, a career accelerator for India's top software engineering talent. The round also saw participation from Sriharsha Majety, Rahul Jaimani and Nandan Reddy (Founders of Swiggy), Dr. Ritesh Malik (Founder, Innov8), Ashish Tulsian (Founder, Posist), and Jack Yeung (OIC Capital) among other prolific angel investors.

Founded by Ayush Jaiswal and Andrew Linfoot, Pesto is on a mission to change lives of engineers in developing countries, starting with 5.2 million engineers of India. Pesto's 12-week intensive training program is a career accelerator for India's top software engineering talent and it helps them break into international tech careers via full-time remote jobs. After going through the Pesto program, a graduate gets on an average a 6x increase in their salary. The program is affordable for everyone as there's no upfront fee. Instead, the company takes a fixed percentage of the engineer's salary for the next three years through an income share agreement. This way the company wins only if graduates are successful. Starting January 2019, Pesto is starting a batch every month and accepting students on a rolling basis.

Commenting on the fundraise, Ayush Jaiswal, Co-founder of Pesto said, "We're thrilled to have on-boarded investors that share our passion to make opportunities globally accessible to all. The world is changing faster than ever and I believe that the future belongs to distributed teams with talent no longer being restricted to their location. There's a severe shortage of tech talent in certain parts of the world (US, Canada, Europe etc) and we believe that India has a large number of undiscovered tech talent that can fill this gap.We believe it's an incredible opportunity and we have truly exciting times ahead of us.'

"Apart from technical skills, we teach students about cultural differences between the US and India, how to be better communicators, how to manage their time in a remote work environment, etc. However, the unique thing about Pesto is the fact that the whole training program is designed to create a change in mindset. By the time students graduate, they have the confidence to believe that their career opportunities are unbounded and that they can participate as equals in the global tech community.' said Andrew Linfoot, Co-founder of Pesto.

Rajat Agarwal, Vice President, Matrix India commented, "Remote work is an early trend globally driven by a shortage of high-quality local talent, rising cost of living in key technology hubs and widespread adoption of enabling infrastructure such as co-working and collaboration tools. Pesto is on a mission to build a marketplace for quality remote talent from India and we strongly believe in their skilling led approach. We are excited to partner with Andrew and Ayush on this journey and look forward to building a global company together.'

About Pesto:

Pesto is on a mission to give everyone equal access to opportunity, regardless of where they were born. Pesto's 12-week intensive training program is a career accelerator for India's top software engineering talent and it helps them break into international tech. careers via full-time remote jobs. After going through the Pesto program, an average graduate gets a 6x increase in their salary. Starting April 2019, Pesto is starting a batch every month and accepting students on a rolling basis. More information about Pesto can be found at: www.pesto.tech

About Matrix Partners India:

Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with approximately $1 billion under management. Founded in 2006, the firm invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market at the seed, early and early growth stages. Matrix India has invested in several market leading companies such as Ola (local transportation), Quikr (online classifieds), Practo (digital health platform), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Treebo (digital hotel chain), Limeroad (social e-commerce platform), Mswipe (mobile POS), Five Star Business Finance (SME lending), OfBusiness (credit led B2B marketplace), Vogo (scooter sharing), Razorpay (payments), and ZipLoan (small business lending) among others. Matrix India has advisory offices in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. Matrix Partners has a global network of funds investing in the US, China and India, with approximately $5 billion under management. Further information is available at www.matrixpartners.in