Pesto Tech, a home-grown edutech startup championing remote work and borderless opportunities for Indian engineers have raised funds from Ryan Hoover (Founder, Product Hunt), Anand Chandrasekaran (Stalwart Angel Investor), Ankur Nagpal (Founder & CEO, Teachable), Sahil Lavingia (Founder & CEO, Gumroad), Hiten Shah (Co-founder & CEO, FYI, usefyi.com), Andreas Klinger (Investor, Remote First capital), Maran Nelson (Founder, Interact), Derek Anderson (Co-founder, Bevy/Startup Grind) & Cindy Bi (General Partner, CapitalX). With the mission of expanding globally, Pesto Tech will use this funding to strengthen its presence in Silicon Valley.
The Founders at Pesto believe the future of work does not belong in offices and given the unprecedented times, takes their responsibility to help the world become remote-ready seriously. Pesto aims to double down its efforts to make tech opportunities accessible to millions of people in developing countries who have been invisible on the global map.
Pesto Tech has been on a mission of unlocking the potential of remote opportunities for Indian engineers for over two years now. Pesto Tech sees a gap to be filled on both the demand and supply side of engineers and is tapping into remote work to bridge the same. The Indian startup operates on the back of an ISA (Income Sharing
Agreement) model, which makes Pesto more accessible to train Indian engineers with the skills needed to excel within the world’s best startups.
The success of the previous batches of Pesto grads is proof of concept for Pesto Tech’s vision of democratizing tech opportunities for engineers across the world. With 100 grads so far, Pesto Tech has already placed 85% and the remaining 15% are in the late stages of the interview process. The salary packages drawn have gone as high as $85,000 and the highest salary increment has been 16x leading to a package of $82,000. On average, grads have received a 3x salary increment post the program. Pesto grads are hired by leading tech startups including Highlighter, Snorkel, Human Capital, Remotion, Airmeet, Paypal among others.
Ayush Jaiswal, Co-founder & CEO, Pesto Tech said, “We are excited to welcome some amazing people to the Pesto fam, their advice will be valuable for us as we get into our next phase of growth. As the world goes remotely, our goal is to make sure we make it extremely easy for companies to think about talent acquisition globally from day 0. This will help build a level playing ground for talent to compete for such opportunities, irrespective of where they’re born. ”
Ryan Hoover, Founder, Product Hunt, says, "The future of knowledge work is remote and Pesto is accelerating this transition, connecting strong developers in India with the world’s best startups."
Sahil Lavingia, Founder & CEO, Gumroad, says, “I’m super excited to see ISAs applied to the Indian market. Pesto’s results in their prior cohorts speak for themselves - their future cohorts will be more outstanding.”
“A large part of the next million tech jobs will be remote & 23.5% of the world's developers are in India. Pesto can take these opportunities & offer them to underserved markets. The timing to do this couldn't get better”, says Maran Nelson, Founder & CEO, Clara labs & Interact.
Hiten Shah, Founder & CEO, FYI & Product habits, says, “I’ve been recruiting and working with engineers all across the world for 17 years. The Pesto Tech team is building something I’ve personally wished existed when I first started building software: An efficient way to hire high-quality engineers in India without the pain of trial and error.”
Derek Andersen, Founder, Startup Grind & Bevy, says, “Many of the best companies in the United States are run by Indians. As the world goes more and more remote, there should be better ways to access great Indian engineering talent. I'm so excited about Pesto's product and amazing team.”
Recently, Pesto’s angel investor & co-founder of Swiggy India, Rahul Jaimini joined Pesto as the Co-founder & COO. Both share a mutual conviction for Pesto’s long term vision of democratizing tech opportunities. In the past, Pesto has also raised seed money from Matrix Partners, Swiggy founders, Dr. Ritesh Malik- Innov8, and others.