Plug: If you're excited about what we're building and would like to partner with us in India, please reach out at [email protected]!
No other country in the world is as obsessed with coding as India is. India has the most number of computer science students graduating from college (215K+) each year and many more in adjacent fields of study like electrical engineering and IT. Learning to code is the surest way towards upward mobility and a solid middle class lifestyle.
But the education system is broken which means that over 95% of graduating engineers are unfit to be employed immediately. IT services companies who hire 300K+ "freshers" each year, waste time and money on reteaching students what they were supposed to have learned in college itself. Some motivated students are aware of the poor quality of instruction they are receiving and turn to YouTube and other MOOCs that have some fantastic instructors (shout out to CodeWithHarry) that are helping kids to code. But MOOCs can take you only so far - it is well known that they have failed to deliver due to their low completion rates. Life happens and it's tough to stay motivated when you're learning and watching videos alone.
Enter Replit.
Today a kid learning to code in rural Bihar has access to the same internet connectivity (thanks to Reliance Jio) and top coding content on the internet (thanks to MOOCs like Harvard CS 50) as a developer in Silicon Valley. What the kid doesn't have access to is a decent computing device to code on and a community of learners with whom to learn from and collaborate on code.
Replit solves this. The kid now has access to processing power and memory and storage in the cloud to run the most taxing code. They can meet other learners online, remix their code and ask for help from a supportive community of learners. And they don't have to worry about hosting their project anymore - we do it for free (cough cough Heroku)!
Small wonder India has grown to become Replit's second largest user base outside of the US. Indian learners are learning to code on mobile and chromebooks...
[Translation for the bottom most image: A Chromebook user says they prefer using Replit over VSCode as code runs more smoothly and has much more features]
... hosting life-saving projects, and even earning money [psst: something big coming up here - stay tuned!]
And we're just getting started... stay tuned for some exciting product launches relevant to India!
PSA about our upcoming Diwali Diya Jam:
This Diwali, code and light up a beautiful diya for Diwali. You can use Javascript or HTML + CSS to create and animate this! To participate just publish a Repl with the hashtag #ReplitDiwaliDiya before Oct 24th, and you will be automatically entered. The top 5 submissions will get a free hacker plan and be featured on our newly launched community hub!
