About the academy
We teach software the way it is actually practised
Small live batches, honest feedback and code that has to run in production. The method has not changed since the first class in 2017.
18
Maximum learners per batch
A cap we have never raised
3
Career tracks
Frontend, Backend and Full-Stack
240
Live teaching hours on the longest track
All taught live, never pre-recorded
48 hrs
Turnaround on a written code review
Every one written by a working engineer
2017 to today
It started with six people and a whiteboard
In 2017 our founder was a delivery lead at a product company, spending his weeks interviewing candidates who held certificates but could not explain their own code. Most of them had watched hours of video, copied along, and never once had someone read what they wrote. So he started an evening class for six people in a rented room, with one rule: you submit code every week and it gets reviewed line by line.
That rule has not changed since. We moved online in 2020, kept the batch cap and the review discipline, and found the format worked better than the classroom for working professionals in different cities.
Since then we have taught mechanical engineers, BPO staff, teachers, final-year students, freelancers who could build but could not interview, and experienced developers who wanted to move from support work into engineering.
We have deliberately stayed small. We do not run batches of eighty, we do not sell recorded courses, and we do not promise jobs. What we sell is the attention of an engineer who reads your code and tells you the truth about it, which is the one thing that does not scale and the one thing that works.
How the training is structured
The things we can show you. We deliberately do not publish placement percentages, salary figures or review scores on this site.
18
Maximum learners per batch
A cap we have never raised
3
Career tracks
Frontend, Backend and Full-Stack
240
Live teaching hours on the longest track
All taught live, never pre-recorded
28
Weeks on the Full-Stack track
16 on Frontend, 18 on Backend
6
Reviewed projects on the Full-Stack track
Every one deployed to a public URL
48 hrs
Turnaround on a written code review
Every one written by a working engineer
Our mission and the promises attached to it
A mission statement is only worth something if it can be broken.
Our mission is to make a serious engineering career reachable for anyone willing to do the work, regardless of which college they attended or what their first job was.
India produces enormous numbers of graduates who can pass an exam on programming and cannot build a working application. That gap is not a talent problem. It is a feedback problem. Nobody ever told them what was wrong with their code.
So we hold ourselves to four promises, and you may hold us to them in writing:
- We will never let a batch exceed 18 learners, even when a cohort sells out and we could take twenty-five.
- Every submission gets a written review within 48 hours from a person, naming what is wrong and how to fix it.
- We will tell you if this is not right for you. If a free demo reveals that you need a different path, we will say so and refund any deposit in full.
- We will not quote outcome numbers we cannot evidence. No placement percentages, no median salaries and no review scores on this site. Ask about a specific past batch and we will tell you what happened to the people in it, and connect you with them before you pay.
We would rather run a smaller academy that people recommend to their friends than a large one that people warn them about.
What makes the training different
Six choices that cost us money and that we make anyway, because they are the reason the outcomes hold up.
- The core of the method
Code review, not correction
A mentor comments on your pull request and sends it back. You fix it and resubmit. Nobody hands you the answer, because the habit of finding your own fix is the actual deliverable of this course.
- No career trainers
Practising engineers only
Everyone who teaches here has shipped and maintained commercial software. Two of our mentors still take on consulting work, which is how war stories stay current instead of dating from 2015.
- About 20% rewritten yearly
A syllabus that gets pruned
We track what our hiring partners actually ask for and drop what has fallen out of demand. Adding topics is easy; removing them is what keeps a course from bloating to 400 shallow hours.
- Ambiguity is deliberate
Briefs, not step-by-step instructions
Project briefs are intentionally incomplete, so you have to ask questions, make decisions and defend them later. Every capstone also receives one mid-sprint requirement change.
- When the fit is wrong, we say so
We turn people away
If your schedule cannot absorb 12 to 15 hours a week, or your goal would be better served elsewhere, we say so at the demo stage rather than taking the fee and hoping.
- Open to every graduate
Alumni stay in the room
Graduates keep community access for life, post openings from their own companies, and come back to run mock interviews for the batch behind them.
The person who will teach you
Vikas Kumar · founder, lead instructor and curriculum head
Vikas Kumar spent around fifteen years in commercial software before teaching became his full-time work. He began as a frontend developer building interfaces for banking clients, moved into .NET and Node.js service development, and ended up leading delivery teams across fintech, healthcare, logistics and education projects.
Along the way he ran hiring loops and sat on the interviewer's side of technical rounds. That is where the idea for this academy came from: he could see which questions separated the candidates who got offers from the ones who did not, and almost none of them were about syntax.
He has been teaching this syllabus since 2017. He still writes every assignment brief himself, reviews all capstone projects personally, and keeps a repository of the reference implementations so learners can compare their decisions against his.
He teaches on one principle: no concept is introduced until you have hit the problem it solves. Learners meet state management only after prop drilling becomes unbearable, and database indexing only after a query they wrote takes nine seconds.
- 15 years in commercial software deliveryFrontend, backend and architecture work across fintech, healthcare, logistics and education, on greenfield builds and decade-old legacy systems alike.
- Teaching full time since 2017Weekday, weekend, morning and corporate cohorts, in classrooms and live online.
- Ran hiring loops as a delivery leadConducted technical interviews from the employer's side, which is why our interview preparation is built from what interviewers are actually listening for.
- Writes and reviews the curriculum himselfEvery assignment brief, every reference implementation and every capstone review comes from him, not from a licensed third-party syllabus.
- Corporate training for engineering teamsHas run in-house upskilling programmes on React, TypeScript and .NET for product and services companies across South India.
How a single week runs
The rhythm is the same in every track, which is why it becomes a habit rather than a schedule.
Live sessions with live coding
3 to 5 evenings
The instructor builds on screen while you build alongside. Cameras on, questions welcome mid-sentence, and nothing pre-typed or pasted in from a finished file.
Assignment pushed to your own repository
Due before the weekend
You work on a branch, write a real commit history and raise a pull request. Direct commits to main are rejected, exactly as they would be at work.
Written code review within 48 hours
Line by line
A mentor comments on naming, structure, error handling, security and readability, then requests changes. You revise until it is merged.
Doubt-clearing and pair debugging
Six days a week
Book a 20-minute screen-shared slot with a mentor whenever you are stuck. Most learners use two or three a month, and the busy weeks are always the same ones.
Fortnightly build review in front of the batch
Ten minutes each
You demo what you shipped and answer questions from peers and mentors. Explaining your own architecture out loud is rehearsal for every interview you will sit.
Come and judge the teaching for yourself
Book a free demo class, sit through a real session with a running batch, and talk to the learners in it. We would rather you decide from the inside than from a brochure.