It’s hard to create a lucrative career in coding but what is harder is helping someone else do the same without scamming them for profits. Hemanand Vadivel is an impeccable example of this less profitable but beautiful task. He does this with his learning platform Codebasics.io.
Hemanand’s professional career began at Wipro in India, where he worked as a Project Engineer. Following his stint at Wipro, Hemanand moved to Germany, where he worked with Arvato SCM Solutions as an Operations Management Intern and later as a Master Thesis Student.
Hemanand’s career took a significant turn when he joined Edgewell Personal Care in the UK as a Graduate Intern in Demand Planning Data, Systems & Applications.
During his time in the UK, Hemanand mastered tools like Power BI, which allowed him to deliver impactful solutions and conduct training workshops for colleagues.
“It’s not about educated vs uneducated anymore. It’s about people who learn continuously vs people who stopped learning.”
Despite his successful career in the UK, Hemanand felt a deeper calling. In 2021, he collaborated with Dhaval Patel to create a free YouTube playlist on Power BI. This collaboration was born out of a shared vision to provide high-quality educational content and make a positive impact on society.
In 2021, he lost a dear family member to COVID-19, which was a period of deep grief for him. However, this challenging time also brought clarity and a renewed sense of purpose. The success of the Power BI course and the alignment of core values with Dhaval Patel gave Hemanand the courage to leave his high-paying job in the UK and focus full-time on Codebasics.
Hemanand Vadivel emphasizes that Codebasics is a profitable company despite not using aggressive sales tactics or gimmicks. Instead, they focus on ensuring high-quality content, offering 80% of it for free, and making the rest affordable.
After 18 months, they have over 230,000 registered learners, with only 10% being paid learners. The company is profitable enough to pay decent salaries and fund free initiatives for 2024.
“Ed-Tech is a competitive space. But you don’t need to scam to make profit. That is ugly and unsustainable. You can genuinely help people and still make profit. That’s Beautiful. Sustainable.”
He is also very active on Linkedin where he regularly shares his advice and opinions. His relatable and helpful content has garnered him more than 89k followers.
The biggest proof of his success is not the number of people enrolled or the money he made. It is the thank you messages he gets from his old students who landed a job just because of his fre courses.
His most important learning in life was when he was 12 years old and was having temple’s delicious food when two less fortunate kids came showing their palms. His mom quickly divided Prasad into 3 portions and said to Hemanand, “We still have food at home, right dear?”
Here was when Hemanand Vadivel learned the difference between need and want. Even today he applies this learning in his life which he says gives him immense satisfaction. Moreover, he advocates and advises all his social media community not to get scammed by ‘Scamfluencers’ and to learn how to detect and report these scams.
