Creas Impacto buys a stake in Ironhack’s capital

The international school has closed a new financing round with its main partners -JME and BrighEye-, which has also been joined by Creas, with a € 1.4M investment.

With these new resources, the company will multiply its impact and reinforce its leadership on the European and Latin American marketplace.

Creas Impacto has purchased a stake in Ironhack during a new financing round for this European leader in the field of technological training, with the benchmark impact fund in Spain investing €1.4M. The operation was completed in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, with the pandemic highlighting the need to accelerate the digitalisation of many sectors and companies and to enhance talent with new digital skills around the world. The round was also subscribed by Ironhack’s main current partners, JME Ventures and BrighEye Ventures, which continue to support the company.

Thanks to this new capital inflow, Ironhack will be able to reinforce its leadership position on the European and Latin American marketplace and to multiply its impact, by making available to many more people its employment-focused training model. The new resources will be used to boost the expansion of this company, with 120 employees and currently operating in 9 cities in Europe, Latin America and North America, where Ironhack wants to keep growing and increase its regional and online presence, while enhancing its product offering and its value propositions.

The operation was completed in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, with the pandemic highlighting the need to accelerate the digitalisation of many industries and companies

The digital skills divide is among the major global challenges to generate quality jobs. In 2018, the uncovered global offer for IT programmers reached 5 million jobs. In Spain alone, this shortage is estimated at 150,000 jobs per year. In addition to this divide, there is a need to reinvent labour force in many companies in which a considerable number of employees will have to make a career move to become programmers, data analysts or technological product designers. In Europe alone, 375 million workers are expected to make a career change by 2030.”

Set up by Gonzalo Manrique and Ariel Quiñones in 2013, Ironhack was born to bridge that digital divide and has already trained more than 6,000 students. Breaking traditional education moulds, this company is capable to train people of any profile and turn them into programmers or web designers in only 3 months. Thanks to the personalised support it provides, the company has managed to keep employability rates of 80% after 90 days and of 90% after 180 days from completion of its training programmes.

Luis Berruete, founding partner of Creas, explains that “we find it essential to support solutions that fight structural unemployment in Spain and other countries. We believe that Ironhack’s solution, which was already relevant before COVID-19, is now even more significant, at a time when we will need to face major unemployment challenges”.

Meanwhile, Gonzalo Manrique, founder partner of Ironhack, highlights that “impact has become a strategic lever for long-term value creation. Therefore, we thought that bringing in an impact fund such as Creas was essential for us to continue boosting and maximising the impact we already generated”. The law firms DLA Piper, Perez Llorca and Vivancos Abogados provided legal advice in respect of the transaction.

For further information: www.ironhack.com