"Solving Developer Polarization Issues with High-Quality Coding Education Platforms"

Online Coding Education Startup CEO Jaewon Kim of ELICE
Achieved 3 Billion KRW Revenue Last Year... Sets 15 Billion KRW Sales Target for This Year

Jaewon Kim, CEO of ELRIS

"The most difficult thing is that it is hard to find good educators." The problem with software coding education in Korea, as diagnosed by Kim Jaewon, CEO of ELICE, was straightforward. Although interest in coding education is higher than ever due to soaring developer salaries, the rapid pace of technological advancement makes it difficult for existing educators to keep up, and those with strong capabilities receive high salaries in the field, making it hard for them to engage in education, Kim explained. As a result, beyond just treatment issues, if good developers cannot join companies where talented developers gather, the skill gap continues to widen. Developers want to join large companies to grow, while small and medium enterprises struggle to find developers, creating a 'polarization phenomenon.' Kim believes that this problem can be addressed through a platform. The outcome of this effort is 'ELICE.'

In an interview with Asia Economy, Kim stated, "We are focusing on nurturing talent needed for digital transformation," and added, "Last year, 100,000 employees completed software education courses annually." ELICE is an online coding education startup co-founded in 2015 by PhD candidates from the KAIST Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Initially, the goal was to enhance educational effectiveness while working as teaching assistants at KAIST. However, as coding education expanded beyond majors to non-majors and was applied across various industries, it naturally evolved into an educational solution that could be commercialized.

The advantage of ELICE, different from other coding education programs, lies in practice and feedback. Kim explained, "We are creating an educational platform where learners can practice coding and receive easy feedback in difficult coding education," adding, "The core is an educational course where code can be automatically graded." Immediate practice and evaluation increase learning effectiveness. He said, "We confirmed that practicing and taking competency tests improved results two to three times more than just watching lecture videos." Additionally, when students ask questions, online tutors are assigned to provide remote education. Kim said, "Currently, about 30 online tutors are active, and responses are given within a day," adding, "Our goal is to increase this to 100 tutors within the year and create a system that responds every 10 minutes."

Based on this, ELICE provides online coding education not only to KAIST but also to about 100 major universities including Seoul National University, as well as major domestic corporations such as SK and LG. Kim explained, "We can customize courses according to each company's needs," and added, "With video lectures, quizzes, practice, and automatic grading features, results can be known immediately." Recently, ELICE developed its own technology for video classes like 'Zoom' and a coding test monitoring system, which has been adopted by KAIST and Hana Financial TI. It also became the first cloud-based education company in Korea to receive the 'K-Cloud Certification' approved by the Ministry of Science and ICT in December last year. Last month, it was selected for the '2021 Digital Convergence Training Project' hosted by the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

Consequently, this year’s sales target was naturally raised to 15 billion KRW. Achieving this would mean a fivefold increase from last year’s sales level of 3 billion KRW. Given the global interest in developer training and coding education, ELICE also has plans for overseas expansion. Kim said, "At the end of last year, we piloted our solution at a university in Vietnam," and added, "We plan to expand the platform into Southeast Asian markets such as Vietnam and Indonesia."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.