Dubai: Morten Lund, co-founder and investor in Skype, is on a fundraising mission for his new joint venture – CodersTrust – and is keen to move his base to Dubai from Denmark if it clicks.
CodersTrust is a venture to enable online freelancers in Bangladesh to upgrade their qualifications and skills in order to earn more money through online freelance websites and to give them the tools needed to enter the future online job market.
CodersTrust has tied up with Grameen Solutions Limited in Bangladesh. Grameen Solutions is the flagship technology company of Grameen family of organisations founded in 1999 by Dr Muhammad Younus, founder of Grameen Bank and recipient of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
“We are going to finance brains to educate IT coders and provide micro finance to students. CodersTrust aims to fight poverty in developing countries with economic growth and enable the private sector to create economic growth for effective poverty alleviation,” Lund told Gulf News.
Lund is also the co-founder of CodersTrust.
He said there are 200 million young people who live for less than $10 a day. The freelance wages range from $2 per hour to $10 per hour and that has forced the founders to start CodersTrust.
Fundraiser
Lund and Ferdinand Kjærulff, CEO of CodersTrust, was in Dubai on Tuesday to attract investors and businesses to an educational programme that has been recognised at international level to have huge potential for global expansion and presence.
He said CodersTrust is unique. Technology wise, the online coding is accessible as an average job.
Three high schools kids can launch a startup. The Amazon web services are cheap, storage is cheap and internet access is cheap.
“If you can put a good app on the Google or Apple app stores, you will get good returns,” he said.
After selling Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005, Lund founded or co-founded more than 100 startups like Odense, Trade Shift, CapitalAID, FundXO and PayXO.
The top freelance portals are Odesk, Elance and Freelancer.
“I had made lots of cash and lost all of it. I invested $250 million in a newspaper in Denmark - Nyhedsavisen - in 2008 and went bankrupt,” he said.
He was out of bankruptcy in April 2010 and struggled to battle through the cycle and re-establish his reputation.
Local links
“We are looking for local partners in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. We are eyeing government bodies, banks and Sovereign Wealth Funds,” he said.
CodersTrust aims to open an office in Dubai in the next 12-16 months. It is in a beta version currently and expected to go live within a few months.
“Our goal will be to give young IT coders with limited means better qualifications and access to the job market. We will select the best and brightest young people in emerging countries, finance them with micro-loans while they optimise their skills through online training programs thereby giving them access to more and better paid jobs,” said Ferdinand Kjærulff, CEO of Coders-Trust.
With support from Grameen Solutions “ we are developing a system which activates young brilliant people, make them enter the global market and work locally from where they are - it is strategic upgrading of tomorrow’s technological labour force,” Kjærulff said.
