Sandhya Padala, Founder and CEO of Rex Academy, is an Indian immigrant from Hyderabad, India who is a global entrepreneur working towards bringing high-quality technology education to everyone.
“I grew up in a 300 sq ft home that I shared with 5 people”, says Sandhya. “I was an average student who excelled in Math but was not good in History, Biology, or English. My mom was strict and taught me the value of hard work. Dad was lenient and taught me to believe in myself.” By 11th grade, it was clear that math and computer science would be her key to a successful future. Throughout her early years of school, undergrad, and earned a master’s degree in computer science that was paid by merit-based scholarships, she was able to set forth her goals. Her journey, from an upbringing in a culture that taught girls that she should defer to men to one of the few women in a major corporate IT leadership role, a start-up founder, and a serial entrepreneur, is an adventurous and transformational journey!
Since Sandhya’s son was six years old, he wanted to learn how to create video games. She looked high and low for a suitable environment for him. During her research, she realized that in this digital age and generation, learning to code is like learning to read and write. Coming from the other side of having to hire huge technology teams, she has firsthand experience in what education is needed for someone to take on high paying and high demand jobs.
With continuous research, she didn’t find a suitable environment for her son. So she decided to create one, thus, Rex Academy was born!
In its short tenure so far, Rex Academy has trained over 10,000+ students. Rex has partnered with organizations like YMCA, Chambers, Girl Scouts, and elite private schools and has doubled revenue from the past two years. In December 2019, Rex Academy pivoted its business model to the current SaaS model with a vision to be a global leader in digital technology education.
Hustling is second nature to Sandhya. She loves the entrepreneurship journey of living on the edge and solving different problems every day while working towards a long-term vision. The last four years of her life have been the most exciting years from impacting many people positively, overcoming many obstacles, researching, learning from failures and something new every day, and applying her skills and knowledge into her vision. Before she could realize it, Rex has become her passion. She has been very efficient and extremely creative in getting more done from spending little money. She is aware it is important to stay open-minded and strategize accordingly based on developing situations and circumstances. Sandhya discovered her inner strength and resilience as an entrepreneur while building her passionate business!
What is your advice to the entrepreneurs out there?
Be resilient. Persistence is the key. Trust your journey and have fun. Every entrepreneur should prepare for financial challenges. It is essential to build a team that shares our vision and everyone in the team needs to work hard to achieve the company’s vision. It’s important to enrich yourself with both practical and emotional skills.
What has been the role of TiE in your life?
TiE gave me access to the accelerator program, the opportunity to pitch my company and an avenue to meet other amazing entrepreneurs. During this program, I learned sales and marketing skills, communications, and finance management. I had the opportunity to connect to EdTech Investors who showed interest in Rex Academy.
How do you plan on serving the community through your brand?
We partner with k-12 schools, community colleges, organizations, and make everyone tech savvy with our online robust curriculum. We want to develop a value-driven presence on social media. We would like to do online camps to create awareness of the importance of learning computer science and its impact in the STEM fields and encourage everyone to learn computer science.
