Amul Batra: How Northcoders chief partnerships officer went from a number one chart hit to teaching thousands to code

This challenger mindset would never be far from his thoughts. Spurred on by people telling him that the things he wanted to achieve were impossible, Batra has now gone on to forge a career in the tech world, becoming an early investor and now chief partnerships officer at digital training firm Northcoders, as well as managing director of its consultancy firm Counter.

“My story is that I walked into the student union the day after I got to Manchester and bought a ticket for Oasis playing their first ever academy gig,” says Batra.

“It was in an 11,000 person capacity venue and cost me £6. There was no online ticket buying, no dynamic pricing, I just walked in and bought it.

“But that was the last time I had to actually buy a ticket in the proceeding ten years I lived in Manchester.

“I had this dream of becoming a music journalist, so I went straight into the student paper and did it. In those first couple of years I reviewed every CD that came in, went to every gig, I even interviewed Thom Yorke from Radiohead and John Power from Cast.”

Batra’s love of music journalism would eventually lead him to take a shot at getting the job of editor at the university newspaper. After missing out by a few votes, however, he decided to leave for an alternative publication.

It was here that he got the call which would begin his career in the industry, working with indie label Faith and Hope.

“I got a phone call saying a local record label had just set up and wanted peopletoapply for their press office. I got the job and that's where the music industry career really kicked off,” says Batra.

“After so long, the guy who had employed me at the label left. I was 21 years old and they asked if I wanted to run the label.

“At the time, the one act we had signed was an artist called Mint Royale. I had heard Mint Royale’s stuff and thought ‘there's no reason we shouldn’t be able to get a number one’.

“But everyone said ‘no, you’re not going to be able to do that, you’re a tiny label and haven’t put any records out yet, you need the money behind you’, and that just made me think ‘we’re going to do it.’”

After a few attempts, getting one record to 15 in the charts and multiple records on Radio One, things started to come together for Batra’s plan.

“Mint Royale were approached in 2004 to do a remix of Singin’ in the Rain for the new Volkswagen Golf advert which showed a body popping Gene Kelly,” he says.

“The record was destined to go to number one, it was all over the radio one playlist, but then Gene Kelly’s estate pulled it and said we couldn't release it.

“Everyone stopped playing the record. Gene Kelly’s estate then changed their mind and said we could release it, but the momentum had gone.”

Four years later, however, Mint Royale’s remix of Singin’ in the Rain would be used by dancer George Sampson in the second season of Britain’s Got Talent.

“That was it,” says Batra, “It finally got its just deserts and went to number one.”

Batra would eventually step away from the music industry after having his first child. After deciding to learn to code, he would meet Chris Hill, now CEO of Northcoders.

Batra signed up as part the first ever Northcoders cohort, but would go on to become an early stage investor before eventually joining the company’s board.

Hill and Batra bonded over a desire to change how the early stages coding workforce looked.

“We thought, what if we could create a course to fill the talent gap which is about workplace skills, using slightly more mature people, rather than people who have just come out of uni?

“There was and continues to be a massive diversity issue in tech, in gender, age, ethnicity, neurodiversity.

“We wanted to search really widely for people with lots of different life experiences, career experiences, career histories, and bring those people into technology.

“I would go and speak to employers and say, ‘you should come and hire these people, they’re brilliant’, but they would argue that they only take people with computer science degrees.”

Just nine years since it was founded, with campuses in Manchester and Leeds, Northcoders has now graduated almost 4,000 people in total from its 13 week courses, with alumni going into roles including mid level engineer, senior engineer, tech lead, director of engineering, and even chief technical officer.

The company holds over 500 hiring partners, with an average starting salary for course graduates of £29,303.

Earlier this year, Northcoders also launched its partner consultancy brand, Counter. The company has already worked with major clients including Manchester Airport Group, Manchester City Council and Skipton Building Society.

Though his switch from one industry to another may seem drastic, for Batra, his work has always been about working with talented people.

“I’ve always worked with people who do amazing things,” he says.

“There's a big connection between someone who puts a record out, makes a record, writes a song, and someone who writes code that gets released. I had no background in technology and recruitment, but at the very beginning what I did was treat each of our graduates as a rock star, as a DJ.

“I would treat them the same way, help them build their story, and help the company employing them understand why they were so valuable. That was an easy switch for me.

“The biggest thing for me is that, as much fun as I had in the music industry, touring the world, visiting the biggest festivals, getting a number one record, all of those buzzes – getting people jobs, that's a real honour.”