US edu-tech companies look to India as pandemic boosts online learning

American education-technology companies such as Coursera, Udemy and Udacity are seeing a boost in business in India amid the COVID-19 pandemic and increased dependence on online learning.

Udemy saw enrolment skyrocket three times with most individuals opting to upskill or reskill amid the “stay home” situation, Mint reported.

Particularly amongst the courses on offer, communication skill enrolments grew 606 percent, financial analysis enrolments rose 311 percent and registrations business fundamentals increased 281 percent between May and October 2020.

Udemy Managing Director Irwin Anand said India is a priority and the company is working to “localise experience”. It also plans to increase its India team by 50 percent largely in consumer service, marketing and sales roles.

For Coursera, partnerships with colleges and universities have added 5 million “learners” to its roster between January and October, against 1.4 million in 2019, the report added. India with 9.8 million learners has the highest number of Coursera learners outside the US (14 million).

Raghav Gupta, managing director, India and APAC for Coursera, said their courses will be expanded to support growing university partnerships and the company “will add many more top universities in the near future.” It is already working with IIM-C, IIT-Roorkee and ISB.

Udacity is looking to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to help learners of its nano degree programmes and said it is “focusing on India to support its growing student and enterprise client base.”

The boom has increased investments into edu-tech startups with $1.88 billion worth investments clocked between January and October 2020 compared to $440 million in 2019. Byjus, Eruditus, Unacademy and Vedantu led the charge.