E-learning, a billion dollar market

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How is Udemy, the online learning platform with more than 150,000 courses? Since its creation, it’s impossible to know if it has been able to find the path to profitability. But one thing is certain: its vertical online learning appeal, and the unicorn receives training orders from all over the world, including 50 million students, and now companies with “Udemy for Business”.

To sustain its activity, Udemy has just completed a new round, four years after its last. From a single investor – Japanese publisher Benesse Holdings – the online course platform has been able to recover $ 50 million in new money. Now, it weighs $ 2 billion, without having once purchased another box, to collect its skills or knowledge.

Find the most wanted skills
Because yes, everything was done directly thanks to the contributors for Udemy. Professors, enthusiasts, people talking about their profession or simply their knowledge… They are no less than 57,000 to have worked with Udemy, by offering their training on the platform.

With its new fundraising, Udemy will obviously seek to further refine the learning themes offered on its platform. But rather than trying to deal with them all, the company is more focused on finding the skills that are most in demand, and making sure to question itself every year on the demand of its customers – constantly evolving.

“The biggest challenge for learners is figuring out what skills are emerging, what they can do to be the most competitive in the global market,” said Darren Shimkus, president of Udemy for Business. “We live in a world that changes so quickly that the skills that were assessed only three or four years ago are no longer relevant. People are confused and don’t know what they should learn, “added the man.

In Brazil and India
Japanese Benesse’s investment makes perfect sense in the fact that the publisher wants to continue its collaboration with Udemy, which has existed for several years now. “Udemy’s mission is to improve life through learning, just like Benesse. 2020 will be a pivotal year in which we will serve millions of additional students and empower thousands of businesses and governments to develop their employees. This growth would not be possible without our expert instructors who partner with us every step of the way in developing this business, “said Gregg Coccari, CEO of Udemy, in a statement.

For the rest, Udemy intends to deploy even more internationally. Its executives know this: emerging markets such as India and Brazil will be very strategic, and the strong links with Benesse will also bring the platform closer to Japan.