Udemy, founded in May 2010, is an American online learning platform aimed at professional adults and students. As of Jan 2020, the platform has more than 50 million students and 57,000 instructors teaching courses in over 65 languages. There have been over 295 million course enrollments. Students and instructors come from 190+ countries and 2/3 of the students are located outside of the U.S. Students take courses largely as a means of improving job-related skills. Some courses generate credit toward technical certification. Udemy has made a special effort to attract corporate trainers seeking to create coursework for employees of their company. As of 2020, there are more than 150,000 courses on the website. The headquarters of Udemy is located in San Francisco, CA with satellite offices in Denver, CO; Dublin, IE; Ankara, TR; Sao Paulo, BR; and Gurgaon, IN.
History
In 2007, Udemy founder Eren Bali built a software for a live virtual classroom while living in Turkey. He saw potential in making the product free for everyone, and moved to Silicon Valley to found a company two years later. The site was launched by Bali, Oktay Caglar and Gagan Biyani in early 2010. In February 2010, the founders tried to raise venture capital funding, but the idea failed to impress investors and they were rejected 30 times, according to Gagan Biyani. In response to this, they bootstrapped the development of the product and launched Udemy—"The Academy of You"—in May 2010. Within a few months, 1,000 instructors had created about 2,000 courses, and Udemy had nearly 10,000 registered users. Based on this favorable market reaction, they decided to attempt another round of financing, and raised $1 million in venture funding by August. In October 2011, the company raised an additional $3 million in Series A funding led by Groupon investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, as well as 500 Startups and MHS Capital. In December 2012, the company raised $12 million in Series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners, as well as Lightbank Capital, MHS Capital and Learn Capital, bringing Udemy's total funding to $16 million. On April 22, 2014, the Wall Street Journal's Digital edition reported that Dennis Yang, Chief Operating Officer of Udemy was named CEO, replacing Eren Bali. In May 2014, Udemy raised another $32 million in a Series C funding, led by Norwest Venture Partners, as well as Insight Venture Partners and MHS Capital. In June 2015, Udemy raised a $65 million Series D financing round, led by Stripes Group. Now Udemy joined another online learning house Skillsdox Inc of Canada to open up School of Skills in India. In June 2016, Udemy raised $60 million from Naspers Ventures as a follow-up to the $65 million Series D round of financing from June 2015. On February 5, 2019, Udemy announced that the board of the company appointed Gregg Coccari as its new chief executive officer.
Overview
Udemy is a platform that allows instructors to build online courses on their preferred topics. Using Udemy's course development tools, they can upload videos, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, audio, ZIP files and live classes to create courses. Instructors can also engage and interact with users via online discussion boards. Courses are offered across a breadth of categories, including business and entrepreneurship, academics, the arts, health and fitness, language, music, and technology. Most classes are in practical subjects such as Excel software or using an iPhone camera. Udemy also offers Udemy for Business, enabling businesses access to a targeted suite of over 4,000 training courses on topics from digital marketing tactics to office productivity, design, management, programming, and more. With Udemy for Business, organizations can also create custom learning portals for corporate training. Courses on Udemy can be paid or free, depending on the instructor. In 2015, the top 10 instructors made more than $17 million in total revenue. In April 2013, Udemy offered an app for AppleiOS, allowing students to take classes directly from iPhones; The Android version was launched in January 2014. As of January 2014, the iOS app had been downloaded over 1 million times, and 20 percent of Udemy users access their courses via mobile. In July 2016, Udemy expanded their iOS platform to include Apple TV. On January 11, 2020, the Udemy mobile app became the #1 top grossing Android app in India.
Udemy is part of the growing MOOC movement available outside the traditional university system, and has been noted for the variety of courses offered.
Reception
Udemy has been mentioned in The New York Times, The China Post, Fast Company, the BBC, YPN and TechCrunch, with Mashable noting "Udemy offers an experience that rivals the real classroom, and should prove to be a useful utility for teachers and students of all subject matters." In 2014, Forbes named Udemy cofounder Eren Bali as part of their "30 Under 30" of "the brightest stars in 15 different fields under the age of 30." Noted businessman Jack Welch developed an online MBA program, offered through the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University, which acquired JWMI assets in November 2011. Udemy became the MOOC platform for the institute's Welch Way courseware in November 2012, and promoted this Jack Welch connection.
Piracy concerns
In November 2015, Udemy was accused of publishing and profiting from pirated courses. The CEO at the time, Dennis Yang, responded to the accusations in a blog post and stated that Udemy did not profit from that instance of piracy.
