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India will soon become the top market for Coursera in terms of aggregate subscribers, said US-based Edtech major Coursera Global CEO, Jeff Maggioncalda in an exclusive interview with businessline. India, which is home to 17 million subscribers on the ed tech platform is growing at an annual rate of 34 per cent, he said. .
Therefore, Maggioncalda said, India is to soon overtake the company’s largest markets US where Coursera has 20 million users as well as Europe, where 19 million users utilise the platform.
Placements, next
Maggioncalda also told businessline that next company aims at connecting college students taking Coursera courses with entry level jobs. For this, the company has commenced engagement with large enterprises that are looking to hire entry level employees who come job ready from day one.
Just recently, Maggioncalda had commemorated the three-year anniversary of the launch of Coursera on campus in India. He noted that the timing of their 2019 launch of this product targeting universities proved to be fortuitous, enabling the product to proliferate rapidly. Starting with presence in 30 universities before the pandemic, Coursera now boasts a presence in over 11,000 schools with 1.1 million students engaging with the product.
Will outpace US
Maggioncalda describes India as an extremely dynamic market with over 850 million young people and a rapidly expanding economy. “Especially, if you compare this market to Europe and the US, there is vibrancy here,” he said. The India market is growing rapidly at 34 per cent in terms for subscribers in comparison to the US growth rate which is in high teens. Going by these numbers, India could outpace US to become the largest market in terms of users in a couple of years.
Next big thing
The next big thing according to the Coursera CEO for India is their bid to connect users who have enrolled on Coursera courses to entry level jobs offered by enterprises in India. Maggioncalda mentioned a major Indian bank, which has hinted at hiring 200 freshers taking Coursera programs to their tech vertical.
“It is a mix of both in house training and Coursera programmes acting as an identifier for the company to appraise the skills of the new recruits that they are hiring,” he said. “A lot of businesses are interested in getting their employees job ready on day one, this goes into training their employees on the Coursera platform before they join the company, or, taking the training back to the university where students interested in working at the company can enroll in the programme,” he said. According to Magioncalda this demand is going to grow further and Coursera is best suited to take on this challenge.
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