Peter Kokkinos, Vice-President and Managing Director for the Asia-Pacific region at Udemy and Marlon Herft, Director of Customer Success for the Asia-Pacific region , spoke to BusinessLine on the company’s India growth plans and competition in the region.

Q

What is the significance of the India market to Udemy?

India is an incredibly important market for Udemy. I don’t have the exact number of customers, but in Udemy Business, we have hundreds of new customers here in India and that will continue to grow. In terms of instructors, we’ve got a lot of people from India contributing to the marketplace. In all, we have 60,000 to 70,000 instructors across the world.

India is probably one of the biggest markets for Udemy outside the US. It is a significant contributor to revenue. In some cases, there’s more traffic on the Udemy platform from India than most other countries. Our brand recognition in India is really great. When we initially launched our enterprise learning product, it was exclusively used by big enterprise customers. However, today, companies with a staff strength of 20-40 , using our platform.

Q

What is Udemy’s team strength in India? What is your growth strategy for the market going ahead?

We have about 70 people in India and are looking to hire more. Udemy is looking to tap the talent pool in India and I think that will only continue to grow. There are hundreds of enterprise clients here at the moment. We have over a couple of thousand customers in the Asia-Pacific region across all segments.

Q

What do you think of the competitive landscape in India?

I think competition is great for the industry, as it gives people options. It also helps in building the profile of the industry and changes people’s perception of the value of e-learning. From our perspective, we have a unique model, especially in the core enterprise e-learning space. Some of the major players in this segment are working on a publisher model, while we have the marketplace model, which brings a different value proposition and strengths to the market.

These are exciting times and we are still growing. We are now sharing a lot of customers with our competition, more than ever before. Companies that used to have a single vendor model are now using different organisations to fill different learning gaps, instead of just relying on one company. This was unheard of earlier.

Q

Major edtech companies in India are increasingly adding offline aspects to their operations. What is your view on that and would Udemy also look at adding offline ways of collaboration to its courses?

There’s always going to be a place for collaboration and face-to-face interaction. We see that as a real positive if our courses and our learning can bring people together at some stage. However, that’s not always going to be easy to do. We acquired a company called CorpU last year. It provides executive educational content, but it is focused on Cohort Based Learning. The idea is that you are not just in front of a static e-learning course, but you also get an opportunity to come together as a group to collaborate to share ideas, to give comments, provide guidance and all that happens online. In my view, that is what that collaboration will look like, because teams are so spread out.  Cohort Based Learning is a real trend that we are seeing In the industry.

Q

Given the global funding slowdown, a lot of companies are looking to get acquired. Will Udemy consider doing acquisitions in India?

Absolutely, the board and senior executives are always looking at that. There is so much innovation and talent in the edtech space. India is a rich market for a company like Udemy to look at complementary technologies that can help give a better learning experience. India is probably the breeding ground for edtech these days. So acquisitions in India makes perfect sense. That will be very exciting, if and when that happens. 

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