Coursera Hits 1 Million Users In India

Online education company Coursera achieves milestone within seven months of first Indian university partnership

Coursera, a US-based online education provider, announced it has reached 1 million unique learners only seven months after signing its first partnership with an Indian institute. In just four months, Coursera has seen unprecedented growth in the region, with a 25 percent jump in Indians joining the platform.

Rick Levin, CEO of Coursera, said, “We are excited to have achieved this milestone in one of the most education hungry countries in the world. We are extremely bullish about India as a market and are making investments to further expand our course offerings and partnerships in the country.”

India is Coursera’s second-largest market outside the US, just after China. Indians on Coursera are disproportionately drawn towards technology, computer science, and business courses—more so than in any other large country. Karnataka has the largest number of Courserians, while Maharashtra and Delhi take the second and third positions, respectively. The IT surge in India has fueled a strong demand for online courses amongst the country’s knowledge-seeking population. Coursera offers courses that teach skills for the most in-demand jobs in the IT industry in India: software engineers, application programmers, database administrators, web designers and project managers. The three top performing courses in India cover the topics of machine learning, programming, and algorithms.

Kabir Chadha, Coursera’s India Country Manager, said, “It’s an exciting time to be part of the education industry in India which is at the cusp of a major transformation. We are working hard to provide more high quality courses for our Indian learners and continuously improving our user experience.”

Over 14 million learners from around the globe have come to Coursera to choose from over 1000 courses offered by 122 partners including Stanford, Yale, Princeton and Indian School of Business, the latter being the first ever Indian institute to partner with Coursera.

Some interesting statistics about our students in India as well as globally:

Top five countries measured by registered learners:

1. United States – 3.6 million

2. China – 1.1 million

3. India – 1 million

4. Brazil – .5 million

5. United Kingdom – .5 million

Region-wise learners data breakdown in India:

1. North – 25.43%

2. South – 39.41%

3. East – 6.76%

4. West – 27.1%

Highest enrolled courses in India since Coursera launched in 2012:

1. 125,000 – Machine Learning, Stanford University

2. 109,000 – R Programming, Johns Hopkins University

3. 99,600 – Algorithms, Part I, Princeton University

4. 90,000 – The Data Scientist’s Toolbox, Johns Hopkins University

5. 85,000 – Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 1, Stanford University

6. 82,000 – Intro to Finance, University of Michigan

7. 80,000 – Cryptography I, Stanford University

8. 72,000 – Programming for Everybody (Python), University of Michigan

9. 71,000 – Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies: The First Step in Entrepreneurship, University of Maryland, College Park