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Udemy
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ABOUT UDEMY
(from Wikipedia)
Udemy, Inc. is a for-profit massive open online course (MOOC) provider aimed at professional adults and students. It was founded in May 2010 by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar.
As of September of 2021, the platform has more than 46 million students, 175,000 courses, and 60,000 instructors teaching courses in over 75 languages. There have been over 644 million course enrollments.
Students take courses primarily to improve 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.
The headquarters of Udemy is located in San Francisco, US, with hubs in Denver, US; Dublin, Ireland; Ankara, Turkey; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Gurugram, India.
History
In 2007, Udemy (you-de-mee, portmanteau of you + academy) founders Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar built a software for a live virtual classroom while living in Turkey. They 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2015, Udemy raised a $65 million Series D financing round, led by Stripes. Now Udemy joined another online learning house Skillsdox Inc of Canada to open up School of Skills in India.
2016, Udemy raised $60 million from Naspers Ventures as a follow-up to the $65 million Series D round of financing from June 2015.
2019, Udemy announced that the board of the company appointed Gregg Coccari as its new chief executive officer.
February 2020, Udemy raised $50 million from long-time partner in Japan, Benesse Holdings, Inc. and announced $2 billion valuation.
November 2020, Udemy raised $50 million at a $3.25 billion valuation led by Tencent Holdings.