Why pay for online courses when you can get them for free? upGrad is such a company that brought out its online education application where students, teachers and everyone else can do courses for free. upGrad’s free courses offer makes it a standout application from other educational websites.
Most websites and applications that you find on the internet do not come free of cost. upGrad is quite opposite to that and that is one of the reasons why it attracted a lot of customers. Competitions are tight in the Indian market and upGrad’s marketing strategy helped them take the lead in the online education platform.
upGrad is an EdTech company that came out with the motive to help students with their higher education. The company performs its business completely online based and free of cost. The application also caters to large variety of courses ranging from undergraduate programs to Master’s degree programs.
Master’s degrees and some post-graduate programs are only offered on a fee payment system. Otherwise, most courses are free of cost and are also offering a completion certificate unlike other educational applications in the market.
It was in the year 2015 when upGrad was launched by the co-founders of the company- Ronnie Screwvala, Phalgun Kompalli, Mayank Kumar, and Ravijot Chugh. Their efforts made upGrad become one of the leading EdTech companies in Asia. Currently, all co-founders of the company are leading different divisions within the organization. Their efforts made it to enter the unicorn club in August, 2021.
Interestingly, upGrad was not meant to be for college students, or school students or any other institutions. But, it was designed so that more people could be familiar with the term ‘entrepreneurship’ and all those things that are required to become successful.
about upGrad learning platform
upGrad Marketing Strategy
upGrad Logo
upGrad is a B2C company and follows a wide range of marketing strategies. The company also focuses on its marketing because it is the only way a company is recognized. Well, a company like upGrad does the same thing.
The CEO of upGrad, Arjun Mohan had even mentioned in an interview that the company spends a whopping sum of money on its advertisements. The company also uses online tools for marketing its products to customers. Some of the most common ones are Google Ads, Social Media Ads, promotional guest posts, and many more.
Back in the year 2020, when the company was just 5 years old had set a budget of INR 175 crore for its marketing. For a startup like upGrad, this amount is considered to be a massive one and surprising too.
Other than spending a large amount on advertising, upGrad also focussed on promotional activities. The company took an active part in promoting its business during the 2020 IPL season. Even in the latest IPL season, i.e. 2021 upGrad took an effective part in its promotional activities.
The company tied up with Disney+ Hotstar and associated with the Star Sports network. This again became a huge boost in the company’s marketing and promotional activities. Surprisingly, the 2021 IPL event became upGrad’s first association with any sport-related event.
upGrad acquired Pyoopil Education Technologies only a year after its formation i.e. in 2016. Pyoopil Education Technologies was a mobile-based SaaS product that was used by corporate. Two years later in the year 2018, upGrad made another acquisition of Acadview Software which was in the field of a college education.
Later, in the year 2019, the company acquired CohortPlus which was known to be India’s largest product management community startup. Looking at the progress that the company has already made it is clear that the company will become the leader in the TechEd companies in the world.
Moreover, the company has got notable connections and tie-ups with large institutes and universities. Some of the most famous collaborations are mentioned below.
Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS)
International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)
Though there are not many revelations from the company’s side of view it is expected that by the end of 2025, the company plans to cross the 5 million alumni members mark. However, other than that, the company is working on other specialization programs curated by global universities.
With collaborations with global universities, upGrad would become a different and standout educational company in the Indian market. There will be a lot coming from the company’s point of view in the future and we hope to experience the brilliance of learning from upGrad.
upGrad’s products and services are likely to improve and enhance better learning to its customers in the upcoming days. It is not that the company is not doing great currently but the future of the company will determine upGrad’s sustainability in the market.
FAQs
Who has founded upGrad?
upGrad was founded by Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli, and Ravijot Chugh in 2015.
Are there free courses available at upGrad?
Yes, there are free courses which can be done free of cost. The company caters to courses ranging from various subject areas.
Does upGrad provide a 100% job guarantee?
Yes, the company offers a 100% job guarantee to fresher candidates and other people as well.
Due to the convergence of technological innovations, global use of the Internet, and the increasing need for a population trained regularly for the ever-evolving digital economy, online education in its different forms has been gradually rising globally. By 2025, online schooling is expected to become commonplace.
Sebastian Thrun, David Stevens, and Mike Sokolsky created Udacity, Inc., an American for-profit educational business that offers massive open online courses. Udacity is an international, online, life-long learning network that connects education and employment opportunities. The company is on a mission to train the world’s workforce in the careers of the future.
Udacity is an international, online, life-long learning network that connects education and employment opportunities. Udacity provides online courses in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, data science, autonomous systems, and cloud computing, among other fields.
Udacity collaborates with technology firms to study how technology is altering businesses and teaches the essential skills that employers need in their employees, allowing learners to prepare for the most in-demand tech positions.
Nanodegrees offered by Udacity have gained much popularity and many consider these nano degrees to be more effective than the regular college degrees. Front-end and senior web developer, full-stack web developer, data analyst, machine learning engineer, iOS and Android developer, programming introduction, tech entrepreneur, iOS app development beginning, Ruby beginning, and 2D mobile game developer courses are among the nano degree programs available.
Udacity – Latest News
As of September 2021, Udacity conducted a renowned virtual conference enabling women to thrive in STEM (Science, Technology Engineering, and Mathematics). Despite global discussions and initiatives to address the gender imbalance in STEM disciplines, women continue to be underrepresented, undervalued, and frequently discriminated against. Udacity’s virtual conference ‘STEM Forward with Women’ seeks to create a forum for women to interact with female industry leaders while also providing them with the chance to gain in-demand technical knowledge.
“Changing the face of technology, especially during unprecedented times, is no easy task. STEM Forward with Women is the pep-talk all women need to take the leap forward and pursue a career that they deserve in the field of technology and computer science,” stated Kimberly Bryant, CEO and Founder, Black Girls CODE.
Udacity – Industry
Over the last decade, online learning has grown significantly as the internet and education have merged to give individuals the possibility to learn new skills. Online learning has grown increasingly important in people’s lives after the COVID-19 epidemic. The epidemic has pushed schools, colleges, and businesses to operate remotely, which has resulted in an increase in the use of online learning. Even before the pandemic, Research and Markets predicted that the online education industry will be worth $350 billion by 2025, thus the figures may be revised after assessing the effects of COVID-19 on the sector’s growth.
All of these online learning businesses have a large quantity of user data, allowing them to employ machine learning algorithms to improve people’s learning habits. Pattern recognition is used by machine learning algorithms to customize material for each individual. When a student struggles with a subject during the course, for example, the platform can alter the e-learning content to give more comprehensive information to assist the learner.
Udacity – Name, Logo, and Tagline
Company Logo of Udacity
Sebastian Thrun, the company’s founder, claims that the term Udacity stems from the company’s ambition to be “audacious for you, the learner.” It used to focus on university-style courses, but today it mostly offers vocational training for professionals.
Udacity was founded by David Stevens, Mike Sokolsky, and Sebastian Thrun in 2011.
David Stevens
From June 2011 to May 2012, David served as CEO of Udacity, then from April 2013 to April 2014, he served as President. As CEO, he grew the company to 30 people, registered the first 250,000 students from 195 countries, and introduced the first 12 programs, the first MOOC employment program, and the first MOOC certified tests in collaboration with Pearson VUE. He obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford under the guidance of Sebastian Thrun. While at Stanford, David was one of the co-creators of Stanley an autonomous car that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. The Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC currently has Stanley on exhibit.
Sebastian Thrun
Sebastian Thrun is a researcher, educator, inventor, and businessman. Sebastian is the founder and CEO of Kitty Hawk, a company whose mission is to relieve people from traffic congestion. He is also the creator, chairman, and president of Udacity, an educational platform with the purpose to democratise education.
Sebastian founded X (formerly Google X), where he oversaw the creation of the self-driving vehicle, Google Glass, and other initiatives. He was a professor at Stanford University for several years, where he led the Stanford Racing Team, which won the DARPA Grand Challenge with its vehicle “Stanley.”
Founder of Udacity – Sebastian Thrun
Mike Sokolsky
Mike believes that technology should improve rather than complicate life. He studied at Carnegie Mellon University and worked in robotics at Stanford University and the University of Alberta. His background includes autonomous cars, medical robotics, reinforcement learning, and robotic soccer. In 2011, he co-founded Udacity.
Udacity – Startup Story
Sebastian Thrun had a dream career for most academics throughout the world. The Artificial Intelligence specialist was a tenured professor at Stanford University, where he’d spent almost a decade leading student attempts to create self-driving cars and acting as the head of the university’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. Thrun also created Google[x], the tech giant’s well-known R&D branch focusing on driverless vehicles, balloon-powered internet networks, and other “moonshots” in his leisure time.
But the entrepreneur and thinker had bigger ideas. Thrun announced his departure from Stanford in 2012 to launch Udacity, an online education company aimed at delivering high-quality tech education to the people.
Salman Khan and his Khan Academy, one of the early entrants into the field, introduced Thrun to the notion of MOOCs. Thrun and co-professor Peter Norvig opened up their next computer science course at Stanford to a global audience as an experiment in 2011. Soon after, other roboticists David Stevens and Mike Sokolsky joined engaged, and the inaugural course had more than 100,000 students enrolled by the time it started. Udacity was up and operating in no time, with Stevens as the company’s first CEO and Sokolsky as the CTO.
Udacity – Mission and Vision Statement
Udacity’s mission statement says, “Udacity’s mission is to train the world’s workforce in the careers of the future.”
Modern technology influences every industry. Companies all around the world are eager to employ people with the right tech skills to help them adapt and improve their operations. Through their strong and adaptable digital education platform, Udacity collaborates with the world’s leading technology companies to teach these vital tech skills. Udacity has made it possible for even the busiest students to prepare for the most in-demand tech jobs.
Udacity’s top hiring partners include Google, Amazon Alexa, Auro, Bosch, CrowdAI, Dataspeed, HARMAN, Intel, Lucid VR, Mobvoi, Nod, Samsung, Slack, Telefónica Germany, Upload, etc.
Udacity – Spin-Off Company
In April 2017, Udacity announced the launch of Voyage Auto, a self-driving vehicle taxi firm that would compete with ride-hailing services like Uber. The business has been testing its concept on low-speed private roads in a retirement community in San Jose, California, using production consumer automobiles. Voyage established a ride-hailing collaboration with The Villages, a retirement community in Florida, in 2018. Voyage was purchased by Cruise in March 2021.
Udacity – Business Model and Revenue Model
Udacity is a freemium EdTech platform that offers massive open online courses (MOOCs) (courses open to anyone for enrolment). Udacity collaborates with businesses and institutions to provide nanodegrees (short-term online education programs focused on specialized skills in computer science). The user can choose to pay a one-time or recurring charge to access one or all of the courses. The courses are available to private individuals, businesses too can buy these courses for their employees. The cost of the consumer courses varies from $718 to $1436.
Udacity courses are delivered in a nanodegree format by the firm. Nanodegrees are made up of a series of lectures and homework assignments that culminate in a capstone project.
In the past, Udacity’s payment models have been prone to change. The most recent modifications are in line with their new approach of providing high-quality educational content, which includes professional mentors and specialized career counseling.
Furthermore, a freemium business model is an element of the company’s growth plan. Udacity provides free access to beginning courses or sections of nano degrees in this way. This assists users in determining if they are comfortable in the learning environment and have the time and abilities required to finish the courses.
Udacity – Employees
Alper Tekin – Chief Product Officer
Dana Bennett – Chief People Officer
Gabriel Dalporto – Chief Executive Officer
James Richards – CTO
Kenny Kim – Chief Marketing Officer
Alvaro Biel – Head of Business Development & Partnerships, Europe and Latin America – Udacity for Government
Blake Tablak – SVP of Global Enterprise
Grace Rhee – Vice President of People and Places
Holger Kobler – Regional Vice President DACH
Ira Stone – Regional Vice President, Enterprise Sales
Udacity – Funding, and Investors
Date
Round
Amount
Lead Investors
Aug 27, 2021
Secondary Market
$5M
–
Jun 20, 2021
Secondary Market
–
–
Jun 12, 2021
Secondary Market
–
–
Jan 28, 2021
Secondary Market
–
–
Nov 3, 2020
Debt Financing
$75M
Hercules Capital
Nov 11, 2015
Series D
$105M
Bertelsmann
Sep 24, 2014
Series C
$35M
–
Oct 25, 2012
Series B
$15M
Andreessen Horowitz
Jan 1, 2012
Series A
$5M
CRV
Udacity – Acquisitions
Acquiree Name
About Acquiree
Date
Amount
Terminal
The Terminal provides bleeding-edge software and AI to edtech companies looking to improve student success.
Mar 1, 2017
–
Udacity – Growth
The pandemic produced great burdens and drove individuals to make many tough decisions, and 2020 was a year of extraordinary challenges. At the same time, individuals continued to learn and grow despite the disturbance in their everyday lives. Over the course of 2020, Udacity increased its focus on assisting students in finding the courses they needed to prepare for a better future.
Last year, the firm celebrated 14 million users, 1.5 million completed projects, and over 170,000 Nanodegree certificates granted, and they are looking forward to celebrating over 50,000 graduates in 2020 as well as some interesting improvements.
The year 2020 was a momentous occasion for Udacity as a company. Enterprise and government bookings increased by 260 percent in yearly recurring revenue in the first half of 2020 alone, and the company just obtained $75 million in funding to assist support this remarkable development, tripling its Sales and Customer Success teams.
Over the last year (2019-2020), the company welcomed a number of new team members to help them maintain this incredible trajectory with enterprise customers, including CFO Seamus Hennessy, CMO Kenny Kim, SVP of Global Enterprise Sales Blake Tablak, and SVP of Global Customer Success and Operations Jennifer Dearman, who joined in early 2021.
Udacity’s top competitors include Khan Academy, Skillshare, Coursebirdie, MasterClass, Pluralsight, Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, BizLibrary, Articulate 360, iSpring Suite, PiiQ by Cornerstone, Infosec Skills, Pluralsight, and General Assembly.
Udacity – Challenges Faced
Udacity had to lay off roughly 20% of its employees and restructure its operations as of April 2019, as co-founder Sebastian Thrun attempted to decrease expenses in line with revenue without stifling growth.
Udacity, which offers “nano degrees” in a variety of technical disciplines such as AI, deep learning, digital marketing, virtual reality, and computer vision, has been in financial trouble for months, owing to rising expenses and other inefficiencies. Thanks to popular initiatives like its self-driving vehicle and deep learning nano degree, the firm flourished in 2017, with revenue jumping 100 percent year over year.
Udacity has also reduced expenses and streamlined marketing activities, shrunk and consolidated office space, and standardized instructional programs throughout its different locations, including the United States, Brazil, China, and India.
The firm maintained an office in Mountain View, albeit in a smaller size, as well as one in San Francisco. Udacity has shuttered a second satellite office in San Francisco and is assessing its real estate requirements in other nations.
Udacity – Future Plans
Udacity has popularized the notion of “Nanodegrees” in fields including artificial intelligence, programming, autonomous driving, and cloud computing. Udacity will focus more on Sales and Marketing in the coming years.
“On the enterprise and government side, we’re seeing enormous demand,” said Gabe Dalporto, Udacity’s CEO, who joined the firm in 2019. “However, it’s largely been inbound to date, with businesses, Fortune 500 firms, and government agencies seeking to collaborate with us.” Now it’s time to assemble a sales force to pursue them.”
The interest in Udacity, both from investors and as a firm, is part of a larger emphasis on online education startups in the previous year. As schools, districts, governments, and public health officials implement social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19, the focus has been on developing better technology and content to help students stay engaged and continue learning even when they are unable to be in their normal physical classrooms. Udacity is not considering any acquisitions for the next 6-12 months.
Udacity – FAQs
What does Udacity do?
Udacity (an American company) is an international, online, life-long learning network that connects education and employment opportunities. Udacity is an online training platform that provides courses in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, data science, autonomous systems, and cloud computing, among other fields.
Who founded Udacity?
Udacity was founded by David Stevens, Mike Sokolsky, and Sebastian Thrun in 2011.
When was Udacity founded?
Udacity was founded by David Stevens, Mike Sokolsky, and Sebastian Thrun in 2011.
How does Udacity make money?
Udacity earns money by selling instructional content to individuals and businesses. These courses are delivered in a nanodegree format by the firm.
Which companies do Udacity compete with?
Udacity’s top competitors include Khan Academy, Skillshare, Coursebirdie, MasterClass, Pluralsight, Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, BizLibrary, Articulate 360, iSpring Suite, PiiQ by Cornerstone, Infosec Skills, Pluralsight, and General Assembly.
The global world has become a home where sincere and eager learners have 24-7 worldwide access to a number of personal tutors and guidance all at the same time, each professor giving expert advice to the keen minds and helping them. The virtual tutors tend to explain their subjects in simpler ways comparatively, they also teach them in a practical language and are even willing to repeat classes. And the amazing part is all this comes free or at a minimal cost. One of the overly amazing platform has been established known as Udemy.
The efforts of education entrepreneurs are revolutionizing traditional learning methods by replacing classroom instruction and fixed curricula with self-paced, online education and instruction from subject experts around the world. Online education gives freedom as sources of knowledge are free wherever they may be found.
Udemy is the world’s largest online learning platform and was founded by Eren Bali in 2010, aiming mainly to educate adults and students. Udemy has a huge student database with more than 30 million students learning worldwide. A total of 50,000 instructors teaching courses in over 65 languages covering over 245 millioncourse enrollments over a period.
Udemy is a platform where the user gets access to a database of new courses and gets wide exposure. The courses from various sectors are available and also in various languages to meet the learner’s expectations.
The founder of Udemy-Eren Bali
Udemy is based in California with $48 million in funding. The company has created a tech platform that allows new instructors to plan, create, design, and produce video instructions for almost any subject.
Udemy targets several different markets. The tutor or instructor who creates the course, the student who takes the course, and organizations that might utilize Udemy technology to create specialized courses as a branded product or for internal employee use.
This platform offers 20,000 video instruction courses divided into different categories with suitable prices. Udemy gives opportunity to more than 10,000 instructors globally. The rapid growth of the student base to acquire knowledge on Udemy is amazing and there are 4 million views for videos.
There are other competitive ed-tech companies like Coursera, Unacademy that have grown their academic institutions online. Udemy, on the other hand, has adopted the unusual path, they came up with an idea of helping candidates to become an instructor on Udemy. Udemy has also built a B2B platform for the Business offering, which targeted a completely different set of target audiences.
Instructor Fees
Udemy does not charge anything from an Instructor to make and publish content. Udemy earns when students purchase a course online. The firm charges 50% for organic purchases and paid advertising on digital media for promoting instructors.
The revenue generated is then shared with instructors. Instructor fees depend upon the mode of purchase opted by the candidate.
Three revenue streams of Udemy:
Instructor Promotion:The instructor receives 97% of the revenue generated on purchases done by using a referral code or link and the other 3% is received by the firm.
Udemy Organic: The sales are called organic when a student explores a course through the site and does not use any referral code. In this case, Udemy receives 50% and the instructor receives an equal amount of the course’s revenue. Udemy charges a 30 percent fee for any sale made through the company’s Android or iOS app.
Paid Acquisition: If any student purchases the courses through paid advertising, displayed by Udemy on channels like YouTube and Google, Udemy takes 75% of each course sale. Instructors get the choice to decide where and how many times the course advertisement should be featured.
Udemy for Business
Udemy has plans for companies as well. With this plan, employees get access to top courses on the Udemy platform.
Udemy has two subscription plans, a Team plan, and an Enterprise plan. The Team plan is aimed at learning groups of 5 to 20 users.
The enterprise plan is suitable for all teams above 21 or more users. Thereon, pricing is available upon request by contacting Udemy’s sales team. Along with access to top courses, Udemy provides custom categories and learning paths, no language limitation (the Team plan is limited to English only), custom user groups, tracking user activity, slack integration, and many more.
In any course of establishing the startup in the market or even after setting it up, marketing has to be given its importance as it attracts more attention and customer base. Udemy has got the power of attracting the target audience and making them believe in online education. In this virtual learning world, there are several marketing strategies of Udemy to count on:
Growth of Course enrolment on Udemy
Specific Goals should be set
Like all the other top businesses, Udemyhas given a sales and revenue target to achieve, to their specific team and get the plan working through online marketing.
Solving Problems of Customers
Acknowledging and solving the doubts and problems of students is a mandatory move. It gives the company an obvious and attractive marketing message and a clear reason for them to purchase the product and in this case, any course on Udemy.
Try getting 5-star reviews
Whenever a user plans to purchase something and makes a choice on which product to buy, he gets and checks all the data in detail about it. The most important thing every customer checks are the product reviews, their ratings and how well the product or its services suits him or her. The companies need to get better reviews by giving customer satisfaction for maintaining the image which will help grow the business in turn.
Choose the Right Keywords and Topics
Marketing in any business is all about hitting on the right nerve of the consumer’s demands and leaving an impact on them whenever the product or service is advertised on any platform. The marketing team needs to use appropriate keywords to get an organic search result from the consumer. The correct keywords will help the users to make a choice. The companies need to make sure the topic is in demand and frequently searched.
Following up on Customers
Following and engaging constantly with customers, in this case, students is all about building relationships with them. This method will make them more comfortable to talk to and have a positive feeling about the company.
Free content to generate leads
Even if a particular product is paid content, free content can go further. Udemy, being an education technology company that offers a variety of online courses on the consumer’s plate has recently seen an 800% growth in traffic after which they lowered down on their content marketing efforts as generating leads through free content helps. The offering of free blog content is an amazing lead generation tool for paid content.
Conclusion
All-time learning at ease is crucial to maintain a position in the world and also for personal growth. The necessary formal coaching is often unavailable or too costly to deliver the education that benefits students in their professions. Udemy is likely to maintain its lead in the online video instruction industry and marketing strongly for its tutors and learners.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the cost of the Team plan?
The Team plan costs $360 (USD) per user per year. To get this plan you need a minimum of 5 users.
How does Udemy make money?
Udemy makes money per course sales. The revenue generation through per course sales depends on how the user purchases course. The percentage varies from 3 to 50 % per course sell. Also, Udemy has plans for businesses, it includes access to top Udemy courses, learning path, custom categories, and no language barrier.
The best strategy for Udemy
Understand customers and their problems. Try to solve these problems through your courses. Get good reviews and keep your customer engaged.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Udemy,India.
With everything around the globe turning more and more into the online or internet-based platform, Udemy is an online learning platform that provides to its customers courses’ videos on a good vary of topics like coding, videos and photos editing, personal and professional development, software tutorials, programming courses, and the list goes on and on…
Recently, Britannia Tiger Krunch has partnered with Udemy for promoting self defense among kids. They have launched defense classes for kids at a special discounted rate.
India is one of the company’s fastest growing market, with revenue and students doubling year-over-year. A local presence will enable Udemy to continue enhancing and localizing the student and instructor experience.
“Udemy’s rapid growth in India shows us the level of demand from students, instructors, and companies for affordable skills training. We are dedicated to our mission of improving lives through learning and expanding in India enables us to deliver on that promise,” said Gregg Coccari, CEO of Udemy.
Udemy offers a powerful platform for self-placed, non-degree learning regarding hard and soft skills to its customers. When you explore the content broadly, there are 13 categories: development, business, finance and accounting, IT and software, office productivity, personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle, photography, health and fitness, music, and teaching and academics. Each category is further divided into subcategories.
It has a wide range of content and is excellent resources for instructors as well as it provides them with the platform to come forward and sell their designed courses to the people needing the same. Several courses are taught by subject matter experts in languages other than English, including Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, and German.
Talking about the best course in Udemy being sold to the customers, a generic question arises, where do the courses come from? To which let me enlighten, Udemy invites instructors and teachers who want to design courses and sell them on the platform. So, Udemy not just benefits the students by providing them with the in-demand best courses at their screens by few taps, but also provides a platform to the teachers to sell them to the students.
One needs a Udemy account for most activities on its platform including purchasing, enrolling in a course or to submit a course for publication.
The platform has more than 35 million students and 57,000 instructors teaching over 65 languages. There have been over 400 million enrollments. Students and instructors come from 180+ countries and 66% of the students are located outside of the U.S.
The Udemy logo is made up of two elements – a symbol and a wordmark. The symbol is handwritten and organic, to emphasize the personal connections being made between our students and instructors. The wordmark, set in practical sans serif type, is the structure and substance that makes their connections possible.
Udemy – How It Works?
Udemy works on 4 major lines and aims to provide the following to its students:
Convenience :
Udemy provides its students with the freedom to choose what and when to study. If a particular course is made available on the e-learning platform, students can enroll for it whenever they want because Udemy gives lifetime access it. Moreover, there’s no set time limit, so the students get to learn at their own suitable pace.
Variety :
Udemy has linked tutors from all around the world who teach a huge variety of subjects from business to the arts. It allows the students to learn whatever they want.
Affordability :
Some Udemy courses are free, and some are paid start from as little as $9. There are also a variety of udemy coupons and seasonal sale and discounts which help students to register themselves in courses at dirt rates. They also have an option to choose their preferred method of payment.
Certification :
Udemy certification courses adds credibility to your career. Udemy provides various certification courses to add up new skills, upgrade your skill, and enhance your expertise. It issues a certificate of achievement to students, a mark of completion of a particular course. Certificates can be saved as a .pdf or .jpg file so that you can easily share your accomplishment. In addition, certificates can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIndirectly from Udemy. The certificate of completion looks like this-
Udemy certificate
Udemy – Founders
Udemy was launched by Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar and Gagan Biyani in early 2010.
Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar and Gagan Biyani, Udemy Co-Founders
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 find a company two years later.
“Udemy differentiates in two major ways. First, students can learn on their own time. Many other services provide the ability to host live learning with teachers, but it is critical for students to learn via recorded content (videos and written articles) as well. Second, it develops a community around the course. We provide features so students can easily interact amongst each other and their instructor,” said -Gagan Biyani, (Indian-American) Co-Founder of Udemy
With a mission to improve lives through learning, it is the largest online learning destination that helps students, businesses, and governments gain the skills they need to compete in today’s economy. They enable anyone anywhere to create and share educational courses(instructors) and to enroll in these educational courses to learn(students). More than 35 million students are mastering new skills from expert instructors teaching over 130,000 online courses in topics from programming and data science to leadership and team building.
For companies, Udemy for Business offers an employee training and development platform with subscription access to 7,000+ courses, learning analytics, as well as the ability to host and distribute their own content.
Udemy for Government is designed to upskill workers and prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. It is privately owned and headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, Brazil, India, Ireland, and Turkey.
Udemy – Business Model
Udemybusiness model maintains a vigorous platform between instructors and students. Instructor create online courses as per their expertise and these are bought by students. It charges instructors a fee for every course sale made on its platform. The fee depends on how the user was acquired. It ranges from 3 to 75%. Additionally, it charges students annual subscription that gives its businesses (and their employees) access to the platform’s content.
Udemy – Revenue Model
Instructor Fees
There is no fee to create or host courses in Udemy. The firm makes money whenever a student purchases a course.
Consequently, revenue is shared with instructors. Depending on how the student was acquired, a different instructor fee applies.
This edtech Company has three revenue share tiers that it applies to its instructors:
Instructor Promotion: The student discovers the course through a coupon or referral link issued by the instructor. In this case, the instructor receives 97 percent of the revenue. An additional administration fee of 3 percent is applied by Udemy.
Udemy Organic: Organic sales occur whenever a student browses the e-learning platform and finds a course he/she is interested in. Furthermore, no instructor coupon is used when purchasing the course. In this scenario, Udemy and the instructor share 50 percent of the sales. Udemy charges a 30 percent fee for any sale made through the company’s Android or iOS app.
Paid Acquisition: In some instances, Udemy buys advertising slots on other platforms like Google, Facebook, or YouTube. Whenever students buy courses through paid marketing channels, Udemy takes a 75 percent cut of each course sale. Instructors can limit the amount of times and types of channels in which their courses are promoted.
For Business
Udemy For Business, as the name indicates, is tailored towards companies and their employees. Udemy for Business host courses including development, design, IT and software, data science, office productivity, management, marketing, personal development, project management, sales, among others.
Leading companies in India, including Wipro, Tech Mahindra, and Tetrasoft are using Udemy for Business so their employees can learn the latest skills and deliver the most innovative solutions for their customers. “We use Udemy for Business because we want to provide a learning platform for our employees across the globe where they can learn anytime, anywhere. With short bite-sized lectures and some of the best professors globally, our employees like learning on the platform because it’s easy to pick up new skills,” says Anurag Seth, VP & Head of Talent Transformation at Wipro, a leading global information technology, consulting, and business process services company.
It offers two subscription plans, depending on the size of the team. The teamplan is aimed at learning groups of 5 to 20 users. The company will have to pay $360 per year and user. Consequently, the Enterprise plan is suitable for all teams above 21 or more users. Hereby, pricing is available upon request by contacting it’s sales team. Furthermore, the Enterprise plan offers a few additional features. These include custom categories and learning paths, no language limitation (the Team plan is limited to English only), custom user groups, tracking user activity, Slack integration, and many more.
Udemy – Prices
With so many perks attached to its name, this is another generic question. There are both paid and free courses on Udemy. But to describe it in layman terms, nothing worth comes for free. So, yes the free courses aren’t as up to the mark as the paid ones. One needs to pay for Udemy courses one by one or can get access to more than 4,000 any time with a Business subscription. Unfortunately, the price is a little high, and you need a minimum of five people for a Business account. Some popular online learning platforms feature a membership system, but Udemy is a pay-per-course service. Udemy Courses ranges from $9 to $300, and the company frequently hosts sales.
It accepts international debit and credit cards, e-payments and bank transfers. The company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Udemy – Courses
The expert turn of events and programming courses are strikingly like the ones you can discover on LinkedIn Learning with proficient teachers. From the student’s viewpoint, you’re generally watching a talking head and incidentally perusing list items or synopses that show up on the screen.
You can discover the frail substance and self-serving educators if you burrow. One can even let the instructor know the doubts while studying the course which the instructor/teacher answers accordingly. The doubts and questions of other users which have been already answered by the instructor also appear to the student which helps in solving their doubt at earliest.
Every learner or student has to have a Udemy account to enroll or purchase a course. As the student purchases a course, it gets saved under ‘my learning’. The student can study them accordingly. The progress made while studying them is also displayed to the user including the number of sections completed. Just like any other shopping website, here we can wishlist a course if we’re not prepared to buy the same at that very moment.
When you discover a course, you can examine an in-depth description of that course, requirements to start it, what to expect at the end of the course, whether or not the course includes a certificate on completion and so forth.
The flesh and bone of each course are videos. Videos generally are grouped into sections. So, a course might be 3 hours long, however, each video might not be greater than 10 minutes. This is how a course is divided into sections.
The format enables teachers to ensure their courses are genuinely structured. By having sections and brief videos, instructors have to break their content material into specific, digestible pieces. this setup facilitates students to see the overall scope of the course beforehand. It additionally makes it smooth for students to pause and take a break from their course once they want to. Having brief videos additionally, lets newbies effortlessly repeat something they failed to apprehend or need to refresh. And it is beneficial in case you have a few revels in with the subject count already because you could skip any videos that include what you already know. Students can even rate the courses accordingly.
Udemy – For Instructors
Anybody proficient and confident in a field can turn into a teacher on Udemy. In beginning as an educator, Udemy offers tools and understanding to assist you with making a decent course. There is no fee to be an instructor on Udemy. Instructors are paid according to a revenue share model of the company. When a student buys a course on the marketplace, revenue is shared between instructor and the company, according to revenue share model. It offers tips, outlines and information concerning what sorts of courses students are searching for. The site likewise reveals to you whether the quantity of courses presently offered is per the interest, in addition to the normal and top-procuring month to month wages in this subject zone. Courses must have at least 30 minutes of video content and at least 5 lectures or learning modules.
In order to ensure that students have great learning experiences, Udemy also have a Quality Review Process that every course goes through.
In order to create paid courses, you’ll need an active PayPal or Payoneer account. Instructors can connect a PayPal or Payoneer account to their Udemy account. They are paid on a monthly basis.
In addition to the Udemy’s standard lecture uploader, they offer the ability to upload materials in bulk or import them via Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, and other file storage tools.
Udemy’s Marketplace Insights they offer robust reporting on student demand, search volume, and revenue for a particular topic to help you decide what to teach. If no data exists for a topic the want-to-be-instructor-person is searching, it likely means that there’s an opportunity to fill this gap in the Udemy marketplace and he/she should get started right away. While success as an instructor on the e-learning platform is not guaranteed, this tool offers some powerful data to help you make your decision.
As an instructor, you have the option to enroll in the Udemy Deals Program, which is made up of two marketing channels that spotlight your course(s) in different ways. Enrolling in the Udemy Deals Program gives company the option to promote your course, at a discount. Selection for promotion is not guaranteed. In addition, they provide instructors with extensive articles, resources and features at online platform to help you effectively market your course(s).
Udemy – Expansion in India
For Udemy, after the US, India is the second largest market catering to the requirement of professionals wanting to learn new skills or upgrade their skills.
“It has started talks with both the Center and various State governments for using its platform to train their staff,” said Irwin Anand, Managing Director, Udemy India.
Udemy MD, India- Irwin Anand
“With over 20 million employees, the Government is one of the biggest sectors to be tapped. Udemy works with the Governments of Japan and Singapore.In India, we have millions of students as customers and thousands of instructors teaching students from around the world. Every year, nearly 7 million graduates pass out of colleges, but not many are employable. The traditional way of education in India is not sufficient for people to be productive at work. Udemy with its practice-oriented courses help people to learn the right skills and get into the job market,” Anand said.
Udemy – Funding and Investors
Udemy has raised a total of $223M in funding over 9 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Feb 19, 2020 from a Series E round.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investor
Feb 19, 2020
Series E
$50M
Benesse
Aug 1, 2019
Secondary Market
–
Manhattan Venture Partners
Jun 2, 2016
Series D
$60M
Prosus and Naspers
Jun 2, 2015
Series D
$65M
Stripes
May 8, 2014
Series C
$32M
Norwest Venture Partners
Dec 7, 2012
Series B
$12M
Insight Partners
Oct 12, 2011
Series A
$3M
Lightbank
Aug 1, 2011
Seed Round
–
–
Aug 31, 2010
Seed Round
$1M
–
Winter Capital Joins Series F Funding Round in 4th Quarter of 2020 to expand its edtech portfolio. The capital raised will enable Udemy to continue growing its consumer and business product offerings to serve the world’s students, organizations, and instructors.
Udemy – Revenue
Udemy’s estimated annual revenue is currently $653.9M. It’s estimated revenue per employee is $165,000. Like any startup in growth mode, it does not share any revenue metrics with the public. Due to ongoing expansions into new markets as well as spending on product development and new hires, it can be assumed that the company remains unprofitable for now.
The cost of online learning is all over the map. Some companies charge a membership fee while others sell access to specific classes only. As mentioned, Teachable lets instructors sell courses at prices they set, rather than offer a membership. The Great Courses is similar. Every course is priced individually.
Top competitors of Udemy are Coursera and Khan Academy. Other competitors include Linkedin learning, Udacity, Skillshare and Master Class.
Udemy – Awards
Udemy has won awards at major competitions such as VatorSplash and the ASU Education Innovation Summit. Also, blogs such as TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb.
Udemy – Future Plans
Udemy is an interesting and evolving concept that focuses on the transfer of knowledge, rather than fetching a diploma. The wide variety of content and instructors available at affordable rates and the exceptionally personal pace of learning make it a very convenient method of attaining skills. With the world becoming more advanced and technophile, their businesses have huge horizons unlocked for themselves. For the time, it remains non-profitable.
Udemy – FAQs
Who are the founders of Udemy?
Udemy was founded by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar.
What is Udemy?
Udemy is an online-based learning platform that provides its customers numerous courses on a variety of topics like development, business, finance and accounting, IT and software, office productivity, personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle, photography, health and fitness, music, teaching, and academics.
Is Udemy accredited?
Udemy is not an accredited institution. Each completed Udemy course includes a certificate, but the certificate can’t be used to seek formal accreditation.
How long are Udemy courses?
Every course has a specific duration associated with it. Once the course is purchased, the consumer has lifetime access to their selected courses.
What Platform is Udemy built on?
Python is the base language on which the Udemy platform is built on. For Database, Udemy uses MySQL.
Is Udemy cheap?
Udemy courses are priced based on the market, though the company does host sales(Udemy sale), and sometimes an instructor offers discounts to increase sale volume.
Is Udemy recognised?
Certificates of completion help demonstrate your accomplishments, but please note Udemy is not an accredited institution, and as a result, the certificates cannot be used for formal accreditation.
Is Udemy an Indian comapany?
No, Udemy is an American company, privately owned and headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, Brazil, India, Ireland, and Turkey.
UpGrad is an educational technology company that was founded in the year 2015. The company has its headquarters located in Mumbai, India. The company was founded by Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, Phalgum Kompaili and Ravijot Chugh.
The target market of the company is the working professionals who are looking back to get into the learning process without quitting their job.
The company provides access to the working professionals with university education through online modes in a structured manner. Let’s look at the below article to analyze the different subsidiary companies of UpGrad.
The Gate Academy is one of the recently acquired company by UpGrad. With this acquisition, UpGrad had entered into the test preparation market. The acquisition amount was not disclosed by UpGrad.
Even after the acquisition, the company is been known from its original name as The Gate Academy itself. The Chief Executive Officer of the company is Ritesh Raushan. The Gate Academy has its headquarters located in Bengaluru, India.
The Gate Academy Website
The plans of UpGrad after acquiring the startup were to increase the accessibility of this startup to at least 1 million test takers annually. This was planned to be achieved by investing over INR 100 crore in the company and by developing the content of around 20,000 hours in different languages.
The Gate Academy is one of India’s leading coaching institutes. The company has around 57 centers across the country. There are around 2 lakh learners who are enrolled for GATE and other entrance exams. They have consumed around 76 million video hours.
The Gate Academy has provided UpGrad with a non-linear growth opportunity by entering into a new segment and providing a deeper penetration in the semi-urban and the rural markets.
Acadview
Acadview was founded in the year 2015 by an ex-Google employee Himanshu Batra. The company helps fresh graduates upskill themselves to find highly skilled jobs. They upskill the graduates through industry projects and online coaching.
Acadview also provides an opportunity to the young IT professionals to earn an extra income by teaching the courses to the students and providing mentorship. The company has its headquarters in New Delhi, India.
Acadview has partnered with more than 80 private universities and colleges across five states in north India. The company has claimed that it has onboarded around 3,000 students in the previous year.
The acquisition of UpGrad will help the subsidiary company to focus on the north Indian market and UpGrad will help in expanding its presence there. UpGrad will also help the company to bring up its model online by providing the required materials.
Fairmont Technologies Pvt. Ltd
Fairmont Technologies Pvt. Ltd was founded in the year 2015. The company has its headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka. UpGrad had acquired the startup CohortPlus which is operated under the company Fairmont Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Srinivasan Narayan is the founder and Co-founder of the company. CohortPlus will enable members to post various questions and they will get a chance to receive various perspectives from industry professionals. The members also have an option to seek assistance on Job interviews using the platform.
CohortPlus claims that it has a community of more than 31,000 members from a wide range of companies such as Google, Adobe, Facebook, Amazon, Practo, Zomato, Uber, etc. After the acquisition by UpGrad the company is concentrated on enlisting the support of the parent company to build a proprietary platform for people who are looking to advance in their careers.
Rekrut India Pvt. Ltd.
Rekrut India Pvt. Ltd was founded in the year 2020 and has its headquarters in Mumbai, India. Ajay Shah is the managing founder of Rekrut India Pvt. Ltd. Rekrut India has an extensive network of over 100 recruiting experts who handles the complexities of the hiring process.
Rekrut Website
The startup is said to be working closely with a lot of corporates, MSMEs and large enterprises. The acquisition helped the parent company that is UpGrad in turbocharging its career engine by providing a wider opportunity in placement and enabling the learners using the UpGrad platform to access the hiring partners of Rekrut India Pvt.Ltd.
This was the first time where an EdTech startup had acquired a recruitment company in India. The size of the deal was not disclosed.
FAQ
Who is the owner of upGrad?
Ronnie Screwvala is the Co Founder and Chairman of upGrad.
Who is the CEO of upGrad?
Arjun Mohan is Chief Executive Officer of upGrad.
Is upGrad profitable?
upGrad’s revenue stood at Rs 230 crore in FY20. The company has set a revenue target of Rs 300 crore for the January-March quarter.
Conclusion
All this acquisition has provided a strong platform for UpGrad in the EdTech space in India. These subsidiary companies are working closely with UpGrad to capture the Indian EdTech market.
In this competitive world, education is the one thing that empowers people. But sadly, a large part of our country is still deprived of this education. Though digitization is the ray of sunshine which can enlighten our country with knowledge and literacy. An IES officer turned entrepreneur, Akhand Swaroop Pandit, Founder of The Catalyst Group is using the power of digitization to empower thousands of youth from every nook and corner of the country to prepare for various Government exams.
Akhand, who himself cleared all government exams envisioned the ‘Catalyst Education Group’ to help many more clear government exams. His purpose through his startup is to make high-quality education reach every part of the country at an affordable cost so that everybody can compete for irrespective of the difficult monetary or geographical circumstances.
The Catalyst Group provides online courses for different competitive exams like UPSC, SSC, GATE, IES, RRB, State PSC, etc.
Founded in the year 2017, Catalyst Group is an education portal where students have to create their profile by signing up. Then they can enroll in any program by any trainer from the profile.
This platform has a payment gateway enabled on its website so anybody can easily take admission. EMI and other payment options are also available. After taking admission students can attend the classes multiple times on the portal till the expiry date of course. They can download notes, study material, provided by the Catalyst Group and can give online tests on the portal.
Catalyst Group – Target Market
The education sector is currently one of the biggest sectors comprising of around 60-70 lakhs students every year preparing for the competitive exams. Data calculated considering the students filling up forms for different competitions. Currently, Catalyst Group has an intake of 2 lakh students every year and in the coming 5 years, they are expecting it to reach 30-35 lakhs.
The Catalyst Group was founded by Akhand Swaroop Pandit.
The Catalyst Group’s founder is Akhand Swaroop Pandit. He belongs to Bareilly, a city in the northern state of India, Uttar Pradesh. Being an average student, Akhand gave all his time and full dedication to his studies and career. Clearly, this makes him the man that he is today. Truly, his success is an inspiration for a lot of young minds who put themselves through these competitive exams.
Akhand started working as an IES officer and later went on to start Catalyst Group. Here, he mentors aspiring candidates of Civil Engineering, IES, GATE, and many more such kinds of government examinations. As an average student, Akhand understands the clear difference between the rules of smart work and hard work.
The Catalyst Group Founder – Akhand Swaroop Pandit
All of it started when Akhand was in his college days and started his preparation for the UPSC examinations. But he didn’t have good study material and he couldn’t afford to go to other metro cities due to the hefty fee amount the coaching institutes charged. So he had to study on his own which was quite time-consuming.
After that, when Akhand started teaching, he had to travel to different faraway cities for institutes to deliver the lectures. And that time he felt the need to have a mechanism through which he could teach lakhs of students at a given time. All these experiences led him to the idea of having a Catalyst Platform that connects teachers with students directly.
Students, irrespective of where they are, can take lectures from teachers who are teaching in a different part of the country. Akhand’s idea was to bridge this geographical and monetary gap between the students and the teachers.
And that’s how he launched The Catalyst Group where the idea was to be able to provide high-quality education at an affordable cost to many. Initially, when they launched through YouTube (catalyst group YouTube), they had roughly 100 students and in the short span of only two and a half years, they are having around 2 lakh students learning on the platform.
Catalyst Group – Name, Tagline and Logo
“Catalyst means something that accelerates the process and here we are doing the same thing by connecting teachers with students,” says this genius entrepreneur.
The Catalyst Group is accelerating the careers and process of learning for students. And so the logo is rocket-shaped that is about to launch!
The Catalyst Group Logo
Catalyst Group – Startup Launch
The Catalyst Group launched through YouTube channel from where they got the first 100 customers. The YouTube video lectures were appreciated by everybody which helped them in getting the base right.
The Catalyst team believes that the primary quality is very important for any product. And secondly, people should know that you have a quality product. That’s where marketing comes into the picture. The team’s continuous point of focus is improving the quality of the lectures and hiring the best faculties to deliver the lectures.
The Catalyst Group’s revenue model works both ways B2C and B2B. They offer online courses that students can directly purchase from the website for Fees ranging from ₹2,000 to ₹38,000. The Catalyst Group also offers business to universities where they can sell the courses to students pan India.
Catalyst Group – Startup Challenges
One of the major challenges for The Catalyst Group was to gain the confidence of the students in their online classes as in India students feel more comfortable in the conventional system of learning where they regularly have to go for classes and can see the teacher standing in front of them.
To gain their trust they had to first give them free online lectures to make them aware and comfortable with online classes. Because the courses this platform is providing has great quality, the Catalyst team could dodge this challenge successfully.
According to the current stats, they are operating in Jaipur, Patna, Lucknow, and Pune. They also have partnered with institutions like NIT Srinagar, NIT Jamshedpur, BITS Pilani, LPU, Thapar university. The idea of empowering thousands of students with quality education at the mere thought of it sounds so noble. And that’s exactly what we need to build a bright future for our nation.
FAQs
Who is Akhand Swaroop Pandit?
Akhand started working as an IES officer and later went on to start Catalyst Group.
What is education empowerment?
Empowerment is the “process by which individuals and groups gain power, access to resources, and control over their own lives. In the field of education, empowerment theory is often associated with the classic work by Paulo Freire (1972/1986), in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
How does education empower people in general?
Education empowers people with the knowledge, skills, and values they need to build a better world. The belief that quality educationcan help reduce poverty and inequality comes from a recognition that education is a basic human right—similar to food and shelter—and that it is vital to protecting human dignity.
How do you empower students to design their future?
5 Ways to Empower Students:
Give Students Decision-Making Power in an Area of Curriculum.
Give Your Students a Voice Through Forums for Student Feedback.
Encourage Meaningful Technology Use in the Classroom.
In Today’s generation, tech-based learning is off the hook. Whereas on the traditional level of learning, the face-to-face interaction of a teacher and student is the prime learning procedure which may not be useful for a student at all times. Hybrid learning model is a model that combines traditional classroom teaching with online/remote activities.
Hybrid learning is a method of learning that combines classroom discussions with an online tech-learning, however replacing the element of the in-person class. Perhaps, Hybrid Learning is a contributing factor to the next level of learning techniques. Such combination of the e-learning methods and traditional classroom instruction is what we call Hybrid Learning.
In addition to it, the concept of a ‘hybrid’ form of learning has been a living example over the last decade except the last few months, for the unusual global catastrophe brought about by the pandemic. Otherwise just not going to school and asking for an online class would have seemed like a far-fetched idea.
What is Blended learning and How is it different than Hybrid learning model?
Hybrid learning and blended learning are often mistaken as the same learning model, However, both are two distinct learning models.
Blended learning
In the Blended Learning model, It combines in-person teaching with asynchronous learning methods. Where students watch instructional videos and work on online exercises during their own time.
Blended Learning
Hybrid Learning
In the Hybrid learning model, the teachers instruct in-person and remote students at the same time. In a hybrid learning model, some students can get hands-on experience, while some learners find those methods inaccessible due to geographic limitations.
For a productive hybrid learning, it needs an equipped curriculum setup of a different set of strategies in order to create a physical classroom environment. However through Hybrid learning, students gain better learning environment along with tailoring the learning experiences. With hybrid learning, the influence of education will reach greater heights.
Advancement of active learning skills
Through hybrid learning techniques, students get purposeful education. And therefore it is to say that, hybrid learning is poised to grow significantly for learners.
Flexibility for busy schedules
A hybrid approach offers the students a command over the flexibility of learning. This flexibility is often committed to regular attendance and good participation in the classes.
Immediate Feedback
Students participating in live lectures, live chats with teachers, customized assessments, can get immediate feedbacks to improve for the better.
Lower transportation costs
Students bearing hybrid learning, has less need to go offline, which in way saves transportation costs.
Advanced Use of Technology
The adoption of Artificial Intelligence has helped to tailor different learning styles that eventually lead to better learning outcomes. It has also helped to make the learning environment more entertaining and productive.
Cons of Hybrid Learning Model
As distance education don’t help in developing oral skills and social interactions, there may be some reasons that can be an obstacle in obtaining hybrid learning.
Less participatory in asynchronous class
Many a times teachers complain of students not participating in classes. Unlike in traditional method of teaching students are require to participate.
Technology trouble
Technology can cause trouble and be challenging challenging Rather Than Useful. Most of the students encounter problems like slow internet connection, or devices trouble.
How Hybrid learning has improved education in the times of Covid -19
Covid-19 enforced the academies and its educators to test out online study technique for distance education in the correct form. Indeed, there was a lot of new skills and knowledge gone into the process. To implement the modern technique of education, many different online learning tricks and techniques were tested and evaluated for an effective participation, and hybrid learning is one such approach.
As lockdowns and social distancing measures are likely to continue in some form and schools may have to remain closed for more months, as cases of infection research is alternating between periods of normal operation and quarantine.
With flexible or hybrid learning, every school can exist side by side with a parallel virtual school. Teachers and students can meet their educational requirements remotely over the internet and online classes can be held on a regular schedule just like traditional classes for synchronous learning.
Also if internet access is lacking, students can continue with the synchronous learning through self-paces lessons with the smart school system. Teachers have the flexibility to design and create digital lessons that are suited to needs of the students, whether taught online or in-person. Teachers are also getting access for a full digital curriculum with high quality content as found in textbooks.
Other functions may also be shifted online according to means, further reducing the need for anyone to come to school in person. Students can be enrolled in classes through the internet using certain online school platform.
Such platforms can be used to manage student enrollment online and to facilitate remote working for teachers and employees.
FAQ
What is the difference between hybrid learning and remote learning?
In remote learning student and teacher are separated by time and/or distance, Hybrid learning combines traditional classroom teaching with online/remote activities.
How can hybrid learning be improved?
Plan effective interactions, Craft a learner-centered approach to learning, and Support student success are some methods to improve hybrid learning.
Does hybrid mean online?
Hybrid learning replaces a portion of traditional face-to-face instruction with web-based online learning (e.g., video lectures, online discussions, or activities).
Conclusion
With the use of smart test tools, online testing allows teachers to design and conduct examinations remotely, so that the functions of the virtual schools keep running smoothly, thereby ensuring that learning never stops.
So even if we are self-isolated, it is to remember that we are all facing these challenges together. And with innovative tactics and broad support, the educators and students can get through this time in a biased way. Looking at the current scenario of Covid 19 and imposing lockdowns, it looks like the hybrid learning model is the future of education.
The online education is getting a great response. Since, all the schools and colleges are temporarily closed due to the global lockdown, there is a significant rise in the demand of online courses and platforms. Even the schools and colleges are also trying to shift their classes on their online platform in order to continue the process of learning and not to hamper the studies of the students. Let us see the whole case study of rise of e-learning sector during COVID-19.
Statistics of different countries on the status of e-learning
In India, any online learning platforms are offering free access to their services which includes platforms like BYJU’S, which is now the world’s most highly valued Edtech Company and India’s unicorn platform providing services in the e-learning category. While giving the interview, the COO of the company shared the information that; From the day of announcing the free live classes on its Think and Learn app, BYJU’s has seen a 200% increase in the number of new students using its product which lead to rise of e-learning business in the e-learning sector.
In China, after looking to the pandemic, the Chinese govt. gave the instruction for the full-time students to resume their studies through online platforms. So, taking the initiative, the Tencent classroom started working in this field. As a result, China is able to see the largest “online movement” in the history of education with approximately and so, about 730000 or 81% of students, attending classes via the Tencent K-12 Online School in Wuhan.
All this gives a great information about the rise in the e-learning solution in the situation of global pandemic. This rise in the e-learning will also help in the upcoming post pandemic where schools and colleges will able to shift themselves on the online platform so that, they should not get any problem if such situation comes in the upcoming future time period.
The online education or the e-learning system has now become a new point for debate. There are two groups in the society having a different opinion for the online education. They are:-
Opinion 1) The first set of group believes that the unplanned and rapid move to online learning – with no training, and little preparation – will result in a poor user experience and will lead to the poor growth in their respective field.
Opinion 2) The second set of group believe that a new hybrid model of education will emerge as a best source of gaining the knowledge in their respective field. This is because of the fact that today, we are leading to an era of digital world. So, this initiative will be giving a significant benefits in the future itself.
There is always a demerit of every merit source and this online education also has its own challenges which is to overcome. In this case, the upcoming challenge is the internet. Some students without good connection of internet access and without the good internet connection, the technology struggles to work perfectly with digital learning. Example for this case is:-
According to a survey 95% of students in Switzerland, Norway, and Austria have a computer which can be used for their school or college work but on the other hand only 34% of students in Indonesia have an access of computer for their work.
According to a survey students retain 25-60% more material when learning online as compared to classroom study which helps them in retaining about 8-10% only. This can have many reasons like students can learn at their own pace or reading 2-3 times repetitively by going back and re-reading or choosing their own topics which they like to read or study. These reasons are the main reason behind the faster learning of the students. A fact tells that e-learning requires 40-60% less time to learn than in a traditional classroom setting.
Technical education is of utmost importance for developing the human resource of a country. Technical education produces manpower that has practical knowledge of modern and advanced technology which is much required for the development of any country. In modern times, the demand for technical education is increasing globally and India is also experiencing the same trend.
Besides, technology is not something which can be learned once and for all, it is must to keep oneself abreast of the new developments. While it is not possible and convenient to go for formal offline education at all stages of one’s career, online technical education can do a lot to keep one up-to-date of new technologies, without giving up the current job or alongside another course.
However, it is important to check the quality and credibility of the courses while opting for any online technical course. Techved Academy of Design (TAD), initiated by Techved, a Mumbai based design company is offering certified courses on many technological areas, that are just perfect to upskill and uplift your career.
StartupTalky interviewed TADCourses co-founder Neha Modgil to know about the story behind this initiative.
TAD stands for Techved Academy of Design. TAD Courses is an initiative of Techved, a leading global user experience company based in Mumbai. To meet the shortage of skilled manpower in the field of User Experience (UI/UX), Techved started TAD Courses which initially offered just courses related to UI and UX. However today TAD courses is offering online courses in many other technological areas.
The TAD team believes that everyone should have the opportunity to create progress through technology and develop the skills of tomorrow. TAD Courses offers assessments, learning paths and courses authored by industry experts. The platform helps businesses and individuals close skills gaps in critical areas, innovate faster and deliver on key objectives.
With a mission to become the one-stop channel for Technology education, TAD has been providing quality training and education, aspiring masses in the realm of creativity. Combining the passion for technology and education, TAD set up the online learning platform with the sole vision of increasing accessibility in education, thereby elevating itself as a reliable and esteemed global education brand.
“We desire to endow individuals with an intrinsic inclination and pursuit of technology and design,” Neha says emphasizing on the company’s vision.
TAD Courses was co-founded by Neha Modgil & Mohar V.
Neha Modgil | Co-founder and CEO of TAD Courses
Neha Modgil, Co-Founder and COO of TAD Courses, is a thought leader with a fertile mind and woman with great passion towards the work. She has around 10+ years of experience into Designing and Innovation industry. Her passion lies in inventing new and powerful ways to make consumer’s digital experience better. She has an educational qualification in design and management.
Mohar V | Business Evangelist of TAD Courses
Mohar V, is an experienced Business Evangelist, Digital Strategist and a UX Design thinker. His 19+ years of experience into Technology innovation, UX/UI Design, Digital Strategy, Software Development, and Project management have helped him to sweep the tech world. His conscientious qualities and ideas have always touched the zenith of success. He has a stellar track record of business innovation, market presence, and creative mind into various business verticals. He is an MBA person with a tech background.
How was TAD Courses Started
TADcourses is a member of NASSCOM and was started under the leadership of TECHVED Consulting. Techved has over a decade of experience and an ardent passion in the field of UI/UX. The leaders of TECHVED – deemed as the top UX/UI Company by Silicon India – wanted to cultivate a talent pool of aspiring professionals in design and technology. Thus, TAD was founded as an oasis to quench the growing scarcity of UX professionals.
“In a decade, we have conducted a lot of workshops and meet-ups for industry professionals. These experiences explicated the gaps in skilled individuals in the industry. Therefore, TAD courses have been launched for bridging these gaps” says Neha.
Apart from UX/UI related courses, TAD Courses now offers several other technical courses too.
“Initially, we have discussed with COO’s and CTO’s of Technology to know what challenges they face while recruiting the right candidate and that lead to the need of industry ready professionals. Today there are so many working professionals who lack contemporary skills, which results in great disappointment. Looking into the responses, TAD courses set up the online learning platform to build and enhance the critical professional skills required in today’s in-demand fields” Neha added.
TAD Courses – Name, Tagline and Logo
The name TAD stands for Techved Academy of Design.
TAD courses are the short online courses in cutting-edge technology for both beginners and professionals to cultivate their talent.
The courses are divided into ‘Foundation’ and ‘Advanced’ based on the levels of knowledge and expertise. TAD courses offer specialized video tutorials forArtificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Blockchain Technology, User Experience, and Big Data Analytics in multiple languages. A graduate in any stream can apply for these courses.
Major USPs of TAD Courses are: • Mentors with hands-on industry experience. • Premium content • Industry Recognized Certificates • Placement Assistance
The company is trying to reach out to the Tier II and Tier III Cities by creating an extraordinary technology learning experience for them to make their future with these buzzing and dynamic technologies. Besides TAD Courses also boasts to be the first Indian online learning platform to teach the updated technologies In multiple languages.
TAD Courses – Funding and Investors
TAD Courses has not raised any funding until now. It is powered and invested by its sister company Techved Consulting. The company uses a major fraction of its funds in creating quality content videos with the right mentors.
TAD Courses – Startup Challenges
Getting the right mentors on board was a challenge for the TAD Team.
“Our objective was to find industry experts to train our students to increase the employability in the tech industry. It was a very challenging task, to find the right product person who has the vision to run this. But we effectively pulled it off by bringing industry experts and subject matter experts to the board” says Neha.
TAD team chooses to learn from the various players in its domain rather than seeing them as competition.
As Neha says, “We have learned and reaped inspiration from many platforms; each one of them has their own presence in the market to stand out. We have willfully started this because we are already into tech Industry witnessing 100’s of newcomers in the market who are unable to stand firm due to lack of Ideas and concept. Therefore, we have learned the pros and cons of their platform, which has motivated us to build our platform into a unique platform.”
TAD Courses is focusing on making its service better for the learners and make technology easy to learn
“The moment we began to look at others as our competitors, we descended and categorized ourselves comparing another platform with some similarities. Thereafter, we decided not to consider anyone as our competitors, we take everyone as a learner because everyone is trying and practicing new things to be prominent out of which some people strike the right platform enlighten the people and some later”, added Neha.
TAD Courses – Future Plans
Having successfully created a high-quality user experience in its platform, the TAD team will keep on improvising the content and teaching methods by incorporating new ideas. As they are evolving with the current technologies, the industry will consistently evolve as well.
Along with the evolving industry, TAD courses will further improvise teaching methods by introducing new ideas into the courses. However, their objective of providing a high-quality experience will remain the same. Their goal is to increase employability in the Tech Industry. Hence, they will continue to transform our students into a job-ready professional.
Pratyusha Srivastava
