Online education startup Udemy has raised a new round of funding, to the tune of $60 million, from South African media company Naspers. Larry Illg, CEO of Naspers Ventures, is joining Udemy’s Board of Directors.
Founded in 2010, Udemy is a marketplace for online courses that brings together people with expertise in one or more areas, and people who want to learn about a new topic or develop a new skill. Udemy provides tools and a market for the experts to make and sell their courses, and takes a cut of their sales.
Udemy faces competition from a number of other online education startups, which include Udacity, Pluralsight, Coursera, and LinkedIn-owned Lynda.com. In particular, many of these companies have been racing to expand to international markets, where there is a significant opportunity to teach skills. In the past year, Udacity has launched localized versions of its technical degree programs, nanodegrees, in India and China.
But unlike Udacity and others, Udemy doesn’t focus on providing alternatives to traditional degrees. Instead it provides certificates for completing certain courses.
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Udemy is also localizing its content, and said it now has 40,000 courses now available in 80 different languages. The company also said it has surpassed 11 million students and 20,000 instructors worldwide, and two-thirds of its students are now based outside the U.S. Udemy declined to reveal revenue, or growth, but said revenue from non-English courses is up 300%.
The latest investment brings Udemy’s total funding to $173 million.
