Online learning marketplace Udemy revealed today that it is now teaching more than 1 million students. This news comes as the company added localized support for 9 new languages, including Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Russian, and Turkish.
The 1 million milestone comes almost two months after Udemy’s last update when it told us that it has more than 8,000 courses being taught to 800,000 students. Today, half of all of its students come from outside the US. It is also diversifying its courses, with more than 600 courses being available in Spanish and 150 in Portuguese.
Company CEO Eren Bali shared that making Udemy’s offering as open to everyone as possible holds a special place in his heart:
I grew up in a single room schoolhouse in Southeastern Turkey, and while the internet helped me lift myself up in ways I never imagined possible, so much of the great learning content available online is only in English. I couldn’t be more excited to be part of a force that helps remove this language barrier for good, and I hope by localizing Udemy into these 11 languages, we will be one step closer to truly empowering any expert anywhere in the world to give back and teach the next generation.
Adding 10 new languages certainly will help appeal it to a wider audience. The service will display text in the user’s native language based on their location. Udemy believes instructors will find this also useful as it could potentially attract more users since they’ll be better able to comprehend what’s being said.
Udemy competitors include Coursera, Udacity, and Khan Academy.
Photo credit: JEAN-PIERRE CLATOT/AFP/Getty Images
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