Coursera Is Taking Massive Open Online Courses To New Heights
Have you ever realized that after the advent of online education, millions of students have been benefited? Extra knowledge has become a pre-requisite for landing either a lucrative job or making it into one of the finest institutions around the globe. But, everyone can’t pay for extra courses when basic education seems far-fetched. Especially in a developing country like India, e-learning is the need of the hour. Because most of the population belongs to middle-class society and they need the privilege to acquire proper education. Learning the crucial need to educate the world, especially the young minds in an affordable way, MOOCs are needed. In 2012, two professors from Stanford University, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera. Coursera has become one of the largest and successful websites for MOOCs. And, this platform mainly focusses on making people learn about the emerging demanding topics like AI and ML.
About the Founders of Coursera
Daphne Koller’s research area is mainly based on the application of artificial intelligence in biomedical sciences. She is an Israeli-American professor in the department of computer science. In 1985, she graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at the age of seventeen and received her master’s degree at the age of eighteen. Daphne went to Stanford to acquire her Ph.D.
She received the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in 2008 which came with a cash prize of $150,000. In 2012, she along with another Standard professor, Andrew Ng, co-founded Coursera. She served as the co-CEO of the company and later as the President. Daphne left the company in 2016 and joined Calico as the Chief Computing Officer. Later, she left Calico to start her company, Insitro, a drug discovery start-up. Daphne is also the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.
Apart from being one of the most famous and successful computer scientists, Andrew is also an investor, writer, and businessman. His parents were immigrants from Hong Kong and thus he grew up in London. He went to Carnegie Mellon University and acquired his bachelor’s in three subjects in 1997. He majored in computer science, economics, and statistics. Later, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of technology and acquired his master’s degree in 1998.
Andrew joined Stanford University in 2002 and co-founded Coursera in 2012. He is also the co-founder of Google Brain and the former Vice President and Chief Scientist at Baidu. He was listed in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2012. Andrew has also founded AI Fund that financially backs the AI-based start-ups.
The Beginning
Both Andrew and Daphne were inspired by the online courses of Stanford in the fall of 2011. They were driven by the idea of how an online learning platform is advantageous to millions of students out there who cannot afford to take coaching classes. Moreover, through this platform people can learn from the best professors in the world.
When they founded the website, Stanford, Princeton, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania joined their hands to contribute. It included many specialization courses as well. The content of Coursera eventually became very elaborate.
Growth, Funding, and Investors
The first funding that Coursera raised was an amount of $16 million. It was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers and New Enterprise Associates. The series B funding took place in 2013 where Coursera raised $63 million from World Bank Group. The amount of funding raised shows how fast it was gaining popularity. In the next round of funding, the start-up raised around $60 million from EDB Investment. After a few more rounds of funding, Coursera’s valuation crossed $1 billion at the end of 2019.
To date, Coursera has established a relationship with 200 partners across twenty-nine countries. Apart from college and other educational institutions, Coursera has also come into partnership with many government agencies.
Strategies and Business Model
Within one year of its product going public, Coursera made an annual revenue of $1 million. Students from all over the world signed up for the courses especially because of the valid certificate provided after the completion. After a couple of years, Coursera decided to provide financial aid to the students who cannot pay the course fee.
After this, more students started enrolling and learning new skills. The students were highly benefited as the certificates were only given after passing the assignments with 80% gradation. This is one of the best features of Coursera that they are genuinely interested in educating people and not just making money.
Currently, Coursera has 47 million users around the world. The company has 450 employees and the headquarters is situated in California.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more