With GenAI support, Coursera offers 4,000 courses in Hindi

More than 40 courses from country’s prominent institutions such as Introduction to Programming from BITS Pilani, Leadership Skills from IIM Ahmedabad, and Trading Basics from Indian School of Business (ISB) will also be translated into 18 languages, including French, Spanish, German and Thai, as per Coursera.

In terms of course enrollments, India has surpassed the United States. This, as per Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda, is a pandemic effect. “During the pandemic, we have registered tremendous growth in India — 18.6 million new learners registrations which is over a million higher than the US (17.1 million). This is because Indians are keen to upskill themselves for better job prospects more than any country. Before the pandemic, nobody had thought that work from home concept would be so relevant. Indians worked and upskilled themselves online during the lockdown phase,” he said.

Some of the states like Maharashtra (4.1 million), Karnataka (2.6 million) and Tamil Nadu (2.3 million) have seen a massive spike in enrollments.

“If these were a country and not states, they would be among the top 10 on Coursera list with a 52 per cent CAGR,” he added.

Not just the cities, some of remote locations registrations are surprising too. As per compound annual growth rate (CAGR), 800 per cent from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Manipur 710 per cent, Bihar 650 per cent, Mizoram 610 per cent and Kerala 520 per cent.

Realising this, Coursera plans to tap their Hindi speaking belt in India. “This initiative is in accordance with India’s National Education Policy 2020 which anyways bringing in more flexibility in course curriculum and focussing on promoting Indian languages,” Maggioncalda said adding that in future, they might come up with more courses in other Indian languages.

However, why aren’t Indian educators roped in to curate industry-specific courses in Hindi?

“Until the pandemic, not many Indian varsities were generating their courses online. Three years back, we had association with only four Indian institutes, which has now expanded to 18. We will get more educators on board in the future,” Maggioncalda said. When asked if technology would cut jobs instead of generating them, he quickly answered that AI has already disrupted the market and the Hindi translated content will depend a lot on users’ feedback. “For now, we are banking on the AI tools for translating the content. In future, with the users feedback, we might hire translators to cross check the content,” he said.

One of the most popular courses by an Indian educator and has been recently added is Leadership Skills by IIM Ahmedabad. As per Raghav Gupta, Managing Director, India and APAC, Coursera, over two lakh seekers have registered so far and covers topics such as power dynamics, stress management, and lessons from the Mahabharata. “This course is picked up not just by the business community but also by many individuals who realise they need these skills on an every day basis,” he said.

Furthermore, the company has announced two new programmes from Indian institutions: Advanced Digital Transformation from IIM Ahmedabad and Master of Science in Information Technology from IIIT Hyderabad.