Udemy

Education has never been easier. From a virtual classroom to a platform offering thousands of courses all around the world, Udemy has definitely hit the home run!

Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar, the founders of Udemy, created software for a real-time virtual classroom in 2007. They recognized the potential of making the product free for all, and two years later came to Silicon Valley to start a company. Udemy was launched by Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar, and Gagan Biyani in May 2010.

Udemy is a combination of the words “you” and “academy.”

According to Gayan Biyani, the founder of Udemy, the reason why Udemy’s requests for venture capital funding were turned down 30 times was largely because investors weren’t confident enough in the business to pull the trigger. So they opted to self-develop the product and established Udemy—”The Academy of You”—in May 2010.

In a short period, Udemy had around 10,000 registered users and 1,000 teachers had produced about 2,000 courses.

They decided to try another round of financing based on this positive market response, and by August they had raised $1 million in venture finance.

Groupon investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, as well as 500 Global (formerly 500 Startups) and MHS Capital, led an additional $3 million Series A fundraising round in October 2011.

Udemy raised $60 million from Naspers Ventures in June 2016, then followed up on a $65 million Series D round of funding in June 2015. Udemy further raised $50 million in November 2020 at a $3.25 billion value, with Tencent Holdings as the lead investor.

The site had 62 million users as of March 2023, taking more than 210,000 courses. With over 830 million course enrollments, Udemy provides more than 70,000 educators instructing courses in approximately 75 languages.

Udemy is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

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