Coursera Inc, an online learning platform, announced new initiatives to improve access to high-quality education in India and better serve the local needs of learners and institutions in the country. These efforts include launching an extensive catalogue of learning content in Hindi and AI-powered features to make online learning more personalised and interactive. 

More than 4,000 Coursera courses are now available in Hindi, including supervised machine learning: Regression and Classification from DeepLearning.AI and Stanford, Financial Markets from Yale, and Learning How to Learn from Deep Teaching Solutions. Learners can access course readings, lecture video subtitles, quizzes, assessments, peer review instructions, and discussion prompts—all in the local language. 

Over 40 courses from Indian educators, such as Introduction to Programming from BITS Pilani, Leadership Skills from IIM Ahmedabad, and Trading Basics from the Indian School of Business, will also be translated into 18 languages, including French, Spanish, German, and Thai.
The edtech major also launched GenAI Academy, which is designed to offer foundational literacy and executive education programs from top universities and companies. These include Stanford Online, Vanderbilt, DeepLearning.AI, Google Cloud, and AWS. 

Its new enterprise and campus customers nationwide can embrace online learning to equip their employees and students with digital skills. L&T is the first enterprise in India to launch Coursera's GenAI Academy to provide structured digital literacy across its workforce. 

The other 45 Coursera for Business customers include Aditya Birla Group, Tata Power, KPIT Technologies Ltd, and Bajaj Finserv, bringing the total to 140 enterprise customers in the country. It has 55 Coursera for Campus customers, including XLRI Jamshedpur, Somaiya Vidyavihar University, Alliance University, and Yenepoya University, bringing the total to 1,100 higher educational institutions in the country.

With over 23.4 million learners and 57 million enrollments on the platform, India is the second largest Coursera market globally. "India's ambition to become a $5 trillion economy depends on its ability to develop a skilled workforce and maximise its demographic dividend," said Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda. "Our goal is to make high-quality education available to everyone, no matter what language they speak, and today marks a big step towards that goal." 

The company also announced the beta version of a GenAI-powered virtual learning assistant for Coursera Plus subscribers. It will provide personalised feedback, answer questions, and summarise video lectures and resources. The Coach will also support learners with interaction in the local language. 

Based on prompts from human authors, the newly introduced AI-powered Coursera Course Builder tool will auto-generate content, including course structure, descriptions, readings, assignments, and glossaries. Companies and campuses can also use this feature for private authoring, using their internal experts to produce custom courses and blend them with recommended content from participating partners on Coursera. 

"Emerging technologies like Generative AI are transforming the way we learn, teach, and work," said Raghav Gupta, Managing Director, India and APAC, Coursera. "With the surge in digital jobs and remote work, we are excited to empower Indian learners and institutions with several content and AI innovations to bridge the rural-urban gap and build an inclusive workforce."

Coursera was launched in 2012 by two Stanford Computer Science professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, to provide universal access to world-class learning. The global online learning platforms had more than 136 million registered learners as of September 30, 2023, and partners with over 300 university and industry partners to offer a broad catalogue of content and credentials. It became a Delaware public benefit corporation and a B Corp in February 2021.