Bangalore: Coursera Inc. is partnering with more Indian institutions and introducing platform innovations to better serve learners in its largest market outside the US.

The online course provider has 12.5 million registered learners in India. Of these, approximately 7.5 million signed up since January 2020, making the country the fastest growing market for the US company. According to a statement on Wednesday, Coursera has also elevated India as the center of its Asia Pacific (APAC) operations.

“The pandemic has dramatically changed the way we learn, teach and work. Our strong momentum in India reflects the continued trend of individuals and institutions embracing online learning to develop skills for the digital future,” said Jeff Magioncalda, CEO of Coursera.

The company is partnering with four new higher education institutions in India, taking the total number of university partners to 10. The new partners include IIT Bombay, IIT Guwahati, Indian Statistical Institute and Ashoka University, according to the statement.

Coursera is launching a new course, ‘Introduction to Basics of Ventilation’, to train frontline medical staff managing critically ill COVID-19 patients. It will do so through a partnership with Philips India.

• It intends to offer a localized home page for better discovery and wholesale pricing for enthusiastic learners with five new payment options.
• It will also offer new scholarship offers from industry partners including Microsoft and IBM. The two companies are expected to award 500 scholarships each.

“With the pandemic widening the skill gap, there has been a renewed urge for massive re-skilling efforts,” said Raghav Gupta, Managing Director, India and APAC, Coursera.

In an interview with ET in July, Magioncalda talked about the strong growth of online learning in India. Furthermore, he said, “There are 190 countries on Coursera. The smallest country is Egypt and the second smallest is India. Therefore, India has the second youngest learner of any country in the world.”