Success Story of Udemy: A Billion-Dollar EdTech Platform

In the vast landscape of digital education, one platform has risen to exceptional prominence, changing the way millions of individuals across the world approach learning and skill development. Founded by Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar, and Gagan Biyani, Udemy is not just a platform, it has crafted a success story that echoes the revolutionary impact of online education. 

Want to know the story behind the success of Udemy? In this blog we will tell you everything about its journey and how did the founders of Udemy launch this e-learning platform in the market. 

How Did It Begin? 

Udemy was founded by  Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar in 2010. Bali is a Turkish entrepreneur who grew up in a small village with limited educational resources. In his primary school, there was only one teacher who rotated through each grade with the pupils in separate rooms. The students were without a teacher 80% of the time in the classroom. 

Therefore, Eren had nothing but the only option to educate himself on his own. He completed his education in a schoolhouse with the help of a laptop with internet access. By leveraging just these two resources he learned Maths and even ended up winning the National Math Olympiads in Turkey.

During his freelancing days in the mid-2000s, Eren decided to invest some additional time and funds in his passion project. As a result, he successfully developed a software for a live virtual classroom in 2007. 

Seeing a great potential in his new development, Bali opted to move his base of operations to Silicon Valley, setting up Udemy, an online learning platform, along with his two friends – Gagan Biyani and Oktay Caglar. 

Obstacles In The Road

As the concept of e-learning was not quite popular at that time, pitching Udemy to investors was very challenging for Bali and his partners. The three men had attempted and failed 30 times in gaining the interest of investors. In fact, the first 60 investors they contacted immediately turned them down. 

In order to receive funding for their project, Bali, Gagan and Caglar decided to develop and populate the Udemy website with courses to give an impression that something big is actually happening and that their platform has the potential to be very successful in the next few years. 

Eventually, their hard work paid off as Udemy raised $1 million which gave the founders a much-needed headstart. In May 2010, the trio finally launched Udemy publicly, using their own resources. The platform provided both free as well as paid courses for the users that were taught by their experts.

Success Of Udemy

Since its inception in the market, Udemy has experienced remarkable growth. In 2016, the platform had more than 200,000 courses and over 10 million registered users. And over 30 million individuals had registered by 2020, and there were more than 1 lakh courses available on the website. 

If you take their journey into account, many things have been credited for Udemy’s success so far. Be it a large assortment of courses, reasonable prices, or practical online teaching style, all these factors took Udemy to the level where it is today. The company has helped millions of students and working professionals across the globe  to develop new abilities and advance in their jobs.