Udemy appoints top OLX executive as India managing director

Online learning marketplace Udemy has appointed the former chief operating officer at classifieds portal OLX, Irwin Anand, as its India managing director, it said in a statement.

As the India head, Anand will drive Udemy’s localisation efforts by growing the team and deepening the company’s investment in the region, the statement added.

Prior to joining OLX, Anand was chief manager of business development at Yahoo! India and worked on mobile distribution partnerships. The XLRI MBA joined Udemy in January this year after leaving Naspers-backed OLX in November 2018.

Udemy, which was founded in 2010 by Gagan Biyani, Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar, set up its first India office in Gurugram in March this year. Calling India one of its fastest-growing markets, Udemy said that student enrolment and revenues from the country were doubling annually.

“With a mission to improve lives through learning, Udemy sees a big opportunity to bring a more localised experience for our students and instructors in India. Irwin has the right experience to help us extend the benefits of our learning platform to students, companies and governments alike,” said Gregg Coccari, chief executive of Udemy in the statement.

Udemy, which is also backed by Naspers, works with students, businesses and the government for skilling and learning courses on its platform. The company, which has a presence in Denver, Ireland, Turkey and Brazil apart from US, has a user base of 30 million students across 50 languages.

Udemy competes with Ronnie Screwvala-backed UpGrad; Unacademy, which is funded by Sequoia Capital; and US-based platforms Udacity and Coursera.

Naspers-backed ed-tech platform Byju’s has also seen its valuation jump to $4 billion through consecutive rounds of funding.