Heaptalk, Jakarta — Udemy, an online platform for learning and teaching, showed significant growth since entering Indonesia’s market in Q3 2019. From less than ten courses, the Udemy platform provides 1,500 courses in the Indonesian version and 270 Indonesian instructors in 2022.
“There are 1,500 courses in the Indonesian version and the number keeps growing. We could say these number, are the largest in Indonesia,” said Giri Suhardi, Head of Indonesia market at Udemy (30/08). Further, he explained a course commonly consists of more than a video with the duration can range from 3 to 30 hours long.
Founded in 2010, Udemy offers three categories of topics taught, spanning technology, business and professional, and self-development. The technology topic provides learning of website development, mobile development, game development, data science, coding, IT and software, Microsoft office, and so on. The business and professional topic serves contents such as finance, accounting, marketing, and power skills or soft skills. The self-development topic ranges from making teriyaki chicken savory rice to language courses such as English and Japanese.
Carrying the concept as a platform for sharing expertise and knowledge, anyone can be an instructor at Udemy regardless of formal academic qualifications, thereby eliminating traditional barriers to teaching. Through the platform, instructors can create a course and market it to learners. Therefore, Giri also said Udemy is a marketplace for learning and teaching.
“Udemy enables anyone in Indonesia to create and share educational content as an instructor and to access that educational content as learners. As the fourth most populous country, we see a lot of potential to empower individuals and organizations within Indonesia with a highly personalized, agile, and affordable learning model. We want to give Indonesian people the freedom to choose their careers and upskill or reskill to advance in their profession by enabling flexible, effective skills development,” uttered Giri.
One of the instructors, Sandika Rahardi, proved that anyone can teach at Udemy. He said, “I used to be a learner. Since Udemy empowers collective potential, everyone can be a learner and a teacher. I bought an English course in mobile technology, then create a new course in Indonesian version based on the knowledge I have learned.” Sandika graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Indonesia.
Another instructor based in Yogyakarta, Gregorius Agung, produced content on Udemy since 2018. “Our market at Udemy expands not only in Yogyakarta but all over the world. About 87% of students are from Indonesia, and the rest are from India, the US, Malaysia, and other countries. We focus on Indonesian version content to develop local talent,” explained Greg.
Likewise the other instructor at Udemy, Agus also sees the opportunity of creating content in the Indonesian version since the contents are mostly taught in English in early 2020. Firstly he recognized the shifting of people’s activities, such as working and learning, to online platforms due to the pandemic. Then he found Udemy as one of the online learning platforms in Indonesia. Agus delivered, “Until now, almost 7,900 students have enrolled in my courses and the trend continues to rise. My background is as a practitioner and academic in the field of network, security, and DevOps.”
Giri stated there are a million Udemy platform visits every month in Indonesia. The dominant users in Indonesia are generation Y and Z, aged 19—34 years, representing 80% of Udemy users in Indonesia.
Globally, Udemy serves 54 million students with 71,000 instructors teaching 204,000 courses over 75 languages, including Indonesian, Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean. Meanwhile, Udemy Business recently expanded its global footprint with several enterprise customers across the Asia Pacific. It has deployed 9,200 international courses in 13 local languages, including more than 300 courses in the Indonesian language.
Last, Giri said Udemy will continue to bring more instructor expertise to help Indonesians gain the right skills to experience career freedom, develop their confidence, and help decide on the best path for their futures.