US ed tech company Udemy to create 100 jobs in Dublin

Online education provider Udemy is to double employee numbers in Dublin over the next year with the creation of 100 jobs.

The announcement comes just weeks after the learning platform received a $50 million (€44 million) investment from Japanese educational publisher Benesse Holdings.

Udemy, which first established operations in the Republic in 2014, currently employs about 100 people locally. It has just opened a new 2,000sq metres EMEA headquarters in Dublin in an investment supported by IDA Ireland.

"We're running the majority of our infrastructure out of Dublin so we have a broad range of functions based there and it is a key part of the organisation," said chief executive Gregg Coccari told The Irish Times.

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“We have 26 countries represented in our Dublin office and the great talent pool there, along with a friendly government has made it a very good place for us,” he added.

Mr Coccari said 70 per cent of the company’s current revenues come from outside the US. Udemy is active in over 190 countries.

International expansion

“Our EMEA operation is growing rapidly and the recent investment gives us flexibility to speed up international expansion and to consider buying companies,” he added.

In addition to growing the Dublin office, the company continues to expand and invest in its offices around the world, including its San Francisco headquarters as well as offices in Denver, Colorado; Gurgaon, India; São Paulo, Brazil; and Ankara, Turkey. It employs about 650 people globally.

Founded in 2010, Udemy offers more than 150,000 online courses from 57,000 instructors in over 65 languages covering topics as diverse as software engineering, personal brand building, pet care to photography, yoga and web development. Its platform has over 30 million unique users.

Closest competitor

As many as 80 per cent of Fortune 100 companies use Udemy for educational purposes. Clients include Adidas, Pinterest, Mercedes-Benz, General Mills, Booking. com and Volkswagen.

“Nobody is close to our scale. Our closest competitor is half our size,” said Mr Coccari.

Udemy has raised about $200 million to date with other backers including Insight Partners, Prosus (formerly Naspers), Norwest Venture Partners, and Stripes.

The company’s market capitalisation has risen to about $2 billion currently from $710 million in 2016.

Bill O’Shea, EMEA managing director for Udemy, said the company has already started recruiting for the new roles and that he hoped they would all be filled by the end of 2020.