Learners in India prefer to pursue newer courses, such as Gen AI by building apps and code using the technology, along with learning about it.
The pace of adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI courses in India is the fastest globally, with one enrollment every 20 seconds in these learning modules, Coursera's Chief Technology Officer Mustafa Furniturewala said.
Overall, there are roughly 4 million enrolments from India in AI and Gen-AI courses on Coursera, Furniturewala said, adding that this pace of upskilling and reskilling was necessary to unlock a $1.7 trillion economic opportunity.
"We are seeing a population that is young and hungry to learn. Giving them the right tools and guidance is going to unlock that economic opportunity," Furniturewala told Business Standard in an exclusive interview.
India, which is the company's second-largest market overall, has also grown in research and innovation across all kinds of learning content, with more than 3,500 of the total 12,000 Coursera learning modules developed here, he said.
The pace of learning in India has also picked up as generative AI has helped Coursera localise and contextualise a lot of learning content for domestic learning by using accurate machine translation and voice-dubbing, which keeps the instructors' personalisation intact, even as the content is translated into the language of choice of the learner, Furniturewala said.
Partnerships with state governments such as Keralam and Odisha, as well as, with universities and companies such as Reliance, have helped the company better contextualise its learning modules for Indian users, he said.
"Since the pace of acceleration in India is so high, there is a need for the introduction of micro-credentials, so that universities can roll out these programs faster than hiring faculty," he said.
Further, using AI to personalise a learning module or a course to match the learner's ability and help them absorb the content is also being done in India, he said.
Most learners in India prefer using their mobile phones to access Coursera content, prompting the company to invest further in its mobile app to improve the user experience.
Learners in India also prefer to pursue newer courses, such as Gen AI by building apps and code using the technology, along with learning about it, he said.
Apart from the pace of learning, the functions and skills sought from employees in India are also advancing faster than in companies from other countries, he said.
To match this demand, there needs to be a smooth integration of the job market with universities and government ambitions, Furniturewala said, adding that offering micro-credentials to learners could help in fulfilling that gap.
"We are moving from a world where credentials like degrees and longer-term certificates were important to a world which focuses on skills and continuous learning instead of a one-time degree.
Integrating with that framework is important to roll this out at scale," he said.
In countries such as India, Coursera is also enabling companies and learners to build their own learning modules by allowing them to ingest user content into a course structure, Furniturewala said.
A lot of companies in India also want to build skill-based learning courses for their employees using their own knowledge and datasets, he said, adding that such learning modules have also been launched in the country.
"In colleges, professors will take weeks, sometimes months, to build a course. With course builder," Furniturewala said, "you enter the existing material and use simple prompts to build quick learning modules, sometimes in just 15 minutes."
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff