In 2023, the top courses Indian learners took on Coursera — one of the world’s largest online learning platforms — covered both functional/technical skills and behavioural skills.
For instance, the most popular overall course was ‘Foundations: Data, Data, everywhere’ offered by Google, followed by ‘Leadership Skills’ offered by IIM Ahmedabad. These were followed by financial and digital marketing courses such as ‘Financial Markets’ by Yale University, ‘Supervised Machine Learning’ by Stanford, ‘Crash Course on Python’ by Google, ‘Pre-MBA Statistics’ by IIM Ahmedabad, ‘Digital Marketing and E-commerce’ by Google, ‘Data-Driven Decisions’ by Google, ‘Foundations of Project Management’ by Google, and ‘AI For Everyone’ by DeepLearning.AI.
While globally Coursera has more than 120 million learners, India is one of its biggest markets – from 2022 to 2023, the number of learners on Coursera India increased from 16 million to 22.2 million. The average age of learners in India is 29 years, and 34% of all learners are female.
“In 2023, we saw the rise of revolutionary technologies such as ChatGPT, Generative AI and 5G, among others, which shaped the tech landscape of India,” Coursera India said. “We also witnessed the increasing integration of digitised pedagogy with the traditional methods of education. The year further delineated the need for the human resource of the country to rigorously skill and upskill, which will, in turn, fuel the growth of India.”
As far as tech courses are concerned, the most popular ones on 2023 were ‘Crash Course on Python’ by Google, ‘Foundations of UX Design’ by Google, ‘Programming for Everybody’ by University of Michigan, ‘HTML, CSS, and Javascript for Web Developers’ by Johns Hopkins University, ‘Algorithms, Part I’ by Princeton, ‘Foundations of Cybersecurity’ by Google, ‘Introduction to Generative AI’ by Google Cloud, ‘Introduction to Front-End Development’ by Meta, ‘Introduction to Cloud Computing’ by IBM, and ‘Generative AI with Large Language Models’ by Amazon Web Services.
The most popular business courses were ‘Leadership Skills’ by IIM Ahmedabad, ‘Financial Markets’ by Yale, ‘Foundations of Digital Marketing and E-commerce’ by Google, ‘Foundations of Project Management’ by Google, ‘AI For Everyone’ by DeepLearning.AI, ‘Business Analytics with Excel’ by Johns Hopkins, ‘Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills’ by University of Michigan, ‘Introduction to Public Speaking’ by University of Washington, ‘Excel Skills for Business’ by Macquarie University, and ‘Agile Project Management’ by Google.