India emerges as global hub for GenAI education demand, says Coursera CTO Mustafa Furniturewala

India has emerged as the world’s largest market for generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) courses on Coursera, highlighting the country’s accelerating push to reskill its workforce for the AI era, the company’s chief technology officer, Mustafa Furniturewala, told Business Today in a virtual interview.

Speaking to Business Today, Furniturewala said India is now also Coursera’s second-largest market by overall enrollments, with about 34 million learners on the platform.

Of these, roughly 4 million are enrolled in GenAI courses, making India the single biggest contributor to demand for such programmes globally.

The pace of adoption has accelerated sharply. In 2025, India recorded three GenAI course enrolments per minute, compared with one every three minutes in 2024 and one every four minutes in 2023.

Furniturewala said the surge reflects both the scale of India’s workforce and the urgency of adapting to technological disruption.

“There's a huge opportunity there, but it'll only be realised if we can reskill people,” he said. “We are working with the government and have launched the Yuva AI for all programme, which can be accessed by everyone. We are also working with some of the state governments on skilling initiatives.”

One such initiative is the Karam Yogi programme aimed at upskilling government employees and bureaucrats.

India as a product innovation hub

Coursera’s India operations extend beyond consumption to product development. The company employs around 400 people in the country across engineering, product design, content marketing and other functions, with a major development centre in Bengaluru.

“There is a lot of product innovation being done in India and the team here is driving the key protocols being used for integration with the LLMs,” Furniturewala told Business Today.

India has also become a major content contributor. Of the roughly 12,000 courses on the platform, about 3,500 have been created in the country.

GenAI reshaping how people learn

Furniturewala said generative AI is not only driving demand for courses but also transforming how education itself is delivered.

“One of the key missions Coursera has is democratising education, and Gen AI is really helping accelerate that, because we are able to use Gen AI to reach a lot more people with the right support,” he said.

AI tools are enabling localisation at scale, including dubbing instructors’ voices into multiple languages and creating personalised learning pathways for individual users.

“Each person has their own curriculum and learning pathway, and Gen AI also allows us to scale support for students,” he said, adding that these capabilities help deliver education at a lower cost and broader reach.

Other AI-driven features include tutoring support, course recommendations and role-play-based learning experiences.

Coursera is also partnering with major AI companies such as OpenAI, Google and Microsoft to integrate educational content directly into their ecosystems. While still early, Furniturewala said traffic from these integrations reflects strong user intent because it comes through personalised interactions with AI systems.

Shift toward micro-credentials

As technology evolves rapidly, traditional long-duration courses are giving way to shorter, skills-focused certifications.

Companies and learners are increasingly favouring micro-credentials that can be updated continuously rather than degrees that take months or years to complete.

“You have to keep refreshing your credentials as the skill advances,” Furniturewala told Business Today. “This way, learning happens in the flow of work and is tied to real business outcomes.”

Coursera’s verified skills pathways are designed to adapt to a learner’s role and provide ongoing assessment and feedback.

Skills beyond AI still critical

Furniturewala, who previously worked through major technology shifts such as cloud computing and mobile, cautioned that learning GenAI alone will not guarantee employability.

“Skilling and reskilling will be critical to enabling this transformation,” he said.

He added that combining AI expertise with domain knowledge, such as cybersecurity, will be far more valuable over time. As AI agents become more prevalent across industries, demand will also grow for skills such as system design and management of autonomous systems.

With India projected to account for about 16% of global AI talent by 2047, the country’s education and workforce ecosystem will play a decisive role in shaping the future of work.