Airtel is latest to join Coursera for business certification programmes

Anurag Meshram, Joint Director of the Transformation Cell of the Indian Railways, was preparing for entrance exam to a post-graduate programme in industrial and labor relations. But there was a problem. He had forgotten the mathematics lessons he studied till Class X.  To rev up his skills, he turned to online learning platform Coursera where he did certificate courses in trigonometry and functions. "I believe this had a big impact and I was accepted into the Masters programme at Cornell University," he says. His online learning journey didn't stop there. He recently finished a course on data-driven decision-making by PwC and is using the skills in his new project at work - setting up a National Rail & Transportation University.

In the ever-changing world of rapid technological disruption, the onus of learning has fallen on employees. To be ready for the jobs of the future, they have to upskill themselves. Companies recognise this and are moving from providing classroom training to online learning platforms such as Coursera and Edx.
Within a year of launch of the Business product, Coursera has already got over 100 large enterprises such as Axis Bank, Tata Communications, Infosys, AXA, L'Oreal, PayPal, Danone, JP Morgan Chase and AIR France-KLM as its clients.

The latest is Airtel. "Coursera will help us provide world-class online certification programs to our workforce. With their help we aim to create a rich pool of talent across verticals to contribute to our vision of building a digital Airtel," Srikanth Balachandran, Global Chief Human Resources Officer, Airtel, said in a press statement.  Airtel employees will have access to a plethora of courses on Machine Learning, Data Science, Digital Technology, Cyber Security, Cloud, IoT along with some soft skill courses like Leadership, HR Skills from Coursera for Business platform.

Though the completion rate for massive open online courses is low for individuals at 5 per cent, the figures are quite healthy (60-90 per cent) for enterprises courses, says Raghav Gupta, India Country Director, Coursera. This can be because the content is curated specifically for companies according to the employees' needs. Also, since the organisation is sponsoring the courses, the motivation among employees is higher, he adds.  Since launching in 2012, Coursera has 29 million registered learners on its platform.