This appointment is integral to the company’s India growth and its ongoing commitment to preparing Indian students with job ready courses for global companies. Since launching in India, Udacity has seen 5x growth in students and has built partnerships with flagship employers such as Infosys, Flipkart, Google, Tata and others. Ishan Gupta’s appointment will serve to accelerate these early successes in the market to bring technical education to many more students.
Ishan Gupta most recently served as the vice president of business at Paytm, the leading Indian mobile commerce platform. Previously, he founded EduKart in 2011, which became a leading education marketplace for India. Earlier in March 2016, the team at EduKart was acqui-hired by Paytm.
Prior to EduKart, Ishan has worked at Facebook as a Growth Manager for India and founded another education company in 2004. He has an MBA from Stanford University and holds an engineering degree from the University of Delhi.
His in-depth knowledge of the education sector, ability to develop an innovation driven culture in teams and passion for digital education, makes Ishan a valuable resource whose appointment will further strengthen Udacity’s leadership team in India and globally.
Commenting on his appointment, Clarissa Shen, VP, Udacity International said, “Udacity in India has already made a significant impact in connecting the new age workforce to the industry. With Ishan's extensive experience in edu-tech, we hope to delve deeper into the ecosystem and create a higher benchmark for the whole category. Ishan brings valuable experience as a leader through his work at startups and large companies. More importantly, he shares our mission and values in how we wish to better serve students and industry alike in India. Under Ishan’s leadership in India, we are looking forward to making a difference to help more students reach their job and economic potential and to help bridge the skills gaps with our Industry partners”.
Ishan Gupta, Managing Director at Udacity India added, “The connect that Udacity brings in between the industry and education is the need of the hour especially in the Indian ed-tech ecosystem. With the seamless integration of technology, Udacity is successfully solving the problem of skilling in the country.I see a huge opportunity in the market here and am looking forward to making our industry-focused Nanodegree programs and courses available to students as well as working professionals across industries.
My stint as an entrepreneur at EduKart built my understanding of the education sector, while my role at Paytm provided me insights into building a technology led business at massive scale. Now, at Udacity India, I am excited to apply all these learnings to build a strong team, launch more India-focused courses and take the Indian business to new heights”.
The last two years has seen the user base for online education growing rapidly around the world. Drawing similarities from the international scenario, India too in the year 2016 has witnessed an interesting revolutionary change in online education trends as compared to last few years. Indian colleges and universities have slowly started recognizing the need of including digitally enabled courses in their existing college curriculum to make their students job ready for globally accepted technology platforms. With SWAYAM (launched in August 2016), the Narendra Modi government is working towards the same objective, introducing online courses in the formal education system.
Contributing to this radical change, Udacity over the past year, has been launching multiple initiatives and campaigns in India, aiming to educate both students and colleges about the dire need for industry mentorship in their growth cycle. Udacity is now looking to accelerate this journey by increasing its presence and operations in India.
Udacity is democratizing education to make it affordable and accessible for people around the world to get the jobs they want to improve their lives. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with operations in China, Germany, India, Brazil and the UK, Udacity provides online education to millions of students in collaboration with top employers including Google, Facebook, AT&T, IBM Watson, Amazon Alexa, Mercedes, Didi Chuxing, FlipKart and more. The company’s Nanodegree program, a credential built and backed by industry, is designed to give students the skills they need to be in demand for the global workforce. The company offers Nanodegree programs across a range of subjects including self-driving car engineering, virtual reality development, AI engineering, machine learning, web and mobile development, and data analytics.
