Gagan Biyani co-founded Udemy raises $1 Million in Seed financing
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San Francisco: Udemy, provider of a platform that allows anyone to teach an online course, has secured $1 million in Seed funding from 11 angel investors including Keith Rabois, Rick Thompson, Russ Fradin, Dave McClure and Naval Ravikant. Founded in May, Udemy will use the investment to speed up hiring process and expand its web based courseware platform. The San Francisco-based, Udemy enables anyone to teach an online course, and make money by charging students. Udemy also provides instructors with a way to host live video conferences over a proprietary tool, which includes a whiteboard feature, presentation viewer, chatroom and a file-sharing component. Now, instructors will have to offer their courses for free. But in about a month, Udemy plans on rolling out its monetization strategy by allowing instructors to charge their students. Udemy plans to take 20 percent of the fees. As of now, Udemy has signed up 1,000 instructors, ranging from people teaching poker, to technology geeks teaching Web development/design and Photo Shop. Since its launch, the site has attracted nearly 10,000 registered users, claims the company. "We want to essentially democratize education so that anyone can teach over the Internet," said Gagan Biyani, Co-Founder and Vice President of marketing, Udemy. "On the other side, people also want to learn. So, they will spend thousands of dollars to buy instructional DVD's and take online courses," Gagan added. As part of its plans to get traction with both students and instructors, the company plans to focus on building out its instructor base to find brand-name teachers.

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