FRESH OFF A funding round that valued the business at $2 billion, educational technology company Udemy is doubling the headcount at its European headquarters in Dublin.

The US company, which provides a marketplace for online courses, first opened in the capital in 2014.

It recently moved into a new office in Windmill Lane, which serves as its headquarters for the Europe, Middle East and Africa markets, and currently employs just under 100 people.

“The plan is to double that in the short and medium-term and there’s going to be more after that,” Bill O’Shea, managing director for EMEA, said.

“There’s been a lot of growth from the middle of 2019 to now with further growth (expected) for the next number of years so we’re adding to the current team.”

O’Shea, who joined Udemy last year from Qualtrics, said the company is hiring across all divisions with a particular focus on sales, engineering and product.

“We’re not just a sales hub or an engineering hub, we have a lot of different functions here from sales to client success, customer support, engineering, product design, HR, recruitment, marketing and we’re adding functions like legal and finance.”

Bill O'Shea

With strong markets for the company in several European countries and the UAE, the Dublin base oversees sales and operations across the EMEA region 

The wider region is a particularly key focus for Udemy, O’Shea said: “More than half of our revenue actually is (from) outside the US.”

Funding

In February, Udemy raised $50 million from Japanese education and publishing firm Benesse Holdings, an existing investor, that valued the edtech company at $2 billion.

It was the first round of investment the business had raised in nearly four years and marks a significant bump on its reported valuation in 2016 of $710 million. Previous backers in the company include South African multinational Naspers.

“The funding allows us more flexibility in terms of expanding our organisation globally, not just from a product perspective but from a footprint perspective,” O’Shea said.

“Funding aside, we are constantly enhancing the content that we have. We bring in multiple pieces of new content on a weekly and monthly basis based on the requirements of what we see in the marketplace.”

Udemy’s main headquarters are in San Francisco with additional offices in Colorado, India, Brazil and Turkey.

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Written by Jonathan Keane and posted on Fora.ie