'Lot of Indian edtech firms tried to do it all themselves,' says Coursera CEO amid Byju's shrinking valuations: Report

US-based edtech platform Coursera's CEO Jeff Maggioncalda weighed on the current valuations of Indian edtech firms and spoke about what could have gone wrong for them, said a report on Friday. 

Maggioncalda told Moneycontrol that Indian edtech firms "tried to do it all themselves" at a time when central banks across the world kept interest rates low to spur consumption and investments post Covid.  

“I remember when Byju's was hot. Every time I came to India, everyone was saying 'You are going to get swallowed by Byju's. I said, 'I don't know, maybe I will. But, I'm gonna stay focused. And now there's a lot of 'Oh, what happened in Indian edtech?' Look, this is part of entrepreneurship,” Maggioncalda told Moneycontrol.

“In India, the value chain is pretty big. I think a lot of the Indian edtech companies tried to do it all themselves... Just because the capital is available, doesn't mean that's a good business strategy,” he added.

Maggioncalda told Business Today that through AI Coursera has translated 4,000 courses in 18 languages, including Hindi.

"This time last year, the world was just introduced to Generative (Gen) AI. In the last year, even just at Coursera, we have translated 4,000 courses into 18 languages, including Hindi, which means that almost everyone in the world can now learn on Coursera. We have created something called Coach, which is a personalised learning assistant, so that if you're having trouble learning the concept on Coursera, you have your own tutor who can teach you and not just teach you about the course but could actually help guide you in your career. We've also built something called Course Builder that allows universities and businesses to use content on Coursera to create custom courses for students and their employees, and we're just getting started. So things are moving very, very rapidly," he said.

Meanwhile, a report said on Friday that valuation of the embattled edtech firm Byju's, which was once valued at $22 billion, was further slashed by asset manager BlackRock to $1 billion. In a regulatory filing dated January 5 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the October 2023 quarter, BlackRock said it valued Byju’s shares at about $209.6 apiece, down from the peak of $4,660 in 2022, TechCrunch reported.

Meanwhile, Coursera currently has a market capitalisation of $2.9 billion, down 32.5% from the $4.3 billion valuation at which the company went public in early 2021, reported Moneycontrol.