Coursera in October became the first online learning platform to be directly embedded into ChatGPT, as part of OpenAI’s newly launched generation of apps. This partnership, unveiled at OpenAI’s DevDay, allows ChatGPT’s 800 million weekly users to access Coursera’s trusted educational content—from course videos to enrolment links—within the flow of their conversations. The integration is built on OpenAI’s Apps SDK and reflects a shared mission between the two companies: To expand access to high-quality education and help learners build job-ready skills in an AI-driven world.
This move comes at a time when Coursera is seeing growth in GenAI-related learning, with over 1,000 courses now available and India emerging as the top market globally for enrollments. The company is also doubling down on AI-powered personalisation through features like Coursera Coach, Role Play and Course Builder, while actively localising content through machine translation and AI dubbing in regional languages like Odia.
Coursera’s global CEO Greg Hart speaks with Forbes India about the ChatGPT partnership, India’s pivotal role in the platform’s growth, and how Coursera is preparing learners for the jobs of tomorrow. Edited excerpts:
Q. How did this partnership between Coursera and OpenAI came about? What does it mean for the company’s mission and growth?
We're incredibly proud to be the first online learning platform included in OpenAI's new generation of apps in ChatGPT that they recently announced, along with some other marquee companies—Canva, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, Zillow, Booking.com.
What's really exciting is that people go to ChatGPT to learn about whatever. And obviously the whole purpose of Coursera is to give access to the world's best possible education—trusted courses from amazing universities and industry partners—so that people can learn and gain skills, and the right skills that they need for their careers. We're excited because it puts our trusted, world-class learning directly into the most widely used AI tool in the world: ChatGPT.
It's a new app that's in ChatGPT, built on the App SDK that OpenAI created. It allows users to instantly access relevant course videos and information directly in the flow of their interaction with ChatGPT. ChatGPT can suggest the Coursera app when it recognises that we have a course that might be helpful for that user.
Users can also ask for Coursera directly by name—so, ‘Coursera, can I learn data analytics?’—and then ChatGPT will surface a relevant video, course details along with a link to enroll.
So, it's easy for people on ChatGPT to preview content based on whatever they're curious about, and it encourages them to go deeper and learn more on our platform, all without disrupting that flow of learning.
Q. Traditionally, app downloads have been a key metric for platforms like Coursera. Do you view this integration as a marketing strategy to reach new users? Do you anticipate that this could lead to a shift away from app downloads?
Yes, certainly… it is an opportunity for learners to come across Coursera on ChatGPT—you know, the most used LLM platform in the world, with 800 million weekly active users, which is a phenomenal number.
And, in some ways, if you think about ChatGPT and other LLM experiences, they're effectively new search, if you will. Historically, it might have been that people went to Google or Bing or another search engine to learn about whatever they might want to learn about. And then there would be links—to come to Coursera, to go to other sites, to download an app, etc.
ChatGPT and the other LLMs are sort of the next iteration of that learning experience and that discovery experience. So, it's a fantastic way for us to make sure that we're in front of the most used LLM platform in the world.
I'm not so worried about what the impact is on app downloads, because at the end of the day, if they are going to continue with the learning experience, they need to enroll and do that on Coursera.
So, the learning experience happens on Coursera. The intro to the learning, the exposure to the material starts on ChatGPT in the case of this integration. It's a great way for us to provide a little bit more insight into what a learner might get from a given course directly in the ChatGPT experience.
Also Read: Coursera has nearly 2 crore registered learners in India. Can it help them find jobs?
Q. Coursera has been doing interesting work with AI internally—particularly with Coursera Coach. Could you tell us how does it work, and how it's helping improve course completion rates and learning outcomes?
That's right. In addition to having lots of content on GenAI, Coursera has also been a huge user of GenAI to improve the learning experience. Starting shortly after ChatGPT launched in November 2022, we introduced a host of GenAI-driven features on our platform. Coursera Coach is one of those. It's a GenAI tutor that rides alongside the learner in virtually every course we offer. It enables learners, at any time, to query Coach and ask questions about the material they're going through—whether it's to prep for an assessment, refresh their memory on something they learnt a day ago, two days ago, or last week, or get summaries of material they've just read. It serves as an excellent way to ensure that learners aren't just consuming the material—watching a video, reading text, etc—but are gaining true understanding and mastery.
A few of the other GenAI features we have included is Course Builder, a GenAI-enabled capability that allows enterprises—and now our university and industry content partners—to leverage their own material with AI to easily create courses. From an enterprise perspective, you can combine Coursera’s existing courses with internal content to create tailored learning experiences for specific roles within a company. Course Builder makes that easy.
We also have Role Play, a feature within Coach that enables targeted role play scenarios. One of the best ways to learn something is to practice it, and Role Play gives learners a fantastic way to do that with Coach.
And finally, because there's a lot of conversation around how GenAI can be used to take shortcuts in learning, one of the big things we've focussed on is academic integrity. We’ve developed GenAI-driven academic integrity features based on a pretty simple premise: Show your work. These features help ensure learners have true mastery of skills. In high-stakes assessments, we lock down the browser to ensure the learner is truly learning—not referring to other materials—but demonstrating their own knowledge.
The goal of everything we do is to make sure our learning experience is as personalised, interactive and relevant as possible for the skills the learner is trying to acquire. Continuing to improve on that—and ensuring those skills are truly learnt and verified—is something we pour a lot of energy into.
Q. Are you actively exploring similar collaborations with other LLMs or competitors, or is this an exclusive partnership with OpenAI?
We'd love to do the same with other LLMs. You regularly see Coursera cited on various LLMs as one of the sources for content, which is a source of traffic for us. It reinforces our reputation—and that reputation is built on the reason for the citation to begin with, which is 10,500 courses from top universities like Stanford, Penn, Michigan, Yale, etc—not just in the US, but around the world. And then also from industry partners—the best ones—Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, etc.
That’s what drives the citations. And as learners and users of different LLMs see those citations, it brings them to Coursera. This integration with ChatGPT is sort of taking it to the next step—making it even easier for learners and users on ChatGPT to get a little bit more information without having to first click off. By putting the video directly into the flow of learning, it creates a much more seamless experience.
At the end of the day, both Coursera and OpenAI share a commitment to expanding access to education and ensuring that AI bridges—rather than widens—the opportunity gap. We see this as a fantastic way to put trusted, verified learning into the hands of hundreds of millions—soon, probably billions—given the pace at which OpenAI continues to grow globally. We're helping people gain the skills they need to pursue economic opportunities and prepare for what the world might look like tomorrow.
Q. Upskilling is a hot topic, especially in India, but given the global economic uncertainty and layoffs, how do you see this trend playing out on Coursera? What kind of courses are students gravitating towards, and how has the learner demographic evolved over the last six months?
Well, one of the big trends—not surprisingly—is the incredible interest in GenAI content. Our catalogue now has more than 1,000 courses on GenAI. They range from entry-level introductions to GenAI, just to help people get familiar with the technology, to much more advanced and role-specific GenAI courses.
You can take courses on GenAI specifically for leaders, for example. You can take them for specific roles—for educators, for people in different industries. We're seeing both the general global zeitgeist interest in GenAI and the depth of our catalogue drive incredible interest and enrollments.
We are now seeing 14 enrollments per minute globally this year in GenAI courses on Coursera. A year ago, that number was eight per minute. And as the year has gone on, it has steadily increased. At the start of the year, we were at 11 or 12, then 13, and now 14 per minute—on average across the entire year.
It’s an incredible acceleration. In India specifically, we’re seeing three enrollments per minute. So, three of those 14 per minute are coming from India. A year ago, India was at just one per minute. We've had millions of enrollments in GenAI content from India.
India has the single highest number of GenAI enrollments of any country in the world on Coursera. It’s more than doubled year over year, with an incredible amount of learning hours spent consuming that content.
So that’s one of the biggest trends we’re seeing, honestly. And obviously, to your question regarding upskilling—one of the reasons people are spending so much time trying to learn about GenAI is because they recognise it’s going to change the nature of almost every job over time.
They want to understand: How do I prepare for this? Whether it’s in the job they already have—to make themselves more effective, to leverage AI to grow their career—or to gain a job, because they’re a student, or because they’re worried that the job they’re in may be so impacted by AI that they need to look for another profession or role. I think those are some of the big drivers.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report forecasts that 63 percent of Indian workers will need to be retrained by 2030. It also estimates that there will be a demand for 2.3 million AI jobs by 2027, but currently, only 1.2 million skilled workers have the capacity to fill those roles. That leaves a gap of over a million people. This is exactly where Coursera and online learning can play a critical role in helping bridge that gap.
Q. Are you looking at deeper localisation for the Indian market in terms of content, pricing and language? Given the diversity of regional languages, have you introduced new language options or partnerships to make learning more accessible across states?
We’ve started to do some of that. We have a number of courses, and one of the things we offer on the enterprise side of our business are partnerships—not just with companies, but also with government institutions and universities. Some of those in India are big drivers of language expansion as well.
Odia is one of the languages we support, thanks to a partnership with the government in that state. That’s one of the initiatives we’re working on, and we continue to expand both the number of courses we’ve translated and the depth of those courses in any given area.
We started with machine translation—just text translation of the material—but now the next step is AI dubbing. We want to do both
Our goal is to make sure every course is available in a machine-translated format in pretty much any language in the world. We're not there yet, but more than half of our courses are already translated into 26 languages using machine translation for text.
On the AI dubbing front, we have a goal of more than doubling the number of AI-dubbed courses we currently offer. Right now, those courses are dubbed into six languages, and we’re looking to continue expanding that as well.
Q. Where does India stand today compared to other global markets in terms of learner base and strategic focus? And what are some of the new bets you’re making specifically for the Indian market?
India is our second-largest market in terms of number of learners. We have 183 million registered learners globally on Coursera, and India ranks just behind the US as the second-largest individual country by learner count.
About two and a half to three months ago, we rolled out significantly lower pricing in India to make Coursera’s content and courses far more accessible to learners here. We're pleased with that, because our goal is to provide global access to world-class education and help people upskill. And, of course, we have to do that in a way that makes economic sense for learners in each country—meeting them where they are and ensuring that our value proposition aligns with their realities. We believe we’ve now achieved that in India, and we’re in a place that makes a lot of sense for the market.
We’re going to continue investing in India. It’s also a location where we have remote development centres, and many key parts of our platform are built here. We’re bullish on India—not just because of the quality of talent, with amazing developers, product people, etc—but also because, as a global company, we want to ensure our product is both globally relevant and locally targeted. That means building features that matter in strategically important regions like India.
One of the areas we’re focussed on in India is continuing to invest in our mobile app and mobile learning experience, and improving that further.
We absolutely believe India has the potential to become our largest market. I would expect that to happen in the next few years, based on registered learner numbers—depending on the pace of growth in other countries. And that’s incredibly exciting for us.
First Published: Nov 03, 2025, 17:11
Subscribe Now