Udemy Solidifies Leadership Position in Online Training for Companies, Signs Esri, Lyft and Mixpanel

SAN FRANCISCO, March 3, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Udemy, the global marketplace for learning and teaching online, today announced that its corporate training division, Udemy for Business, has achieved significant momentum, signing on key customers including Esri, Lyft and Mixpanel. In the past year, Udemy for Business quadrupled its customer count, as more companies realize the critical need to provide their employees with access to skills training to stay up-to-speed and competitive.

At the start of 2014 Lyft had about 80 employees, and now Lyft employs over 400 people. They needed a tool to provide their expanding workforce with learning opportunities to support their dynamic and evolving roles.

"We were looking for an option that would both allow existing employees to learn new skills, and help new hires to get up to speed at a faster pace," said Lisa-Maree Wallace, Head of People Operations at Lyft. "It was an added bonus to have the opportunity to develop and store our own internal content to increase visibility and success of our internal programs. We were impressed with the ease of implementation and have high hopes for the internal success of this tool."

Proven Leader in Courses for Growth and Success
Udemy for Business has already added a swath of new courses in 2015. To date, the company has tripled its course library since launching to a total of 1,000 courses for subscribers, with significant additions in the following areas:

• Sales--Udemy has added 30 sales-specific courses on building great sales teams, social selling, inside sales, and sales cold calling, all focused on helping sales leaders empower their teams to delight more customers and win more deals. New courses were added from industry luminaries like Jeffrey Gitomer, renowned author and expert on sales and customer loyalty, Tony Armstrong, managing director at BMD Global and pioneer of the Exceed 9 Methodology, and The Sales Institute at Florida State University, one of the largest and most unique sales training programs in the country.
• Technology--Udemy also built a diverse library of technology courses so companies can keep up with new technology trends, such as the growing demand for employee and consumer-facing mobile apps and their underlying programming codes. For example, the company added courses for building both Apple's Swift programming language and Android Lollipop.
• Management--For companies experiencing rapid growth, promoting new managers and training existing managers can be a burden. Udemy has expanded its management training content to meet this need. New courses have been added from industry experts including the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University, a social enterprise focused on strengthening organizations to strengthen society, and LearnSmart, one of the most widely used learning providers of soft skills training.

Rapid Customer Adoption
Udemy for Business has grown an average of 172 percent quarter-over-quarter since inception. The company has achieved significant momentum with global enterprise companies as well as some of the fastest growing companies in the world, including Esri, Lyft and Mixpanel, all of which are valued at more than $1 billion.

"'Always be Learning' is one of our cultural pillars at Mixpanel, and we pride ourselves on having an insanely smart group of people who comprise our workforce," said Carolyn Satenberg, Operations Manager at Mixpanel. "Particularly as we scale and look to manage our growth, investing in our employees' education helps us foster and maintain our amazing culture, and ensure Mixpanelers are constantly honing their skills as well as learning new ones. Udemy for Business plays a central role in this education; the quality of courses is top notch, and their management courses are taking our internal training program to a new level." 

As part of the company's growth and commitment to HR leaders, Udemy for Business also launched HR Innovators, an ongoing event series hosted in San Francisco that has already attracted and connected more than 600 HR leaders. At the events, HR leaders come together to discuss issues facing their teams today, including recruitment, employee retainment, employee engagement, and diversity in the workplace. Interested participants can contact [email protected] to receive information on upcoming events.

ABOUT UDEMY FOR BUSINESS

Udemy for Business is the leading online learning platform for high-growth companies. Through Udemy for Business, companies and teams of all sizes gain instant access to a targeted suite of over 1,000 of the highest-quality, cutting-edge training courses on topics from digital marketing tactics to office productivity, design, management, programming, and more. Udemy's unique skills-focused courses help empower companies and teams to solve the biggest challenge to competing and staying relevant: the growing employee skills gap. In addition to learning from leading experts, companies can easily create their own proprietary training courses within a custom-branded internal portal. With Udemy, global teams can instantly and securely connect - anytime and from any device - to upgrade their critical skills. Goldman Sachs, Optimizely, Esri, Lyft, Mixpanel, 1-800 Flowers, IBM, Datalogix, Pitney Bowes, Oracle, and Pepsi are just some of the innovative companies that rely on Udemy to get and stay competitive in today's fast-moving, technology-driven market landscape.

SOURCE Udemy