YouTube to launch Courses in edtech push in India

For years, teachers have used YouTube to promote their lessons and persuade learners to join their classes off the platform. YouTube said on Monday it is taking broader steps to make the video service more appealing to educators and learners and also provide more monetization avenues to the creators.

At its annual India conference on Monday, Google unveiled Courses, a feature that will seek to bring structured learning experience on YouTube.

Teachers will be able to publish and organize their videos and provide text reading materials and questions right on the video app. They will be allowed to offer the content for free or charge a fee, the company said.

Courses will span academic subjects as well as vocational interests, the company said. Viewers who buy a Course will be able to watch the videos without ads.

The feature is currently in beta and will roll out to users in India “soon,” and will represent a “new monetization option for our creators,” the company said, adding that it has partnered with several local creators (LearnoHub, Speak English With Aishwarya and Telusko) to develop courses across academic and vocational subjects in various Indian languages.

Monday’s move represents Google’s growing push to make inroads in India’s education market, where more than 300 million students go to schools. Meta and Amazon have also made deep investments in the space in recent years.

Google is also competing aggressively with Meta’s Instagram in India to court creators. India banning TikTok in 2020 propelled Google and Meta to launch new services to fill the void left by the Chinese firm.

The Android-maker’s unit separately pointed to an Oxford Economics Study that found that YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed over $1.2 billion to the Indian GDP last year and supported over 750,000 full-time equivalent jobs.