Launched recently, Eduson.tv, is an online business learning service with courses by professors from top rated business schools, guest speakers, who are leading experts in their given business field and free courses, featuring existing content by globally-recognized experts.
With professors and guest speakers from London Business School and Merrill Lynch and notable entreprnuers and experts like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer, Tony Hsieh, Tim Draper, Steve Blank on its platform, Eduson.tv wants to be the ‘Coursera’ of business in BRIC countries.
The courses have videos, slides, reading materials for every lecture, and tests. Each student’s progress is monitored by a bar from begining to final exam and award of certificate.
According to Eduson CEO and co-founder, Daria Zimina the demand for business knowledge is huge and people in the BRIC need it most.
Zimina said: ‘As an ex-investment banker I’m all about looking at numbers and drawing conclusions. Let’s look at three facts: Only 30% of Harvard MBA students are from outside the US; the Stanford MBA program accepts less than 400 students a year; and, there are 60 million managers in BRIC countries who need business knowledge to advance their careers. My conclusion is pretty straightforward – several million people will be learning online soon. And, Eduson is here to disrupt this market’.
Eduson’s mission is to make high-quality business learning accessible to students worldwide. Currently, most popular option – a full-time MBA – requires leaving one’s job for 2 years, paying around $150K, and relocating, often with family. Distance learning
with Eduson is an alternative.
To do this, Eduson has secured around $1 million in funding from angels including Groupon Russia founders. The investment will be spent to add high quality content and improve the platform. Eduson is expecting to generate revenue since day one. One third of courses are free, and enrollment fees are charged for others, with first lectures always offered as a free trial. Eduson then pays royalties to its lecturers.
Elena Masolova, Eduson investor and co-founder, notes: ‘Our plans are to focus on content and platform. At least one new course will be added every week. We’ll add features like a ‘networking tool’ for our alumni or ‘interactive video’, which will allow detailed study of cases and getting personalized explanations to wrong answers. Learning experience shall be fun’.
