Duolingo is a free, gamified language learning platform with courses in over 40 languages available on desktop and mobile devices. It employs bite-sized lessons and game-like features to make learning more entertaining and effective for people of all ages. Duolingo also provides language certification and is noted for its science-based teaching methods.
Indians are reluctant to pay for apps
In a virtual interview with the Economic Times, Ahn stated that India is the fifth-largest country in terms of subscribers and is rising. They’re all active users as well. However, the American edutech company has been unable to earn any revenue in India.
“In India, We have millions of monthly active users. But in terms of revenue, it’s not there yet. There’s a real reluctance to pay for the app. Worldwide, 9% of our monthly active users pay to remove ads.
In India that percentage is well under 1%, he said.”
When asked if he had any ideas for making Indian users pay, the edtech business founder laughed and asked the interviewer if they had any suggestions!
The entrepreneur voiced confidence, stating that this will change in the future and people will be more comfortable with digital subscriptions. Duolingo currently only supports geographies with lower GDP per capita, which do not pay.
He also reasoned that the app’s free version is good.
“We have about 12 markets that we pay attention to and India is one of them,” he told me. “We’re taking a long-term approach with India. And we expect to be able to monetize here in the future,” he told ET.
Though the scope and use of artificial intelligence are rising, the CEO of Duolingo believes that people will continue to learn languages in 20 years.
Luis von Ahn devised CAPTCHA as a graduate student and gave it to Yahoo for free before moving on to teach computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.
At the age of 28, he was awarded the MacArthur “genius” grant, and he later founded and sold reCAPTCHA to Google, where he also worked.
He ditched all of that to launch Duolingo, a gamified language-learning program, in 2012. The app attracts over 130 million monthly active users.
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