The transition to a life with remote services is a factor that for a few months it was established in everyday life for many people in the world.
Thus, it was increasingly necessary to adapt these models in all areas and online study alternatives have not been the exception; Before this panorama, digital language course platforms have made their way in the face of the health emergency.
Recently Duolingo, the most popular language learning platform, raised $ 35 million in funding from Durable Capital, a signature of investment management; and General Atlantic, a growing global equity company.
With this, the US application that was born in 2011 and had a value of 183 million dollars; the capital It will be used to stimulate its investment in research and development on a global scale for the platform that has more than 500 million downloads and that has seen a hundred percent increase in its income in the last three years.
Figures of The Competitive Intelligence Unit (The CIU) emphasize that with the pandemic some language study apps in the country they have grown up to 60 percent.
In an interview with MILLENNIUM, Tania Domenzain, responsible for Recruitment and Employee Development for English First, explained that “it is identified that although English is a compulsory subject in most Latin American countries, in some regions only 10 percent or less of schools offer language classes.
We have seen this for years and it is due to the lack of teachers trained to teach the language or even to be able to have teachers who do not have the necessary level of English, they cannot share this with their students “
According to the EF EPI 2020 study on English proficiency, Mexico went from 57th place out of 100 countries listed, to 82nd this year. The report indicates that the country was even surpassed by Venezuela and Colombia.
Domenzain noted that the use of technology for these services has turned out to be an incentive for some people.
He pointed out that “it has been a great tool to give many people access to study a language that they did not have access to during their student years. It is a reality that we are facing a very interesting expectation of immediacy. With platforms, there is a promise of immediacy that has led many people to face this frustration of not seeing the progress they are needing. ”
In this tenor, Polyglot, startup Chilean language learning, has seen growth of up to one hundred percent in its operations.
Also in an interview with MILLENNIUMJosé Sánchez, co-founder of the project, stated that the proposal that was born with classes in cafeterias had to adapt it to the new reality and implement the use of technology to continue with its operations.
Sánchez mentioned that “people try to take advantage of the time they have trying to learn something and we have discovered that education does not stop, all online education has grown in different areas but one of the ones that has grown the most is languages. We have had one hundred percent growth between 2019 and 2020, with this new product people have arrived en masse ”.
Currently the company has operations in Chile, Peru and Mexico, and in the latter it has had a 75 percent increase in its results.
“What we have seen a lot is the very even distribution within the country of this trend that was previously strongly concentrated in Mexico City and also in some large cities such as Monterrey and Puebla. There is a demand throughout the country that has grown and that has been super surprising because it gives us the impression that what is happening is that people no longer necessarily need to move to a city to learn a language, “he said.
Sánchez indicated that there is a greater interest on the part of women in learning other languages, since the number of clients has risen between 65 and 70 percent.
“The female market today is much more empowered, joining the labor market with force in any field, it takes its own personal growth more seriously and languages are a fundamental part of it; this is a very marked trend that we have seen this year ”, he stated.
Currently 90 percent of the demand is for English, although options such as French, Italian, German and Portuguese continue to gain ground.
Domenzain, from English FirstHe explained that it is necessary for people to continue learning English to access these professional positions, a trend that will continue in the coming years.
“There is the need to be able to communicate not only with the people in the office, but with their peers from other parts of the world, and this makes the need for the language greater. It is important to identify what kind of positions are the ones that most need that command of the language ”.
In this context, the co-founder of Políglota affirmed that the corporate segment is also a division that has grown due to the health contingency and went from 10 to 15 percent of its income, although it estimates that it can represent between 30 and 40 percent of its sales.
“Education had a great awakening and today more than 60 percent of students took an online class for the first time. There has been a growth in clients from other countries and that is something we want to promote. We are preparing the opening of Colombia for January and throughout the year there will be a focus of growth in Latin America in Brazil and in 2022 to the United States”Sánchez concluded.
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