Babbel Opens Offices in the United States
Founder to Head Company’s Expansion in New York City
Babbel, the market-leading language learning app experiencing 100 percent revenue growth year-on-year, is now expanding, opening its first office in the United States. Co-Founder and President of Babbel, Inc., Thomas Holl, will head operations in New York.
Although a large number of Americans are already learning with Babbel and account for a substantial portion of the company's total business, this “official” entrance into the U.S. market is an important step for the company, which was founded in 2007 in Berlin and sees more than 1,300 users registering per hour. Babbel’s service, the modern, inexpensive and easy way to learn languages, was recently tailored for the U.S. market and is now available with American English as a display language. Additionally, Babbel is considerably expanding its marketing efforts in the U.S. A double digit percentage of Babbel’s revenue is already coming from the U.S. market.
“The United States holds enormous potential for Babbel, and we expect growth in the three-digit percentile in 2015 alone,” says Thomas Holl, co-founder and president of Babbel, Inc. “Babbel features high-quality content developed by a team of language professionals and offers courses specifically created for each language. Like in Europe, this approach to language learning has been well-received in the U.S., as indicated by the widespread popularity of our premium app.”
In the United States, just 18 percent of the population is bilingual, as compared to 53 percent in Europe. The fact that foreign languages in the U.S. are not required in schools or in professional life is reflected in the motivation of Babbel users: just 5 percent say they learn a foreign language for work. By contrast, 26 percent are motivated by cultural interest; 23 percent are preparing for upcoming travel; and 20 percent want to keep mentally fit. Accordingly, Babbel’s service – offering mobile, independent language learning outside of a formal education environment – is falling on fertile ground.
Babbel currently offers more than 7,000 hours of learning material in 14 languages: English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, Indonesian, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Russian. The cloud-based content can be accessed with a computer, smartphone, or tablet – anytime, anywhere. “It is our mission to revolutionize the world of learning and establish quality standards not yet met in the industry,” adds Babbel co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Markus Witte. “Self-directed language learning was a privilege in the past. We’re changing that with Babbel, and we are fueling a current ’zeitgeist’ that we observe from our users globally.”
