Alibaba's UCWeb to invest Rs 200 crore in India

Alibaba group firm UCWeb said India accounts for about 20 per cent of the global userbase of its flagship UC Browser with about 80 million monthly active users.

UCWeb also launched 'UC News', a platform that brings together news content from over 20 featured channels, including news, cricket, technology, entertainment, movies and lifestyle.

The company, which is witnessing a fast pace of adoption of its Internet browser, is also focusing on local languages and further strengthening technology platform to work with low broadband network.

"India is a very important market for us. Globally, it already has the second largest Internet userbase and for us too, it is the largest userbase outside of China. It is about 20 per cent of our 400 million global userbase," Alibaba Mobile Business Group (MBG) General Manager UCWeb Kenny Ye told PTI.

He added that UC Browser is focusing on key aspects like content and technology to drive usage in India. Citing data from StatCounter, UCWeb said UC Browser has over 58 per cent market share as of May 2016. Also, on an average, each UC Browser's Indian user consumes six pieces of news/feeds per day.

"UC News tracks and matches the trending keywords on Facebook and Twitter and decides on the trending topics before recommending them to the user," he said.

Ye added that UC News, which is present in a similar format in China, will be expanded to Indonesia and other countries. Asked about the company's focus areas, Ye said the company is focusing on building content.
"Digital content consumption is on the rise and the challenge is how can we customise, curate and present diverse content to users," he added.

The company has about 30 people in its India team with a larger team in China to work on the products.
"The team size in India will be doubled as we expand the local language content on the platform," he added.