UCWeb revamps its browser to tap Indian market

Robert Bu

General Manager, UCWeb India 

talks to Girja Shankar Kaura

UCWeb, an Alibaba Group company, is increasing focus on India market with revamp of its highly popular browser, a news aggregation app and a tie-up with Colors TV. Robert Bu, General Manager, UCWeb India, talks about the company’s plans.

Q: How is news and content consumption changing in India?

A. According to a study by Pew Research Center, “75% of online news consumers say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites while 52% say they share links to news with others via those means.” 

Q: So how is UC News relevant in a market like India?

A. Smartphone penetration is expected to reach 520 million by 2020 and 45% of all content consumed is expected to be on the small screen. India has a huge appetite for content and people like to consume different kinds of content available online.

Q: How is UC News different from other aggregators?

A. UC News is a product that brings together news content from over 20 featured channels, including cricket, technology, entertainment, movies, lifestyle and more.  With UC News, we have utilised our strength in data analytics and created a product which tracks the trending keywords of social media and suggest the recommended news instantly to the user. 

Q: What’s your current user base in India and target for next year?

A. UC News App was launched in June 2016. Recently, we launched the new UC Browser which includes news feeds from UC News, making it an integral part of UC Browser. It has over 80 million monthly active users in the country and 9Apps is the most popular 3-party app store in India.

Q: How do you plan to grow? 

A. We have recently announced a partnership deal with Colors TV for exclusive content on the microsite of our browser. As part of the collaboration, the browser will have video clips, behind the scenes, news, games and more on these shows.