Breaking: Alibaba’s UCWeb bets $30m on its news aggregator business in India, Indonesia

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Last year, Alibaba-owned UCWeb launched UC News to curate content in popular categories like news, tech, entertainment, and cricket. It became the top app under the news category in Google Play within five months of its launch.

Encouraged by this, UCWeb introduced We-Media, a program to broaden news aggregation to include user-generated content. It allows people to write and engage with followers on UC News. Those who meet criteria for views and engagement also get paid.

Today, the company announced an investment of US$30 million (RMB 200 million) to build its news aggregator business in India and Indonesia, over the next two years.

“As India enters the age of increased content consumption through its mobile devices, there is a huge potential for growth of user-generated content in India similar to what has happened in China,” says Jack Huang, president of overseas business, Alibaba Mobile Business Group which owns UCWeb.

There are 600 million mobile users and more than 20 million online content creators in China.

The We-Media program saw a tripling of its page views month-on-month in November for its English content, says UC Web. Hindi content page views increased more than four times, it adds.

“There are 600 million mobile users and more than 20 million online content creators in China,” points out Jack. “India has 370 million mobile users but minuscule contribution from self-publishing, underlining a huge demand-supply gap.”

The UC Browser is already the leading mobile browser in India, where it has more than 50 percent market share, according to StatCounter. It is also the leading browser in Indonesia.
Now it is becoming a leading content distribution channel by integrating with UC News. This is similar to what is happening on Facebook, but the Chinese company has an edge in the mobile market.

“We plan to add more than 30,000 self-publishers on our platform in 2017, generating over 10,000 articles for UC News every single day,” says Jack Huang.

“India is the most critical overseas market for UCWeb and this investment will help bring in the global mobile internet to an era of GUF (Google, UCWeb, Facebook),” says a statement announcing the investment to develop UC News.

UC News demonstrates the flexibility of Chinese companies to jump into new areas and build ecosystems around its core business.

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from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/ucweb-bets-30-million-news-aggregator-business-india-indonesia
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