‘India Is One Of Our Largest Markets’

Robert Bu, general manager, UCWeb India, spoke to BWBusinessworld’s Haider Ali Khan about digital content consumption and the company’s plans for Indian users.

Excerpts:

Q: What was the thought behind the deal with Colors?
A: Digital content consumption is on the rise and the challenge for a content creator is to be able to customise, curate and present diverse content to users to strengthen their engagement. We as partners of Colors TV help them by making their shows like Big Boss more portable. We bring a bigger audience to the shows. While we could benefit from the popular content that Colors brings, our users base of 80 million gets Colors more eyeballs.

Q: How significant UCWeb is for Alibaba group and its revenue?
A: We are a part of Alibaba group and motivated to provide better mobile Internet experience to billions of users around the world. As of today, UC Browser has reached 80 million monthly active users and acquired 50 per cent market share in India. We are also witnessing great traction for our products in Russia and South East Asia.

Q: What would be your strategy for the Indian market?
A: Our focus is to build and enhance user base in India. The success and adoption rates so far have been encouraging and going forward our focus will remain on localisation of product with a view to drive deeper content and service integration, making UC Browser the super application on a handset.

We will focus on content aggregation going forward based on our successful partnership for UC Cricket. We will continue to address the key challenge faced by users and partners.

Q: How much revenue is UCWeb generating from Indian users?
A: We can’t share the revenue details but can tell that we are doing very well globally with 420 million MAU’s and counting. India is one of the largest markets for us and currently drives our growth in the Asian continent. UC Browser is the leading mobile browser in India and Indonesia. We are the leader in Asia and one of top three in the world.

UCWeb has grown organically throughout India. The largest number of downloads come from Maharashtra, followed by Delhi, and West Bengal. Cities like Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Jaipur, and Lucknow are also growing fast.

Q: What was the purpose behind the launch of 9Apps?
A: 9Apps is one of the most popular Android apps store with over 250 million monthly active users worldwide. We provide local apps with more visibility and offer better experience to local users with localised elements.

We have also announced our foray into the lucrative e-commerce space in India, where users can compare product prices from 8 different sellers; Paytm, Flipkart, Myntra, Snapdeal, Jabong, Askmebazar, Voonik and Shopclues.