UCWeb Launches UC News, a News Aggregator App for India

Alibaba group firm UCWeb on Monday launched UC News in India, a platform that brings together news content from over 20 featured channels, including news, cricket, technology, entertainment, movies, and lifestyle.

"UC News tracks and matches the trending keywords on Facebook and Twitter and decides on the trending topics before recommending them to the user," Alibaba Mobile Business Group (MBG) General Manager UCWeb Kenny Ye told PTI.

Ye added that UC News, which is present in a similar format in China, will be expanded to Indonesia and other countries. The app is available to download for Android via Google Play.

Asked about the company's focus areas, Ye said the MBG 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.

UCWeb also said that India accounts for about 20 percent of the global user base of its flagship UC Browser with about 80 million monthly active users.

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

"India is a very important market for us. Globally, it already has the second largest Internet user base and for us too, it is the largest user base outside of China. It is about 20 per cent of our 400 million global user base," Ye said.

He added that UC Browser is focusing on key aspects like content and technology to drive usage in India.