UCWeb, a part of Alibaba Mobile Business Group, plans to invest Rs 200 crore or $29 million over the next two years in India and Indonesia market.
UCWeb will the funds to tap the potential of user-generated content in India via its news distribution and content platform, UC News.
UCWeb will add resources to aid enhancement of vertical content and news in regional and minority languages. Content in entertainment, sports and technology category will remain the biggest focus areas for 2017. In addition, UCWeb will also offer column operation service to quality self-publishers, bloggers and KOLs.
UC News, available in 3 languages such as Hindi, Indonesian and English, integrates trending content from social media and partners with traditional media, self-publishers and key opinion leaders for original content.
UC News became the top app under News Category on Google Play within 5 months of its launch. The Program achieved 184 percent growth in its page views in English and 348 percent in Hindi page views in We-Media content in November 2016.
There are more than 600 million mobile phone users and 20 million online content creators in China. India currently has 371 million mobile phone users with miniscule contribution from self-publishing outlining a huge demand-supply gap.
“India is the most critical overseas market for UCWeb and this investment will help bring in the mobile internet to an era of Google, UCWeb, and Facebook,” said Jack Huang, president of Overseas Business, Alibaba Mobile Business Group.
Earlier this month, UC News announced a monetary compensation plan to offer unique content on UC News. UC News will also help contributors gain traffic, revenue and followers with the help of Big Data technology and smart content distribution system.
“Our aim is to make the UC We-media Program the No. 1 platform for content consumption, creation and services in India and Indonesia. We plan to add more than 30,000 self-publishers, bloggers and key opinion leaders to our platform in 2017, generating over 10,000 articles for UC News, every single day,” said Kenny Ye, GM, Overseas Business, Alibaba Mobile Business Group.
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