Alibaba Group's UCWeb launches content-publishing platform in India

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If you run a blog and want to showcase it, you now have a platform to do it. User-generated content ecosystem in India, Alibaba Group’s UCWeb Inc has launched We-Media Reward Plan 2.0, a self-creating content platform in the country with an initial investment of Rs 5 crore.

The internet major is investing Rs 200 crore for driving content distribution in India and Indonesia over the next two years. UCWeb’s content distribution platform UC News was launched in the country in June 2016 and it currently has 80 million active users in India every month.

“Dominance of mobile and digital proliferation is leading to an increased adoption of mobile internet and is making India digitally ready,” said He Xiaopeng, co-founder UCWeb and president, Alibaba Mobile Business Group. The investment falls under Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group’s targeted investment of $7.2 billion in content over the next three years.

Content consumption on mobile is rapidly rising in the country. As per data available with the Chinese giant, there are at least 4 lakh self-publishers in India and the market offers massive scope and opportunity. UC Browser was launched with an aim to solve browsing-related problems while UC News and We-Media programme plan to meet the increasing demand of varied content by users and build a well-established ecosystem.

“With our strengths in technology like Big Data AI and vast experience in markets like China, UCWeb will augment its focus on digital content aggregation and distribution in the world’s second largest internet market, India,” said Xiaopeng.

UCWeb is also upgrading its content and services portfolio by adding more short video-related content. Short videos are fast becoming the most popular form of content consumed in China today and UCWeb sees huge potential for this concept here in India as well. UC News aims to provide upgraded content and services to its users and, going forward, will make significant investment in this category. According to the company’s latest Content Consumption Trends Report, video content has risen by 30 percent in the last quarter alone. The company is in the process of setting up a separate team to handle the short videos section and is scouting for relevant partners to support this for UC News India.

Why We-Media Reward Plan 2.0?
Besides an upgrade in ad revenue sharing model, We-Media Reward Plan 2.0 will open the door of opportunity to the most talented writers in the country. A thousand We-Media writers will be recruited in India and Indonesia who will be able to earn at least Rs 50,000 per month through the UC News platform. UCWeb has been setting new trends under the UC We-Media programme where people get an opportunity to create, to write, share thoughts and engage with their followers on UC News.

UC News is a big-data powered content distributor, serving as a one-stop source of trending and curated news content covering all popular categories that Indian users can consume on the go, with featured channels, including news, cricket, technology, entertainment, movies, lifestyle, health and humour among others.