Alibaba owned mobile business platform UCWeb will invest Rs 200 crore over the next 2 years into its India and Indonesia operations. The funds will primarily be used to support UC News features which includes news aggregation as well the blogging platform integrated within UC News. This is UCWeb’s second investment into the country after it earlier invested a part of $170 million in 2013 for global expansion in countries including India. The fresh investment comes just days after UCNews announced that it would start compensating top bloggers, writers and self-publishers through its earlier launched blogging platform called WE-Media. UCWeb said that the investment will help grow the platform which witnessed a growth in non-news news related content like blog posts, independent write ups, imagery feeds, videologs, and short video content. The company claims that the platform’s pageviews increased by 184% and 348% month-on-month, but did not mention the time-period of this growth. Note that its news aggregation feature earlier debuted on the UCWeb browser but was later launched separately as an app titled UCNews in India in June last year. The app features news content in 20 different categories including news, cricket, technology, entertainment, lifestyle and movies. It is currently available in Hindi and English language options. In India, the UC Browser crossed 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) in November last year. Apart from this, UCWeb also provides an ecommerce shopping aggregation feature on its Android app store called 9Apps which aggregates products and pricing offers from companies like Paytm, Flipkart, Myntra, Snapdeal, Jabong, Askmebazar, Voonik and…
