UC Browser revamps India strategy, to launch cloud storage service

UC Browser, a web browser developed by the China-based mobile internet company UCWeb, has announced that it is revamping its India strategy. The company is set to roll out UC Drive, an in-app cloud storage service offering, for Indian individual users, it said in a statement. 

“In a mobile-first market like India, almost all digital activities are shifting to mobile devices – from watching movies to clicking pictures to sharing files. In a scenario like this, users are left scrambling for cloud storage and syncing options,” said Huaiyuan Yang, vice president, UCWeb global business.

UC Drive, which is integrated into the browsing platform, will let users save any downloadable content using the ‘save to drive’ function. This will enable users to directly save a wide variety of downloadable content while browsing without taking up storage or memory on their mobile devices. The drive will also act as a tool for immediate file exchange with its file-sharing option that allows for streamlined communication among users, the statement added. 

The company said that storage service will be available for free to all UC users. UCWeb claims that India is one of the largest markets for UC Browser and makes up about 50% of its global downloads, the statement added.

UCWeb, owned by Chinese internet giant Alibaba, is a provider of mobile internet software and services. The international product portfolio of UC includes content distribution platform UC Browser, UC Browser Turbo, UC Browser Mini, and UC Ads for mobile marketing. The company also claims that it has reached 430 million monthly active users globally. 

In September last year, Alibaba-owned UCWeb had said that it was preparing to establish an indirect presence in India’s ecommerce market with a recommendation engine that will feature products from popular online marketplaces.