China's UCWeb eyes 100 million users in India

Firm had opened India office in 2011, its first facility outise China

Having created a strong foothold on its home turf, UCWeb Inc, a China-based developer of mobile internet browsers, has now set its sights on the Indian market.

The eight-year-old company, which has over 400 million end users globally, including 300 million in China alone, had opened its India office at Gurgaon in November 2011 -- its first overseas facility outside of China.

"Considering the 137 million mobile Internet user base in India, and still counting, we are seeing a significant opportunity for our flagship product 'UCBrowser' here, after the US and China," said Kenny Ye, managing director of UCweb.

Speaking to Business Standard on the sidelines of Internet and Mobile Association of lndia's 'AppFest 2012' here on Thursday, Ye said the company currently had 40 million users in India, which they expected to touch the 100-million mark by 2015.

The UCBrowser app, which was first launched in China in 2004 and in the rest of the world in 2009, is currently available in 12 international languages, including in Hindi.

"Given the increasing adoption levels for the Hindi version, which was launched in September this year, we are now in the preparatory stage of introducing the mobile browser app in Urdu, which should be rolled out sometime next year. We are looking at partnering local developers to explore more regional languages in the near future," Ye said.