Alibaba’s UCWEB lays off India staff

THE COMPANY LAID

OFF ALMOST 90% OF ITS 350 EMPLOYEES IN

INDIA AFTER APP BAN

BENGALURU: China’s Alibaba Group-owned UCWEB Inc. has suspended its India operations and laid off almost 90% of its 350 employees at its Mumbai and Gurugram offices, three people aware of the development said.

Employees in associate, managerial and entry-level positions were informed about the layoffs over video-conferencing and given at least 30 days’ notice, said one of the two people quoted above, both of whom spoke under condition of anonymity.

UCWEB, which is in India since 2009, operates a mobile browser (UC Browser) and a news aggregation service (UC News).

On June 29, India banned 59 Chinese apps including Tiktok, Helo, UC Browser, UC News, and Wechat, after 20 Indian soldiers died in a deadly border clash with China. Among them, Tiktok was the most popular, with over 200 million active users in the country.

A UCWEB spokesperson declined to speak about the layoffs, but said the company has “complied with the government’s recent directive concerning 59 apps and stopped the service.”

Alibaba-owned UC Browser has over 430 million active users globally, of which 130 million are in India. According to Statcounter, a web analytics firm, UC Browser was the second leading mobile browser in India, with a 10% market share after Google Chrome, as of June 2020.