Alibaba’s UCWeb announces $20m for India’s game developers

Photo credit: Johan Larsson.

Alibaba’s UCWeb, maker of UC Browser, today announced US$20 million in resources to be shared with independent and startup game developers in India. Called the 9Apps In Dev program, it will provide up to US$500,000 to a game developer. UCWeb expects to support 100 Indian gaming startups within two years.

Robert Bu, general manager for UCWeb India, made the announcement at the PocketGamer Connects conference in Bangalore today.

UCWeb’s Android app store, 9Apps, will help these developers with user acquisition, monetization, game publishing, and promotion. Developers will not have to share any of their revenue with the 9Apps app store. Robert Bu told Tech in Asia that the Indian gaming market is posed to grow nearly five-fold in three years – from US$416 million in 2015 to US$2 billion in 2018.

UCWeb expects to support 100 Indian gaming startups within two years.

The Indian gaming market is hampered by a number of issues such as the predominance of budget phones not suited for good quality games. Mobile payments are also an unsolved problem in India, as are connectivity and bandwidth. But UCWeb sees this changing in the next two to three years.

“Smart developers will not only develop low-end games suited for the market as it is currently but also plan ahead for a better gaming environment in two to three years’ time,” Robert said. In other words, Indian gamers will have to work on parallel tracks, producing cheap games below 20 MB in size as well as preparing for a market that will demand high-end games just as in the US and China.

UCWeb’s UC Browser is by far the most used mobile web browser in India, where 90 percent of smartphones run on Android.