Umeng Dominates Chinese Mobile App Analytics, Plots Overseas Expansion

One of the hottest startups in China, Umeng (pronounced as “you meng” in English), is run and was founded by Fudan University graduate and ex-Googler in China Jiang Fan.

Umeng is like Google Analytics for mobile applications in China. Founded in 2010, Jiang said that the company came about because there was a need for it. Knowing that mobile will be huge in China over the next couple of years, Jiang believed that mobile developers would require tools to help them understand their users’ data and in-app behavior. He was right. Today, Umeng is serving over 100,000 mobile applications across all major mobile platforms — iOS, Android, and Windows Phone — with more than 50 percent of all Chinese developers using the service.

Umeng’s fast-paced growth was a mixture of timing, luck, a good team, and a solid product. Jiang says that Umeng is the only mobile app analytics company that was first launched in China and for China. Even today, there are very few competitors because making money through analytics is tough. Jiang also says that Umeng started early and grew together with the ever-growing mobile industry in China.

The team at Umeng is made up of folks who used to work at big companies including Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Sohu, and Yahoo. Today, Umeng has over 100 people in the team and has raised more than $10 million from Innovation Works and Matrix Partners.

Speaking about turning points and challenges, Jiang says that there were times when Umeng was tempted to go astray to run other mobile-related businesses which have a more direct way of generating revenue (such as mobile advertising). But he is thankful that Umeng ultimately stuck to its vision to serve the Chinese developer crowd. And being in the mobile space, changes are rapid, especially for mobile games. Umeng, as a startup, has to learn how to keep up with the changing trends. He said (translation ours):

Some developers grew very big very quickly. So it’s always a challenge to keep up with their usage and tracking demands as a startup.

Despite 100 percent of its developers being local Chinese developers, Jiang reveals that 40 percent of their apps are actually targeting the global market. Expanding abroad is part of Umeng’s plan and the team is already strategizing on how to do exactly that.

Jiang told Tech in Asia that Umeng will be releasing its English version by Q3 of this year, and stresses that the service will offer value to overseas developers just as it does to Chinese ones. Since China is an unique market, he says the purpose of an English site is to help overseas developers who are targeting Chinese users track and mine user data better and with more precision. He added (translation ours):

The potential is there. In the future, China could represent half of the entire world’s mobile user population.

In addition to analytics, Umeng also provides developers with an app network service that helps to cross-promote apps. The future of Umeng, as Jiang explains, is that it will continue to provide the services developers need. He believes that if the mobile industry in China continues to grow and mature, Umeng will eventually find a way to build a sustainable business model around its service.

And if you’re wondering about the Alibaba acquisition rumor that is spreading, Jiang confirms that both companies are speaking to each other but nothing has been finalized so far!