BackCheetah Mobile eyes India market
The Chinese phone app maker looks to invest in tech start-ups, hire talent and expand its partner ecosystem in India
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New Delhi: Chinese phone app maker Cheetah Mobile Inc is looking to invest in tech start-ups, hire talent and expand its partner ecosystem in India, the company said on Thursday.
The Beijing-based firm, which is ranked the third-largest mobile utility application developer in India behind Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., has joined a slew of companies including Facebook, Twitter Inc and Instagram Inc., which have been eyeing the India market with their advertisement platforms.
Advertisement platforms have been the main source of revenue from India for online companies as a subscription-based revenue model hasn’t picked up in the country yet.
Cheetah Mobile is best known for its mobile app Clean Master, which cleans junk files, boosts phone performance, enhances security and manages other apps. The company crossed 1,596 million app installations in June. Among its 494 million mobile monthly active users, 9% are from India, which makes India its largest user base.
To tap India’s smartphone market, the world’s fastest-growing, the mobile Internet firm is expanding its presence in India, eyeing the next half-a-billion smartphone users. It plans to turn the Indian office into “an important hub in Asia".
“The mobile internet market in India is growing rapidly with over 150 million users already accessing the Internet off their mobiles. In addition to being the fastest growing market for smartphones in APAC (Asia Pacific), India will soon become the most populous country. We see India as one of the most important market. With our wide range of utility applications...as well as our expertise in app monetization, we aspire to create a safer, speedier, and simpler environment for smartphone users in India." said Sheng Fu, CEO at Cheetah Mobile.
Over the next six months, the company is looking to partner with mobile phone manufactures and app developers in the country. The company is already working with India’s home-grown mobile manufacturers including Micromax Informatics Ltd, with which it has a contract for pre-installation of its apps.
As a part of expanding footprint in India, apart from working with original equipment manufacturers) and app developers, the company will be investing in early-stage start-ups.
“We are looking to invest in early-stage technology start-ups in areas like data processing, analytics and big data. But we are not limiting it to that only," said Jie Xiao, senior vice president at Cheetah Mobile.
“We have a huge customer base globally, which we want to leverage to get consumer insights," Jie said. “For instance, our apps have access to our users’ mobiles without invading their privacy. We can see the sort of apps that are downloaded or what kind of habits a particular user has. We can analyse that data to provide insights for our clients on our advertisement platform."
The Cheetah Ad Platform currently has over 500 clients globally, including Flipkart, Uber, Amazon, and Booking.com in India.
“From an app developer company, we are transforming into a big data analytics platform for advertising," she added.
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