UC Browser decides to close India operations and the same was communicated to their employees on July 15. The reason as cited by them was the uncertain future and business loss.
The employees were thereby asked to leave. The company has its main India office in Gurugram, which comprised of 100 employees.
“We have complied with the government’s recent directive concerning 59 apps and stopped the service,” said a UC spokesperson.
The Indian government had banned 59 Chinese apps including UC Browser, UC News, WeChat, TikTok, ShareIt, etc, on June 29. The decision was in view of the fact that the apps were engaged in activities that were “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order.”
The ministry further expressed that it has received several complaints from varied sources as well as many reports regarding the misuse by some mobile apps offered on Google Play Store and iOS platforms for stealing and sneakily transmitting users’ information in an unauthorized manner to servers that have locations outside India.
“This move will safeguard the interests of crores of Indian mobile and internet users. This decision is a targeted move to ensure safety and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace,” the order added.
Henceforth, the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd which owns UC Web is laying off its Indian staff due to uncertain future and business loss as nothing is working out for them even after engaging in talks with the government.
The company entered India almost a decade ago and had 130 million active users in India. It was notably the second most used application after Google. UC Browser decides to close India operations and the employees are now set to lose their jobs.
It was also learnt that the employees were hired under two different payrolls; one direct under the Alibaba payroll and the other belonged to the Tata Consultancy Services.
The employees under the Alibaba payroll were verbally terminated whereas the TCS employees were to further sit for an interview and would be relocated to other projects, depending on the vacancies.
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