UC News brings #MasalaCommentary with Celebrities for the ongoing Cricket League

In a clear success of its strategy for digitizing entertainment, UC News, a content and news distribution platform that is part of Alibaba Mobile Business Group, garnered an average daily views of 6.6 million on the UC News app for its innovative IPL campaign “Match ki Kahaani, Celebs ki Zubaani” with #MasalaCommentary. 

UC News ran a first-of-its-kind campaign, bringing together Saif Ali Khan, Preity Zinta, Sunny Leone, Virender Sehwag, Sunil Grover, Rakhi Sawant and Kamal R Khan to give commentary in their witty and inimitable style on the ongoing IPL matches. UC News also got the celebrity commentators to take interesting cricket-based challenges. The chat and activities were live streamed on the UC News app. The videos have clocked another 75 million views on the UC News’ YouTube channel, UC Talks.

“Total time spent consuming content on the mobile has seen a sharp rise among Indian audiences with sports, especially cricket, being one of the most popular content category for UC News readers. Not just that, multiple new-age digital media platforms are challenging the traditional mediums. The success of our app-only videos with celebrities is a clear testament to that”, said Young Li, Head of UC News.

On April 5, Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta revived their popular on-screen pairing after 12 years to live comment on the opening ceremony of IPL followed by the match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Hyderabad Sunrisers.

Comedian Sunil Grover donned his famous on-screen persona of Dr. Mashoor Gulati and partnered with actress Sunny Leone to comment on the match between Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Kings XI Punjab (KXIP), causing a laugh riot. After losing the challenge, Sunny Leone also danced to the tunes of a Punjabi number with Sunil on the occasion of Baisakhi.

Former cricketer Virendra Sehwag and Bollywood actress Sunny Leone teamed up for a fun-filled session during the Delhi Daredevils, Sunrisers Hyderabad match, causing a major buzz on social media.

LAVA announces MS Dhoni as its Brand Ambassador

Lava International Limited has announced its association with India’s most successful national cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni (MS Dhoni), as its brand ambassador. 

A recent report by Counterpoint Research based on the Q4 2015 (Oct-Dec) performance of the handset manufacturers’ report mentions Lava International Limited as the fastest growing Indian smartphone brand globally in 2015. MS Dhoni will be the new face of Lava’s multi-channel marketing campaign as well as brand engagement activities. 

Founded in 2009, Lava International Limited has become one of the fastest growing mobile handset companies in India. It achieved revenues of USD 1.2 billion in FY 2014-15, registering more than 100% growth over FY 2013-14.  

Aligning itself with Government of India’s ‘Make in India’ initiative, Lava has already set up its first manufacturing plant in Noida and plans to invest Rs 2615 crore in a phased manner to scale it up to have an annual production capacity of 216 million phones. 

Lava with its robust network of 1115+ distributors and over 1 lakh retailers has also a strong foot hold in the offline channel

The company also has overseas operations in Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, Mexico, Middle East and Russia and is the number 1 smartphone brand in Thailand. Lava is the only company in the emerging ecosystem outside of China to have an end to end control on product design, development, testing and manufacturing.

450% Increase in App Downloads During Cricket Season

Cricket-related apps have seen a whopping 450% surge during the ongoing T-20 World Cup; the traffic peaked during the second week into the cricket season with India-Pakistan match , according to the latest data shared by 9Apps Trends, 9Apps’ app tracking service.

The following chart demonstrates the download trend of top 5 cricket-related apps. Before the WT20 started, top 5 cricket-related apps were downloaded around 3 lac times per week; the download surged 340% once the World Cup kicked off. 

Three of the top 5 cricket-related apps - Hotstar, Cricket T20 2016 Live TV and Cricbuzz provide videos and even live streaming of the matches. The content consumed by cricket fans is getting diversified as users’ appetite for video is fast growing.

Cricket season is too big to ignore. Sports app developers and content providers have either updated their apps to bring world-cup-theme features, or providing new content to attract users. For instance, UC Browser, the No.1 mobile browser in India with over 59% market share, has revamped its in-app widget UC Cricket to provide a variety of cricket content. 9Apps, the No.1 third-party app market of India, has also geared up with push notification features to remind users of the upcoming matches.