Alibaba to launch first fully owned e-commerce business in India in FY20

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Sep 6, 2019

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba plans to launch its first fully-owned online business in India by the end of the current financial year, through its subsidiary business UCWeb.

Alibaba plans to expand its India business through its subsidiary UCWeb, the business told the Press Trust of India. UCWeb launched its UC Browser in India in 2009 and now aims to expand into online retail. 

"We have Alibaba's e-commerce gene in us,” UCWeb’s global business vice president Huaiyuan Yang, told the Press Trust of India, on the sidelines of the Alibaba Philanthropy Forum on Thursday.

“We are actually trying to start innovative business model related to e-commerce. We are going to launch a new e-commerce product in India this year."

Alibaba owns a 30.15% stake in the Indian digital payments interface and e-commerce site Paytm. Yang stressed that any launch in India will not adversely affect Paytm’s business. 

"E-commerce is very vast business,” said Yang. “There are various part of e-commerce business and several products. UC will choose section according to our business. We will partner with the right players and we will not compete with them [Paytm].”