Alibaba's UCWeb to promote e-commerce firms instead of competing

Alibaba Group firm UCWeb on Friday said it will promote and support online shopping platforms in India rather than compete with them as it plans to launch e-commerce business this fiscal.

"Rather than competing with other e-commerce players, the new initiative would adopt a content platform model for promoting and supporting e-commerce players in India," UCWeb said in a statement.

UCWeb Global Business Vice President Huaiyuan Yang told PTI that the company's plan to foray into e-commerce space will not have any adverse impact on Paytm, in which Alibaba owns 30.15 per cent stake.

"Leveraging our extensive user communities in India, the new service is in line with our strategy to enrich the experience for users and clients alike," UCWeb said.

Alibaba Group owns 3 per cent stake in Snapdeal.

"We have Alibaba's e-commerce gene in us. We are actually trying to start innovative business model related to e-commerce," Yang had said on the sidelines of Alibaba Philanthropy forum.

UCweb, fully owned subsidiary of e-commerce giant Aliababa group, has been operating UC Browser in India since 2009. It claims to have registered 1.1 billion user downloads worldwide (excluding China), with half of its global installs from India. It also claims to have 130 million monthly active users in the country.

Besides, e-commerce solution, Yang said that the company will continue to focus on content on its platform, specially short videos.

UCWeb also have plans to start the sale of movie tickets online.