Exclusive: Interview with Jack Huang of Alibaba, how the company is looking to bring in "an era of GUF" in India

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba through its UCWeb business has just announced Rs. 2 Billion investment in India and Indonesia over the next two years. UCWeb, the internet software and services provider believes that India is the most critical overseas market for the company and it therefore has a special strategy for India called GUF (Google, UCWeb and Facebook) and the announced investment is in order to bring in the global mobile internet to "an era of GUF".

In an exclusive interview with Business Insider Jack Huang, President of Overseas Business, Alibaba Mobile Business also talked about betting big on short videos, compensation plans for content developers, and providing free internet connectivity in India.

What is your 'GUF' Strategy all about, do you think this is the best strategy for India?

GUF as a term, we look in 4 aspects first of all its user volume, UC Browser in India has already crossed 1 Million daily active users and we are the no. 1 in Market Share Mobile Browser. So, from that part we have full confidence that we can achieve our goal. Second thing is Google and Facebook are the brands, we also want to be that kind of brands to our users. We might be one of the company taking this part most seriously in overseas market. After 2 – 3 years, we are now enjoying rich brand reputation over the year. Third thing is our impact to industry, we have the endeavor and determination to provide content makers and services to make commercialization easier. We have a standing in industry and we know how to bring value to them. We also believe in commercialization, it has to be with full capacity of commercialization compared to Google and Facebook. The approach we are taking is recommendation approach, we make full use of Big Data technology to help people to reach out to the right people. But if you consider Google, it’s making people search what they want. So, it’s 2 different approaches.

How important is the Digital Platform for Alibaba in General. Are you also looking at producing your own shows going forward?

Alibaba’s Digital Media Entertainment Group is trying to import good Content from overseas market into China to make the Chinese people consume those especially the Indian content. We also have plans, maybe in the form of investment or directly, to buy logo content especially short video content, top Youtubers in India like AIB is our target. And no, we are not producing our own shows, we are helper, we help people to create content and we promote their content.

Short videos like AIB are very popular in India, how are you looking to make the most of short videos, how important is that aspect for Alibaba's digital platform?

We have three thinking behind this move. Firstly, we look at ourselves as UCWeb international. We are very good at a long term content distribution like what we have done for UC Browser & UC News. Internally we have technology engine to do it well. The second thing is after some recent incident like Jio (Reliance Jio) in 4G space, we see 5 times higher 4G users on our platform which is to say, short video content consumption is definitely going to be next big thing and India is a country where people are passing PC and going straight to mobile. We think you (India) have bollywood, you have full capacity of producing video content and we have the technology and investment to cultivate and help more and more people to become video content maker then it’s a perfect combination.

You talked about Jio. It has been a big entry in the telecom space. Are you looking at tying up with telecom service provider like Reliance Jio for internet connectivity in India as Internet connectivity continues to be an issue in some parts of the country?

We will definitely look at the opportunity to work together with service providers or even some Wi-Fi providers. We are trying to offer lower cost data to users and better connectivity, even free of cost connectivity. Wi-Fi providers and other players can be potentials and we are in talk, but we also think that there are 2 other elements as important as connectivity, first is where to find the content and second is how to help content makers to make better content and how to help them to distribute the content via better technology to reach to a precise audience. So we will consider all important aspects.

Reliance Jio has been providing free internet in the country, are you also looking at doing the same?

We actually think in geographic way because in India not every state is suffering from connectivity problem so we will focus more on providing this kind of services to states that are suffering more and also we will have comprehensive analysis on already existing consumers who will actually need this kind of service.

UCWeb has also talked about getting many content development on board, in terms of blogger you’re planning to hire 30,000 bloggers and content writers in India, how will you go about it as India is still new in blogging compared to China?

First of all we consider the potential of existing bloggers are much more that 30,000 in India so that is our first confidence. Secondly we actually rely and depend on the recently launched compensation plan for it, compensation plan includes 2 things , 1st is to empower them to produce content because we have huge data and lot of instructions and content which user may like. We will focus a lot on trying to help them commercialize themselves. With this compensation plan we hope apart from the existing writers and contributors more and more people may join the platform. We will also focus on branding to help more people