“Digitizing Unilever is one of my top priorities,” says Unilever’s new CEO Alan Jope. “How we digitize marketing. How we digitize working with our customers. Digitizing our supply chain. Digitizing our people processes. You are going to see a strong digital emphasis in my agenda for Unilever.”

Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever, discussed Unilever’s growth in Asian markets and his priority to digitize the company in an interview on Bloomberg Markets and Finance this morning:

Digitizing Unilever is One of My Top Priorities

In China, all of our ecommerce partners are very important to us. That’s where a lot of the growth is. That’s because that’s where consumers are choosing to shop. That integration between ecommerce, search, social, and other digital platforms is also happening in the west. Digitizing Unilever is one of my top priorities. How we digitize marketing. How we digitize working with our customers. Digitizing our supply chain. Digitizing our people processes.

You are going to see a strong digital emphasis in my agenda for Unilever. We are hiring people with good digital skills like crazy at the moment. We are bringing in digital natives and at the same time reskilling the Unilever team.

China Has Become a Stable Part of Our Business

China is a special place for me, I lived there for five years quite recently. I’m delighted to share that China has become a stable part of our business actually. We are seeing good growth year in and year out. Consumers are engaging with the type of brands we are selling and increasingly we are developing products in China for the Chinese market. In amongst all that volatility, it seems like the consumer products segment is one of the stable parts of the Chinese economy.

We have a tremendous global footprint. We are very globally diversified. We are used to dealing with geopolitical shocks and movements. At the moment that is certainly not a significant impact on our business. We are seeing overall Asia doing very well. In particular Central Asia. The markets in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are really doing extremely well. As I mentioned China has been a stable source of growth. Also, that important part of the world where people are really moving into the consumer products markets Southeast Asia. We are starting to see a recovery led by our big business in Indonesia.