Walmart India ramps up investment

US-retail giant Walmart is investing between $240m and $300m to bolster its presence in India by expanding its number of stores from 21 to 70 by 2020.

“We have a cash-and-carry model, and the growth has been good for us,” Walmart India VP and head of corporate affairs Rajneesh Kumar told Retail Update.

“Each store takes two to three years to set up. These will create nearly 2000 direct and indirect jobs.”

Meanwhile, Walmart’s technology centre in Bengaluru is also expanding its role and headcount, ramping up from 750 employees to 1200 by next month, says the Business Standard.

“Most of the growth at Walmart Labs here is driven by supply chain and analytics,” says Walmart Global Technology Services VP and MD Jayakumar K. “The focus is to set up two centres of excellence, from ground up.”

Walmart is working to merge its retail stores and online presence to become an omni-channel player, and has merged its computer systems technology team and its eCommerce technology team in Silicon Valley to create Walmart Technology.

Jayakumar says that as the announcement is new, the immediate impact on the India centre is yet to unfold.

“However, the combined structure in some sense already exists here. The Bengaluru centre is the only one in the world for Walmart where both these teams work together. We not only work in the same building, but have also collaborated on projects.”

Walmart has made huge changes to its technology roadmap for its eCommerce over the past few years. Two years ago, the company changed from using off-the-shelf applications to using more software developed in-house.

In India, it has created the Pangaea platform, which has been partially rolled out locally and this year will be introduced in other countries.

Jayakumar says this approach allows the company to be quicker and more agile when launching products.

As well as its focus on technology, Walmart is also tapping into the start-up ecosystem, acquiring 15 start-ups since 2011.