In a bid to scale up its presence in India, Walmart plans on investing US$ 300 million and also expanding its current store count to 70, which is at present 21.
Rajneesh Kumar, Vice-President & Head, Corporate Affairs, Walmart India, confirmed, “We have a cash and carry model and the growth has been good for us. We intend to raise the numbers from 21 to 70 by 2020. Each store takes nearly two-three years to set up and needs an investment of $8-10 million. These will create nearly 2,000 direct and indirect jobs.”
The expansion is part of the retrenchment strategy formulated by retailers in a bid to improve its e-commerce ventures, which has been witnessing huge changes over the past few years. Meanwhile, the US retail giant is also planning to increase its headcount and role at the technology centre in Bengaluru.
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In this regard, Jayakumar K, Vice-President and Managing Director, Walmart Global Technology Services, said, “Most of the growth at Walmart Labs here is driven by supply chain and analytics. The focus is to set up two centres of excellence. This will be from ground up. Hence the numbers will go up.”
The company changed the way it consumed technology from buying and using more off-the-shelf applications to a more in-house centric model. There have been a host of changes that Walmart has been working aggressively on a roadmap to merge its retail presence and its digital foray to become an omni channel player.
Jaykumar further elucidated on the plans, saying, “Two years back, the application work ratio was 70:30, with 70 per cent contribution coming from outside or off-the-shelf products and 30 per cent from in-house. We have flipped that and created our own platform called Pangaea. We have already started to roll-out that. This year will actually be crucial for us as Pangaea will be rolled out in different countries.”
Divulging the plans with respect to India he further added, “We had stated that we are looking into the Indian start-up ecosystem as well for acquisitions. I reiterate that. This year, we should be able to sign something on acquiring a tech company or an acqui-hire.”
