The multinational retail corporation Walmart has planned to hire around 1,000 employees for the technology space in India. The world’s largest retail company is lately focusing on technology to give a tough competition to the other predominant e-commerce players including Amazon.
At present, the company has its technology operations in Bengaluru and Gurgaon where it has about 1,800 employees. Now, Walmart is looking to expand the headcount and drive more product ownership out of India.
“One of things: we are doing a lot different. We have Walmart Labs, which is e-commerce. You have My Group which is global business services. We are trying to be more product-oriented. We have taken whole projects and moved them over to drive the Indian ownership of the product. We think that is helping but this will help even more (in retaining talent),” said Walmart chief information officer Clay Johnson.
The company stated its technology attrition is at industry levels and it witnesses normal attrition spikes around the two-year and seven-year areas. Products such as Walmart’s return process for its 5,000 US stores were completely developed in India.
Analysts have estimated Walmart’s IT spending at around $10 billion a year, which counts it among the world’s largest spenders of technology. But due to the boost in the competition from e-commerce giants like Amazon, the retail major is working hard on ensuring that it gets the most bang for its buck.
“A lot of our Internet-of-things work that sits in our stores. A lot of those end-to-end products are done here with the sensors and the data are being done here,” Johnson said. “The way that the spend has changed is that we are focused on how to use it to drive our competitive advantage. We don’t just want to be the largest technology spender. We want to make sure that we are spending it on the right technology.”
Johnson also exclaimed that the retailer has also changed how it looks at its spending. Also, Walmart was working with a slew of Indian IT services providers to co-innovate. The retailer is ramping up for growth and also to remain ahead in the battle.