Monday, October 7

Tag: Walmart

Walmart Head Visited Flipkart Office to celebrate first Partnership Anniversary
News

Walmart Head Visited Flipkart Office to celebrate first Partnership Anniversary

President and CEO Walmart International Judith McKenna visited Flipkart to celebrate the first anniversary of the partnership between the two companies, the city-headquartered e-commerce firm said Friday. Judith visited India for an internal business trip from April 30 to May 3, which was a chance for her to interact with Flipkart Group leadership and employees in celebrating the one-year anniversary of the partnership with Walmart, Flipkart said in a release. She was accompanied by Richard Mayfield, CFO Walmart International, and Leigh Hopkins, International Strategy & Business Development Head, it said. Walmart Inc in May last year had announced that it is buying 77 percent stake in Flipkart for about USD 16 billion (Rs 1.05 lakh crore), its biggest deal which will give the ...
Walmart, Amazon kick off government online pilot program
USA

Walmart, Amazon kick off government online pilot program

AP, New York: Amazon and Walmart kicked off a two-year government pilot program allowing low-income shoppers on government food assistance in New York to shop and pay for their groceries online for the first time. ShopRite will join the two retailers on the program early next week, said the US Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The USDA has long required customers using electronic benefits transfer, or EBT, pay for their purchases at the actual time and place of sale. So the move marks the first time SNAP customers can pay for their groceries online. ShopRite and Amazon are providing the service to the New York City area, and Walmart is providing the service online in upstate New York locations. The agency said the pil...
Walmart Labs makes its Second Acqui-hire in India with an AI Firm
ACQUISITION

Walmart Labs makes its Second Acqui-hire in India with an AI Firm

The retail giant Walmart has made its second acqui-hire in India, with a machine learning startup called Int.AI. The acquisition is being done to strengthen its technology team in the country. This will mark as the company second aqui-hire in the country. Prior to this, Walmart acqui-hired micro-app startup Appsfly in September, merging that six-member team with its customer experience engineering group. “We announced one and we just did our second one. It’s called Int.AI,” Jeremy King, executive vice president and chief technology at Walmart said. Int.AI operates in the field of data analytics and machine learning. The platform has built capabilities in analysing data and sharing it with targeted users over email as well as collaborative tools like Slack among others. Founded ...
Walmart Outshines Apple, Becomes No. 3 Online Retailer in the US
USA

Walmart Outshines Apple, Becomes No. 3 Online Retailer in the US

Walmart has reportedly became the No. 3 online retailer in the U.S. overtaking the technology giant Apple. Walmart has been recently making various efforts and it seems that the company got the reward. Amazon still leads by a wide margin, accounting for 48 percent of e-commerce sales in 2018. On the other hand, Walmart (including also Sam’s Club and Jet.com) is supposed to capture 4 percent of all online retail spending in the U.S. by year-end, totaling $20.91 billion. This move has come up following Walmart’s strong earnings which saw the retailer reporting a 43 percent increase in online sales. Also, the company’s year-end forecast for both earnings and sales increased to a great extent. Apart from this, Walmart beat Wall St.’s expectations in its fiscal third quarter, with $1.0...
Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal Resigns Following Allegations of Misconduct
News

Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal Resigns Following Allegations of Misconduct

Binny Bansal, the co-founder and group CEO of India based e-commerce giant Flipkart has stepped down from the company with immediate effect. This step has been taken following an investigation into “serious personal misconduct.” This move has come up in less than six months after Walmart acquired a majority ownership in the company. In an email to Flipkart employees, Bansal said these allegations has left him stunned and strongly denies them. The latter founded Flipkart in 2007 with Sachin Bansal and he had served as its CEO since 2016, before going on to become CEO of the Flipkart Group. “For some time, I have been mulling over the right time to step away from an operating role at Flipkart Group. My plan was to continue in my current role for a few more quarters to continue the tra...
Walmart Plans to Launch Intelligent Retail Lab in New York
News

Walmart Plans to Launch Intelligent Retail Lab in New York

The retail giant Walmart has announced its plans to roll out an Intelligent Retail Lab inside one of its stores in Levittown, New York. The basic ideas behind this is to test both associate and customer experiences. With this, the company wants to use artificial intelligence to better identify when items are running low on stock so that it can proactively replenish the stock. This would be led by an internal team called Kepler. Also, the retailer is planning to use the technology to identify spills, better understand when shopping carts are running low near the entrance and identify when items are on the wrong shelf. It has also been stated that Project Kepler would entail cashierlesss stores. However, the company mentioned that Kepler is the name of the team building the AI lab i...
Walmart Launches an AR Scanning Tool in its iPhone App
Tech

Walmart Launches an AR Scanning Tool in its iPhone App

The online retailer Walmart has announced the launch of a new AR scanning tool in its iPhone application. This feature will help customers with product comparisons. Also, Walmart’s AR scanner can be panned about across store shelves, offering details on pricing and customer ratings beneath the products it sees. This particular technology was initially developed by a team at an internal Walmart hackathon using Apple’s ARKit technology. At the time, their idea was to create a scanning experience that worked faster and felt faster when used by customers. “Walmart store shoppers love using our mobile app barcode scanner as a price checker. Our team sees the potential of this product as so much more, though,” stated Tim Sears, senior engineering manager at Walmart Labs. “When a customer la...
Walmart Acquires an Online Lingerie Retailer for an Undisclosed Amount
ACQUISITION

Walmart Acquires an Online Lingerie Retailer for an Undisclosed Amount

The retail major Walmart has reportedly acquired an online lingerie retailer known as Bare Necessities. The amount of the acquisition deal has, however, not been disclosed. This acquisition marks as Walmart’s second apparel-focused acquisition in less than two weeks. The company seems to be seeking deeper inroads into the online fashion space. Last week, the company acquired Eloquii, a fashion startup that sells plus-sized clothing. Along with this, Walmart had also collaborated with comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres to launch a women's fashion line in August. Talking about last year, it bought ShoeBuy, which specializes in footwear and apparel; Moosejaw, which sells outdoor wear; Bonobos, which sells men's clothing and ModCloth, an online seller of women's apparel. "The a...
Walmart Acquired E-commerce Platform Flipkart Forays Into Mobile Insurance
News

Walmart Acquired E-commerce Platform Flipkart Forays Into Mobile Insurance

Walmart acquired India's e-commerce platform Flipkart said it's foraying into the insurance segment after securing a corporate agent license. To begin with, Flipkart has partnered with Bajaj Allianz General Insurance to offer customised insurance solutions to power its mobile phone protection programme for all leading mobile phone brands that are sold on its platform, Flipkart said in a statement. It added that under the programme, it will offer both cash payout option or free pick up, service and drop convenience to customers. The insurance offering will be available from 10 October, the start of Flipkart’s The Big Billion Days (TBBD). “In line with our customer-first policy and as the market leader in this segment, insurance felt like the logical next step in providing consum...
Walmart to Purchase Flipkart ESOPs worth $800 Million
ACQUISITION

Walmart to Purchase Flipkart ESOPs worth $800 Million

After the Flipkart-Walmart deal, many steps have been taken by Walmart in favor of the merger. This time the company has planned to purchase from Flipkart employees ESOPs worth nearly $800 million. The worth of Flipkart’s total Esop is about $1.5 billion based on the per-share purchase price. Flipkart announced to its current employees that they will be allowed to liquidate their employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) at $126-128 a unit, on the basis of the charges applicable. The retail giant  Walmart is obligated to purchase 6,242,271 shares from Flipkart’s ESOP pool of 11,947,026 shares. “The ESOP repurchase programme, a yardstick for the industry, is part of our continuing efforts to thank and reward our employees for their service,” a spokesperson for Flipkart said. The employees...
Four Senior Walmart Officials Take Transfer to Flipkart
News

Four Senior Walmart Officials Take Transfer to Flipkart

Soon after the Walmart-Flipkart deal, four senior leaders from the US retail giant have been appointed at the Flipkart Group level. The four senior leaders will make the transfer by October. The executives that are supposed to make the transfer are Walmart's M&A head Emily McNeal, who will join the Flipkart Group as senior vice president and group chief financial officer. Another official that will take a transfer consist of Daniel De La Garza, who has come on board as vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer. Next will be Grant Coad as general counsel and Dawn Ptak as vice president and group controller. “Each of these leaders currently leads crucial charters at Walmart and will bring a wealth of experience to the Flipkart Group,” stated co-founder Binny Bansal. “The...
Soon after the Flipkart Acquisition, Walmart Paid Rs 7,439 Crore Tax
News

Soon after the Flipkart Acquisition, Walmart Paid Rs 7,439 Crore Tax

One of the largest retail player Walmart has reportedly paid Rs 7,439 crore tax on the payments the company made to acquire the shares of 10 major shareholders of Flipkart. Various shareholders of Flipkart including the major ones like SoftBank, Naspers, venture fund Accel Partners and eBay, had sold their holdings to Walmart. On the last date for depositing taxes with the Indian authorities that is on 7th September, Walmart paid Rs 7,439 crore withholding tax on payments made to 10 shareholders of Flipkart. "Of the 44 shareholders in Flipkart who have sold shares, Walmart has deposited taxes for only 10 funds and entities. We have asked Walmart to explain the rationale followed while deducting or not deducting taxes from the shareholders. They have been asked to give a case to case ex...