Global retail giant Walmart will be hiring around 1,000 people for technology roles in India, as it looks to strengthen technology operations to hold off competition from its e-commerce rival Amazon.
Walmart has about 1,800 employees for its technology operations in Bengaluru and Gurugram. It is looking to expand this headcount as it aims to drive more product ownership out of India.
“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 Clay Johnson, Chief Information Officer at Walmart.
He further added, “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,”.
Walmart claims that its technology attrition is at industry levels, with normal attrition spikes around the two years and seven years areas. Products like Walmarts return process for its 5,000 stores in the US was completely developed in India, although the exact number of products based out of India could not be ascertained.
With an IT expenditure of around $10 billion a year as pegged by analysts, Walmart is among the world’s largest spenders on technology. It also counts almost every IT service provider as a client.
As the competition from e-commerce players like Amazon gets stiff, it is necessary for Walmart to amp up its technology game by being more efficient. As Walmart boosts its spending, it will also be looking to focus on the right technologies as per its needs to stay on the right track. Walmart is working with a bunch of Indian IT service providers to co-innovate solutions.
Walmart is strengthening its presence rapidly since its acquisition of Flipkart in a $16 billion deal. It had also opened its second fulfilment centre in India last month.