Walmart is on a massive hiring spree in India. Just 10 days ago, Walmart India announced that it expects to create at least 30,000 direct and indirect jobs by setting up 15 wholesale Cash and Carry stores in Uttar Pradesh. The latest buzz is that it is also looking to ramp up tech hiring.
According to The Economic Times, the world's largest retail firm will hire about 1,000 more people for technology roles in India to hold off competition, especially from e-commerce behemoth Amazon. Significantly, the company also wants to drive more product ownership out of India.
"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," Walmart chief information officer Clay Johnson told the daily, adding that "A lot of our Internet-of-things work that sits in our stores, a lot of those end-to-end products is done here, with the sensors and the data". For example, Walmart's return process for its 5,000 US stores was completely developed in India.
This strategy is also helping the company to retain talent. According to the report, Walmart's technology attrition is at industry levels, witnessing normal attrition spikes around the two-year and seven-year marks.
The company currently boasts technology operations in Bengaluru and Gurugram, with about 1,800 employees. "We have Walmart Labs, which is e-commerce. You have My Group which is global business services," explained Johnson. With an IT spend pegged at about $10 billion a year by analysts, Walmart is among the world's largest tech spenders.
But the company recognises that it is not enough to just spend big on tech - one has to invest in the "right technology" in order to drive competitive advantage. So the company is reportedly working with a slew of Indian IT services providers to co-innovate solutions.
India, incidentally, is the only country apart from Ireland to host Walmart Labs outside the US.
Edited By Sushmita Choudhury Agarwal