Walmart Global Tech (WGT), the technology arm of the retail giant Walmart in India, is aimed at powering the business and enabling an innovative future. The India team works on tech innovations that are introduced globally and make experiences better for Walmart’s global customer base, said Hari Vasudev, SVP Retail Tech Platforms at WGT.
“The objective of India’s mandate is to create impact for the business. We are integrated into the larger fabric of Walmart and continuously looking at how to essentially power the business and enable an innovative future. This results in building infrastructure, intelligence, and then great experiences for our customers, members, and associates,” Vasudev told businessline.
Heavily invested
The company said it remains heavily invested in India due to the availability of talent. The India team represents all parts of the global tech team and works across functions of supply chain, customer experiences, platforms, and data. WGT has offices in three locations — Bengaluru, Chennai, and Gurgaon — and employs over 10,000 employees.
“Walmart in India has not just invested in tech teams, as technology alone doesn’t solve problems. Product, design, data sciences, and analytics are all important; hence, we have taken a multi-faceted approach and have directed investments aimed at building teams spanning the entire gamut of functions required for delivering a successful solution or offering to consumers and associates,” Vasudev added.
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The company has been leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in its product functions. Vasudev said that the teams are working on a product called Converse, which essentially uses natural language processing to interact with customers and associates using voice.
“The Converse team has been building a platform that allows one to leverage large language models and create better ways of voice-led interaction for customers. Social commerce aspects of voice-based shopping, even voice-based interactions with associates in terms of backend interactions with systems, are being implemented,” he added.
Walmart has invested in various tech advancements by using AI and machine learning (ML). Vasudev said the company has developed technology like smart substitution, which identifies the next-best items, and forecasting, which makes accurate predictions and solves inventory problems, among many others. All the technologies rolled out globally have been worked on by Indian teams, he added.
Walmart is planning to service about 65 per cent of its stores by automation by the end of fiscal year 2026. The announcement comes as Walmart increasingly uses its huge stores to handle online order deliveries and invests heavily in automation to speed up order processing at its e-commerce fulfilment facilities, according to reports.
Published on April 5, 2023
