Indian start-ups are wooing WalmartLabs! Know why

WalmartLabs is going to change its business strategies for India, which is witnessing a boom in start-up culture. The US-based company, which was dependent on outsourcers, is planning to strengthen its in-house technology team in India.

It has decided to cut back on third-party outsourcing to India and has plans to add hundreds of jobs at its Bengaluru centre over the next few years, Walmart tech chief Jeremy King said.

He also said that the digital arm of the US-based retailing major WalMart Stores would strengthen its engagement with startups from India.

WalmartLabs has changed it strategies, shifting away from the outsourcers which used to be 80% earlier to 20% now. “Typically when we outsource, it's a very specialist sort of technology or capability that we're looking for and we just go with one of the big guys. So, our relationship has changed dramatically in the last four years and we say you can't outsource innovation," King said.

While parent Wal-Mart continues to work with third-party outsourcing firms such as Infosys and TCS, WalmartLabs is taking a radically different approach.

He said: "If you're trying to deal with large-scale or new-age shopping or something innovative, it's something very difficult to express your customer problems to third parties.” While Wal-Mart as a corporation enjoys a strong relationship in many areas in the back-office and some other places, he added.

This is not the first instance in recent times of Indian IT's large customers moving work away from outsourcing companies. US home improvement giant Lowe's, drug maker AstraZeneca and retailer Target are among a number of companies that are taking a hard look at their outsourcing strategies or have started insourcing more tech work to their own captive centres.

Walmart tech chief informed that he met a number of Indian startups during his recent visit to Bengaluru and is looking to work closely with and potentially invest in Indian startups for disruptive new bets and technology.

On being asked about the motive behind this trip, King said he visited the city to take a look at startups. “Frankly, we're opportunistic about what to do with startups -we're excited about Bengaluru startups in particular. They're becoming more and more innovative versus more and more copycat. Starting to see a lot more innovative products coming out of startups here - so typically, we partner with startups and talk to the team.”

The question arises why only Bengaluru!

“If we really like the technology, we talk to them about using their technology and tools -we'll hopefully be much more active in Bengaluru in the near term," he said.

WalmartLabs is working on innovative new technology solutions to improve the in-store experiences of customers and is even leveraging open-source technologies, King said.

"We've done a lot of innovations that are related to in-store digital experiences -I've talked about products like Savings Catcher and InstaWatch, so if you buy a physical gift at the store, then you get a digital copy automatically into your digital account and these innovations are very interesting, especially when you think of the scale of Wal-Mart," said King.

(Image: Indiatimes)