Walmart may be looking to acquire Indian tech startups after Flipkart

After its successful merger with India’s e-commerce giant, Flipkart, the technology unit of Walmart is looking for tech acquisitions in India, a source told Livemint.

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is looking for Indian tech startups to work with its technology unit, Walmart Labs. Unlike the Flipkart merger, the tech deals will be relatively smaller in size, as Walmart is looking for Acqui-hires and niche tech-product companies in India.

Acqui-hiring refers to the practice of buying a company in a cut-price deal mainly to hire the company’s founders and key employees.

Walmart’s Chief Technology Officer Jeremy King had said in an interview, “We got close to doing a couple of acquisitions, nothing was a perfect fit. There were a couple that would have been interesting additions to our competitive intelligence platform. I am looking at candidates in merchandising, machine learning right now.”

In 2011, Walmart Labs had set up a centre in Bengaluru, one of its three main offices in the world. Its scope and manpower expanded rapidly since then.

It now works on payments software, machine learning applications, supply chain systems, tech work for a Walmart-owned retail chain Sam’s Club and its UK supermarket chain Asda, among others.

Walmart will soon hire over 2,000 engineers across the world, including in India, according to King. Hari Vasudev from Flipkart was hired by Labs last year to head the Bengaluru office. Vasudev is also acting head of data science for Walmart globally now.

King added, “Walmart tries to keep a hands-off approach at first because we’re big. Even with Jet (an online retailer Walmart acquired in 2016), we let them be on their own for a while because you don’t want to kill a good thing. But just like with Jet, Asda, and others, with Flipkart there are places where we can collaborate.”

Other American retail and tech firms with a significant presence in India including Amazon, Uber, Target, and others have centres set up in Bengaluru. This is because hiring engineers here is far cheaper than in the US.