Walmart India goes on hiring spree: To hire 1,000 graduates for technology roles

So far, 2018 has been an eventful year for US-retailer Walmart in India. It acquired India's largest e-commerce firm Flipkart and has been piloting second fulfilment centre in Lucknow. It has been trying and executing every move to have an advantage over its rivals (Flipkart and Paytm Mall) in the country.

Now, to strengthening its talent pool, the giant retailer is looking out for 1,000 tech graduates to fill in various technology roles.

"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. We think that is helping but this will help even more (in retaining talent),” Clay Johnson, Walmart chief information officer told ET.

At present, Walmart has around 1,800 employees in tech operations in Bengaluru and Gurugram.

Walmart sees India as a key market. The Arkansas-based company, which has 21 stores in India, plans to open 50 more stores in the next four-five years. It plans to open 8-10 stores in a year in the country.

The company claims to make 50 percent of its business through physical stores and rest from business associates and e-commerce channels. It has revenue of around $500 million form its Indian business.

Earlier in May this year, Walmart bought 77 per cent of Flipkart share from existing shareholders, including Japan’s SoftBank, for $14 billion and investing $2 billion of fresh equity.

Flipkart too has been on a hiring spree and looking for tech talents. In March, Flipkart had opened over 700 positions across functions in the technology department such as data scientists, UI & UX designers, product solution engineers, tech program managers, software developers, IT infrastructure & service delivery and IT applications.

Over 4/5th of all opened positions at Flipkart were for technology functions. The company’s aggressive tech hiring is part of its ‘AI for India’ programme.

However, it will continue to run independently, Walmart CEO and President Krish Iyer had said in an interview to CNBC. Walmart currently focuses on building a business in India with large number of customer base. It aims to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2025.

Amazon, which is known for its robust tech team, had also announced in June that it will be hiring close to 2,000 contractual positions in the next one year for our new fulfilment centre in Bengaluru.