- Saturday, April 27, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
WALMART Inc president and chief executive Doug McMillon has heaped praises on India saying the country’s retail segment has its own uniqueness and it is one of the most exciting markets globally which is set to grow to more than a trillion dollars by 2025.
Speaking at the two-day ‘Converge@Walmart’ event on Wednesday (25), McMillon conceded that taking into account the diversity of the Indian market, the retail giant has to “think local and execute locally”.
“India is such a diverse market, it’s not one country in some ways and so we have to think local and execute locally, and it has its own rules, and so, we’ve got to comply with those rules,” he said at the virtual retail tech event.
The Walmart CEO also said that currently, the company is not allowed to make foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail and hence, it operates in a different way.
“I do think we have seen and will see generation skipping in India, which will be exciting and some of that learnings, we will bring back to other markets that we have,” he said, noting that India is one of the top three markets, besides the US and China.
“We think the future is very bright, and we are going to see a market that is North of trillion US dollars by 2025, I believe. And the way that it is evolving is common in some ways with what we see in other countries, but has its own uniqueness, which makes it exciting,” McMillon said.
He also said that Walmart’s e-commerce unit Flipkart and digital payment firm PhonePe are growing very well and have an “amazing number” of users.
“We are really excited about Flipkart and PhonePe leadership teams and our associates there and the businesses that are being built. The Flipkart business now has reached over 300,000 marketplace sellers, and the PhonePe business has more than 300 million users, which is just an amazing number and both are growing very well…,”McMillon said.
Flipkart competes with American e-commerce giant Amazon in the Indian market.
The Walmart chief executive said the role of technology in all of Walmarts markets, including India, is more important than ever.
“Companies that are born recently that are more digitally native have some advantages. It’s also true that in an omni-channel world, some of the older companies that may employ more people have more physical assets would have some advantages, but only if those older businesses – in our case an older larger business – have an openness, and an ability to change,” he added.
However, he admitted that leading a digital transformation at scale is a real challenge.
“We operate in multiple countries. We have got some commonalities and our infrastructure and underpinning that needs to be modernised…,” he said, adding that the only things that are constant at Walmart are its purpose and values.
