Walmart India fires around 50 executives as part of restructuring: Report

Walmart Inc, the world's largest retailer, has fired around 50 of its India executives as part of its restructuring in the country, three sources with direct knowledge told Reuters.

The move underscores the struggles Walmart has faced in expanding its wholesale business in India. The Bentonville, Ark. based company currently operates 28 wholesale stores where it sells goods to small shopkeepers, and not to retail consumers.

The firings mostly affected executives in the company's real estate division because the growth in the wholesale model has not been that robust, two of the sources said.

"It's happening because focus is shifting to e-commerce rather than physical (stores)," said one source, who declined to be identified as the decision is not public.

Walmart did not respond to a request for comment.

Walmart has placed bold bets on India's e-commerce sector.

In 2018, it paid $16 billion to acquire a majority stake in India's online marketplace Flipkart, in its biggest global acquisition.

The second source added that while Walmart could slow down the pace of opening new wholesale stores, the focus will increasingly be on boosting sales through business-to-business and retail e-commerce.

Some of the executives were sacked last week and more could be let go on Monday, two sources said.

In a statement to India's Economic Times newspaper, which first reported the news, Walmart said it was always looking for ways to operate more effectively and that "this requires us to review our corporate structure to ensure that we are organised in the right way to best meet the needs of our members".

Walmart has around 600 staff in its India head office out of a total of around 5,300 nationally, one of the sources said.

Soon, Walmart will put groceries right in the fridge while you're out

Walmart Inc. already sells more food than anyone else. Now it wants to put those groceries right in your fridge.

Beginning this fall, about 1 million people in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Vero Beach, Florida, will be able to get cereal and celery while away from home. Walmart staffers -- sporting wearable cameras -- will arrive in company-owned cars and unpack the food in customers’ kitchens.

“Once we learned how to do pickup well, we knew it would unlock the ability to deliver,” Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon said in a statement. “What if we not only cover the last mile to customers’ homes, but even the last few steps?”

The service, dubbed Walmart InHome, will be led by Bart Stein, who joined the retailer last year and had been working inside the company’s Store No. 8 incubator on a project code-named “Franklin.” The effort follows a small pilot program Walmart conducted two years ago in California with smart-home provider August Home, which used workers from startup Deliv to handle the in-home deliveries.

Fees and other details of the new service, like what smart-home hardware would be required, weren’t disclosed. Walmart currently charges as much as $9.95 for home delivery, which it offers in more than 100 metro areas, with another 200 coming on board this year.

Real-Time Consent

Employees who deliver the food could be paid a premium, but the approach shouldn’t cost Walmart much more than existing fulfillment methods, US e-commerce CEO Marc Lore said Thursday.

One thing Lore and Stein were clear about was that their delivery staff won’t enter any home without the customers’ real-time consent, transmitted through its shopping app. Customers can then watch the delivery happen remotely through the employee’s wearable camera, and can also choose to get food delivered to their garage rather than the kitchen.

“The camera will have to be streaming before access is granted,” Stein said. “In our pilot testing, we were concerned about trust. But one delivery can turn someone from a skeptic into a believer.”

Customers can also leave unwanted items that they want to return to Walmart for the driver, who will bring them back to the store.

Moving Fast

The new service, which was tested in Lore’s home state of New Jersey, will keep a lid on expenses by bundling deliveries and not spending much time in each home, Lore said.

“From a cost perspective, it’s not all that different,” Lore said at a media event in Walmart’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas.

Separately, Walmart said Thursday it would work with a Palo Alto, California-based technology startup called Gatik to test autonomous deliveries this summer in Arkansas. Earlier this year, the state legislature there passed a bill -- backed by Walmart -- to allow self-driving cars on state highways.

At a store in Rogers, Arkansas, Gatik displayed three autonomous delivery vans: two Ford Transit Connect small vans and a full-size Ford Transit van. Its delivery service for Walmart will be based on a “hub and spoke” system, where Gatik’s vehicles will transport packages from a large warehouse to a smaller pickup spot closer to customers.

The vehicles will travel on fixed routes and won’t be outfitted with a human safety driver, Gatik CEO Gautam Narang said in an interview.