(Online Desk)

While Walmart is still restricted by laws that bar multi-brand retail in India, the company is set to aggressively expand its cash-and-carry (wholesale) stores across key locations. The global retail major plans to open seven stores next year, add another 10 in the subsequent year and take the number to 71 by 2021, Rajneesh Kumar, senior vice-president and head-corporate affairs, Walmart India, said.

This, according to him, would over 1 lakh jobs in a couple of years. Typically, each retail store adds around 2,000-2,500 direct and indirect jobs.

“This year, India was made a priority market for Walmart besides China. That said, we are getting more resources to build capacity, more talent and so on. While there are plenty of job seekers, acquiring the right talent remains a challenge,” Kumar added.

He furher claimed that the company is focused on skilling the job seekers and transforming them to be job creators. Also on the agenda are developing local medium-sized enterprises suppliers, diversifying the supply chain and enhancing women’s economic empowerment.

Walmart sees substantial opportunities in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. After Mumbai, the company is on track to opening another fulfilment centre in Lucknow.

“The distribution reach in tier-2 and tier-3 cities are not as good as metros. Our ability to serve the under-served market is huge and that is where we add most value to our suppliers. We are working with our suppliers to co-create the distribution system in the country,” he added.

The company will continue to focus on three clusters — one in the North, covering Punjab, Haryana, UP and Uttarakhand, the second is in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and the third is Maharashtra.

The Indian unit of the world’s largest retailer believes that India has improved a lot in ease of doing business in the past three years, which has helped Walmart gain over a million members across 21 centres, of which 70 per cent comprise kirana stores and the rest include re-sellers and other B2B businesses.

It used to take around four years to launch a store in India, as the process involved identifying land to getting permits and making it fully operational.

However, thanks to new initiatives like single-window approval, GST, and e-governance, it takes less two-and-a-half to three years to launch a new store, Kumar said adding that Walmart has already signed contracts for 19-20 stores, which are in various stages of construction.

Digital way: Walmart has also begun an online platform without a physical store. “Buoyed by the success of virtual stores which was started as a pilot in Hyderabad and Lucknow, we fast-tracked the mechanism of virtual stores where our sales associate helps a kirana store owner to choose from whatever they want from the virtual store and our logistics partner delivers them.

The idea was to eradicate the hassles of last-mile delivery and the time taken to do the same. We have promised delivery within 24 hours to our members,” he said. The company is also looking at bringing blockchain technology for food safety which already exists in China.