New Delhi, Jan 13: Walmart, 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 said.
The move underscores the struggles Walmart has faced in expanding its wholesale business in India. The Bentonville, Arkansas 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 organized 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.
Comments
The day is not too long to fight for Muslim Freedom/Indipendent - India will FIRE....
That means bakht indian are easily fooled by their cheddi leaders from knowing the TRUTH of WORSHIPING ONE GOD... (NA TASYA PRATIMA ASTI) and these cheddis very easily CONTROL these IGNOrANTS of their GOD given LIFE and BLIND them from understanding their own religion .... Swami AGNIVESH is telling the TRUTH but cheddis blinded the Bhakts so shakuningly that they ignored truth and and stand with the cheddis cos of their religious IGNORANT... Learn from AGNIWESH, cow is not your mother or God its an ANIMAL created by ONE MERCIFUL GOD for human sustenance thru milk or meat... Human beings are an intelligent creation of GOD, if they dont try to know this ONE GOD who created all that exists, then they are really easily FOOLED by the evils of the Society. Wake up guys dont be FOOLS of our time
Yea there is no wonder if one day may afgan talaban enters india to sacrifice their life to protect muslims from crime of saffron talaban killings of innocent muslims.
Well said Mr. Taroor. You are totally right. Even its dung has value also.
Safer to be 'a ugly than a wife of Shashi Tharoor: Sunanda Pushkar
Add new comment