
Walmart turns to Flipkart for tech - NicoJuicy
https://factordaily.com/walmart-turns-to-flipkart-for-tech/
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Brahma111
Whereas I agree that FK is right there when it comes to technology, this seems
a little far fetched headline. 4 yrs back during a mega sale, FK servers
crashed and they rightfully earned a lot of flak for that. From then on, they
have been doing a pretty decent job (adopting actor model, PWA to name a few).
But Walmart is also not living under a rock. I have consulted with them and
they are just as good as any other Enterprise. Their biggest challenge is
their vast team size with each group doing their own stuff in silos. FK will
not help them address that

~~~
puranjay
Flipkart does have a lot of expertise in last mile delivery and logistics.
They manage to deliver in rural India where there are no proper addresses and
infrastructure.

Plus, Flipkart likely has a lot of expertise in mobile as well, given how much
of India's internet usage is now mobile-only.

I reckon that expertise is worth a lot for any company looking to expand in
the developing world

~~~
aedron
In India, because of lack of infrastructure, you can order food from KFC
without giving your name, address or any cash up front. The delivery guy
simply tries to find the location you indicated and hopes that you show up
with cash. I am guessing KFC simply pushes any losses downwards onto the
branches or drivers.

It's fine for India, but I don't think a lot of the business models and know-
how that works in India transfers easily to conditions in the U.S.

~~~
Alterlife
I live in Bangalore and it sounds like this is out of some kind of paralell
reality.

KFC/pizza hut/dominoes don't set up shop in remote places 'without
infrastructure'. It doesn't make "business sense".

They are mostly limited to cities. They don't deliver long distances, food
delivery in general is limited to 2km, and they certainly don't deliver
without a name, contact number and delivery address.

~~~
aedron
The point is you can give them any name, address or phone number you want. In
most cases they won't even use the phone number, except for the driver if he
can't find you when he is delivering the food.

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rco8786
How is this any different than the rest of the world? If you want your food
delivered you should probably give them a findable address.

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aodin
What a strange article - a discussion of Walmart's ecommerce technology
without a single mention of its jet.com acquisition, which had over 1,000
employees in 2016
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet.com))?

The article is not praiseworthy enough to be a PR plant, and it lacks any
substance from insiders. Seems to be tea leaf reading more than anything.

I'd also add that the acquisition cost of Flipkart was largely driven by
direct competition with Amazon during the bidding process.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I was thinking the same thing, though I think Walmart is miss-interpreted they
are not stuck behind the times when it comes to technology. In fact much like
PayPal their infrastructure runs on Node (that way the front-end and back-end
code is not so diversified). Now I know some people dislike NodeJS, but I hold
the belief that programming language is irrelevant if you can be effective
with it, and I noticed PayPal got much faster / stable after they switched to
NodeJS, so JavaScript in back-end enterprise seems pretty damn effective.

Now if only we could just stop treating Walmart like an old lady who needs
hand holding when doing technology and see their acquisitions as more than
acquihires and more as investments...

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NTDF9
Walmart couldn't use Jet's technology in the US. What they want to do with FK
is two-pronged:

1\. Not lose, arguably, the second most important market in the world

2\. Bring some of that web/app first executives in the fold and apply it in
other markets like US or Europe. India is one of the few markets where a tiny
company is still head-to-head with Amazon

Walmart has money. They just don't want their old execs to run the e-commerce
show.

~~~
aodin
Marc Lore, the founder of jet.com, is currently the CEO of Walmart eCommerce
U.S.

Are you an insider? Where have you heard that Walmart was unable to use any of
the jet.com technology?

~~~
Nelkins
Disclaimer: I used to work at Jet and am biased.

Not entirely true, but not entirely untrue either. In my opinion, lots of Jet
tech was more stable, featureful, and performant than what Walmart had to
offer. But in many cases, politics prevented them from taking full advantage
of Jet's tech.

In my experience, Walmart tech was very resistant to letting Jet run services
that the Walmart website had to rely on (not in all cases; pretty sure Walmart
is using Jet's inventory system: good presentation on it here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSCzCaiWgLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSCzCaiWgLM)).
I think there was a feeling like we were encroaching on their territory. Think
about it: Walmart buys Jet, Marc Lore is made head of Walmart eCommerce,
layoffs happen on the Walmart side shortly thereafter. Not exactly something
that will foster warm fuzzies.

Walmart also gets WAY more traffic than Jet, and I think there was a little
bit of dismissiveness caused by that too. A sense of, "We are the big fish, we
are not doing anything wrong, and we are just going to keep on doing what
we're doing."

I'm sure there were other areas of close collaboration, but I didn't see too
many of them. I haven't worked there for five or six months, so things may
have changed, but that's how it was from my perspective.

I did love working there though, was a very transformative time for me as a
technologist.

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blocked_again
My friends at Walmart says this is a BS article and asked me to call this out.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Walmart did buy Flipkart though...

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blocked_again
Definitely not for tech.

~~~
NicoJuicy
So, what do your "friends" do at Walmart

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blocked_again
Tech.

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jorblumesea
But does Walmart understand why FK works and how to use it? Can they take that
talent and apply it to US markets to give them a long term competitive edge?

Digging further, what business decisions got them into this mess? Will FK help
them address their lack of vision or clarity around the new digital world?

I feel like many businesses look to some hot new tech solution for what are
fundamentally pure business problems.

Akka, PWA and Tensorflow will not save Walmart from Amazon, if that is indeed
the plan.

Anyone can buy talented engineers, but can you use them?

~~~
ravivyas
I would not call FK talent cheap, running a service at that scale is no easy
feat.

~~~
dilipray
True that. In terms of technology PayTM and Ola were doing better than
Flipkart.

~~~
jitendrac
+1 for mentioning PayTM, PayTM is improving silently which almost no one
notices.

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bluedino
Wal-mart is lauded for their tech but on a lot of aspects they are just like
any other big, old company.

On the vendor side, we get bashed by managers that are reading reports that
are over a day old, delivered by email. They run quite a bit of stuff on IBM
hardware still, which tells me they have a lot of legacy systems running.

And they try to outsource EVERYTHING. EDI, order tracking/acknowledgement,
their web portal is a clusterf--- that was IE only up until a short while ago.

[https://imgur.com/mbP35Hy](https://imgur.com/mbP35Hy)

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jitendrac
I think the acquisition of flipkart was not for tech, rather it was for the
User acquisition, the real and loyal buyers who are proved value users. aside
of it, It was also beneficial as flipkart has its own logistic and order
tracking system good enough for indian rural areas.

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throwawaywhynot
I work at walmart eCommerce and this article is just plain bs

