Flipkart deal wrapped, Walmart now eyeing deals in Brazil and Japan

The sun never sets on Walmart Inc.’s empire, thanks to its network of stores across five continents. But in the span of 10 days, chief executive Doug McMillon has begun dramatically redrawing the retailer’s map, and there’s likely more to come as it places bets to remain on top.

“All of a sudden, everything is in play,” said Dave Marcotte, an analyst at Kantar Retail.

In less than two weeks, Walmart has agreed to cede control of its British business to a competitor and spend $16 billion to acquire India’s e-commerce leader in its biggest-ever deal, fending off Amazon.com Inc. The wheeling and dealing show how McMillon is focusing on high-potential markets like China and India, finding partners to help it battle online and cutting loose middling businesses. He’s got more work to do, though, and subpar markets like Brazil and Japan might be next on his list.

Walmart’s far-flung international units don’t get much attention, but they’re important as a source of cash, management talent and ideas that percolate into its core U.S. operations. Sales growth outside the U.S. once topped more than 10 percent annually, adjusted for currency moves, but it’s less than half that now as sluggish economies, store closures and fierce competition have taken their toll.

Flipkart will become Walmart today: Is that really good news for India?

When Carl Douglas McMillon, president and chief executive officer of Walmart Inc, arrives at the Embassy Tech Village headquarters of Flipkart in Bengaluru later on Wednesday to acquire India’s first-to-a-billion-dollars-startup, he will be accompanied by Walmart International’s Judith McKenna and CEO (commerce) Marc Lore. It will be a triumphal return to India for the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer which will be partnering Google’s parent Alphabet Inc in a deal estimated at $18-20 billion enterprise value – Walmart will own about 60 per cent stake, and Alphabet will get to own about 15 per cent of the online market place.

The passage of the past five years has obviously dulled memories. All recent media reports seem to have conveniently glossed over the history of Walmart’s previous foray into India, in partnership with Sunil Mittal’s Bharti group. Walmart in 2012 launched a global review of corruption after a New York Times report on bribery at the company’s Mexico operations. The review by its lawyers flagged India among the countries with the highest corruption risk. The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act forbids American firms from paying bribes. Almost on cue, in November that year, Bharti Walmart suspended a number of employees, including the chief financial officer, as part of an internal investigation into bribery allegations in the Indian operation. By June 2013, Raj Jain, the CEO of the India operations, quit after six years at the helm of the company. It did not take much time thereafter for the Walmart-Bharti JV to fall apart.

Amazon edges past Microsoft to become world's leading IaaS cloud provider

Amazon become the main supplier inside the Infrastructure-as-a-provider (IaaS) public Cloud services marketplace in 2016 with 44.2 per cent share, leaving Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and others a ways at the back of, marketplace studies company Gartner stated on Wednesday.

according to Gartner, the global IaaS public Cloud marketplace grew 31 consistent with cent in 2016 amounting to $22.1 billion -- up from $16.8 billion in 2015.

Amazon served the maximum customers across the broadest variety of use instances, from Cloud-native startups to mid-marketplace corporations to huge organisations.

"The market for Cloud services is developing faster than certainly every other IT marketplace today, with a great deal of this increase coming on the price of the traditional, non-Cloud services," stated Sid Nag, studies Director, Gartner, in a announcement.

"even as Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-carrier (SaaS) also are exhibiting sturdy growth, IaaS is expected to expose the fastest boom over the following 5 years," Nag delivered.

but, Gartner anticipated that Amazon will witness boom erosion in proportion as the non-hyperscale vendors struggle to provide fee thru their services, at the same time as other IaaS marketplace leaders will see an growth in increase.

Paytm payments bank launching next week, but not with Shinjini Kumar as CEO

After more than a year's delay, online mobile wallet major Paytm would finally launch its payments bank on May 23. But in a crucial change, former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive and PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant Shinjini Kumar, who was chosen for the role of the payments bank chief executive officer (CEO), has stepped down and is in exit mode, while Renu Satti, vice-president, business, will take over. (A payments bank can carry out most banking operations but can't give out loans or issue credit cards.)

"We are in the process of launching Paytm Payments Bank on May 23. We recently received approval from RBI for Renu Satti to be the CEO," said a Paytm spokesperson.

Kumar told Business Standard that she stepped down as she was relocating back to Mumbai. Paytm Payments Bank headquarters would be in Noida. "I want to be in Mumbai. I tried to relocate to Delhi, but as things are evolving more, it was difficult to travel back and forth between Delhi and Mumbai. That is the reason I decided to step down," Kumar said.

She added that sending a fresh list of probable CEOs for the payments bank for approval, as well as some other conversations with RBI, caused a delay in final approval.

Satti started as manager, human resources, Paytm, nearly a decade back and has risen up the corporate ladder since. She has headed different teams for online marketplace and mobile wallet at the firm.

The payments bank will launch its services first in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and then expand to northeast.

In January, Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma told Business Standard that in the first phase the payments bank would have 100,000 banking correspondents. "In the first phase, we are targeting as many as 200 million wallets, current accounts and savings accounts. While normal banks target savings accounts and current accounts, we will target wallets as well," he had said.

In the last one and a half years, Paytm postponed the opening of the payments bank seven times. Sharma in January had even announced the launch of the bank. But it got delayed.

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Ebay: How India's oldest e-commerce player lost out in the race

The $1.4 billion funding of Flipkart, announced today, includes an investment from eBay as well as a merger of eBay India’s business with Flipkart in exchange for equity. This marks an exit of sorts for eBay from India, although eBay.in will continue to function as a part of Flipkart. It also brings the curtain down on a journey that began 13 years ago.

Long before the arrival of Amazon and Alibaba, or even the launch of Flipkart and Snapdeal, it was eBay that made a foray into Indian ecommerce with the acquisition of Bazee for US$50 million in 2004.

Flipkart launched in 2007 and Snapdeal in 2010. Backing from large hedge funds Tiger Global and SoftBank sucked them into a race to grab market share with discounts.

The eBay model, which originally connected buyers and sellers in auctions, got pushed to the periphery with the broader range of categories on Amazon and Flipkart as well as the discounts.

In an effort to remain a significant player in Indian ecommerce, after the entry of Amazon, eBay chose to invest substantially in Snapdeal. But a US$5 billion infusion by Amazon into its Indian arm put paid to that bet.

Too little, too late

Late last year, eBay fired its product and tech team at its development center in Bangalore, in a sign it was winding down its India operations.

eBay has been trying to rethink its ecommerce model to serve small retailers and millennial shoppers, but the Indian market already has three huge players in Flipkart-Snapdeal, Amazon, and Alibaba-Paytm. Opinion: It's curtains for India's oldest ecommerce player, eBay

It’s too late in the day for eBay to adapt its model to India even if it wished to emulate Amazon.

Parking eBay.in in Flipkart was the only face-saver left for the first global ecommerce player to set foot in India. (READ MORE)