A local report by media has said that Walmart has been making preparations for winding their physical presence up in India and has indicated doing so by firing one third of their top executives in the region.
The largest retailer in the world has planned to halt the expansion of new stores in India and is going to continue the cutting of staff there. The reports say that the executives who have been sacked already include the vice presidents across the agri-business, fast-moving consumer goods, real estate and the sourcing teams. The teams that are responsible for the finding of new locations for stores have too been disbanded as per the report.
The company is seeing no future in the operations in India as it is looking to sell it or enter into a merger with an e-commerce platform known as Flipkart and it had bought in the year 2018 for $16 billion as per the reports.
The exit in the field of brick-and-mortar stores has come after struggling for a decade in the country. The government in India has been regularly stymied the global brands for protecting the local owners of stores. These rules are designed for protecting the local stores which are known locally as the ‘kiranas’ from the competition that comes from global retailers of overseas countries. These regulations have been stemming the growth of a lot of companies such as Amazon Inc. The pressures of politics have been growing too for the foreign e-commerce competitors as well.
The spokespersons of Walmart have not made any comments about these reports as of now although the company had earlier refuted the reports of local media houses in April last year about the pulling of expansion plans by the company.
