Though Walmart has been in the news over the past few month due to its deal with Flipkart, Walmart has been present in India as Walmart Labs, which is its research division engaged in developing local products for its global business. Walmart labs has now reportedly acquired a small startup, Appsfly.io, as per a VCCircle report.
As the name suggests it is a startup working on developing micro apps and the nature of this deal is more like an acqui-hire, where no monetary compensation is paid to the owners or founders of the startup; instead, they come on board and start working as employees of Walmart Labs continuing to do what they were doing but serving the primary interests of Walmart.
One may keep hearing more on the activities of the US retail giant Walmart now that the company has acquired Flipkart and as it tries to plant its feet firmly it will seek to recruit more people in various capacities and functions and make local acquisitions that gel with its overall objectives in running the ecommerce operations.
VCCircle quotes Walmart Labs India as saying that the team will work alongside the existing technical hands at the Lab to develop a “wide range of engaging, consistent shopping experiences to Walmart’s customers".
Of the original 5 founders of Appsfly.io, only one is now joining Walmart Labs. Appsfly has been working on the digital side of connecting data sources, businesses and systems, a technology that Walmart feels it could utilize in its operations. The usual objective of developing and deploying advanced technologies to make the customer experience on their sites while shopping better has also been mentioned as one of the reasons for this acqui-hire decision.
Based out of Bengaluru, Appsfly was incubated at Axilor Ventures.
As for Walmart Labs, it supports the main company’s ecommerce initiatives through development of ideas, technologies and products using the local resources and trying to apply them on a global scale. With around 1800 already on its rolls, Walmart Labs is likely to add another 1000 to this number in the days to come.