Walmart Labs acquihires Indian startups FloCare and BigTrade
The technology arm of US retail giant Walmart has acqui-hired healthtech startup FloCare and B2B wholesale trading platform BigTrade for undisclosed sums.
Walmart Labs, the technology arm of the US retail giant Walmart, has bought two Bengaluru-based startups to strengthen its customer service systems. The company acqui-hired healthtech startup FloCare and B2B wholesale trading platform BigTrade for undisclosed sums.
Commenting on the announcement, Hari Vasudev, Center Head and Vice President – Technology, Walmart Labs India, said,
“We are in an exciting phase of transformation and it feels great to add terrific minds from the startup ecosystem in India to our growing team. Walmart’s online pharmacy and supply chain business are renowned across the globe and I am sure the FloCare and BigTrade teams will strengthen our capabilities as we strive to build awesome omnichannel customer experiences around the globe”.
As part of the deal, Karthik G., Piyush Madan, and Varsha Patil from FloCare have already joined Walmart Labs’ customer technology team to work in the health and wellness space and digitisation of retail services. On the other hand, BigTrade founders, Sunil Soni and Kiran Lingam have joined the supply chain technology team at Walmart Labs.
With offices in Bengaluru and California’s Palo Alto, FloCare's platform enables healthcare services to come together and make “ageing at home” more affordable and scalable. It has been backed by venture capital firm Accel Partners. BigTrade, on the other hand, simplifies the buying and selling processes for businesses.
Walmart Labs also acqui-hired micro-app startup Appsfly last year, followed by machine learning startup Inti.ai in December, and data annotation startup DataTurk in February.
Based in Bengaluru, Walmart Labs India team is engaged in creating cutting-edge engineering and product development solutions to support the company's strategy of offering customers an "anywhere, anytime" shopping experience.
With 11,300 stores globally, Walmart serves over 275 million customers in a week. Its FY 2019 revenue was $514.4 billion and it employs over 2.2 million associates worldwide.
(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)
