'I dont believe that physical stores will disappear in India or anywhere else in the world'

Jeremy King is senior vice president and chief technology officer of Global eCommerce at Walmart. He has been on the forefront of cloud computing and brings over 20 years of experience building highly scalable technology platforms to support global commerce operations. King is also an expert on engineering methodology and productivity, SaaS and presentation layer frameworks. Since joining Walmart in 2011, King has led product, engineering, and web ops team members in charge of developing Walmart's online business on a global scale as the company moves to the next-generation of e-commerce. Prior to Walmart, King spent 3 years at LiveOps as executive vice president of technology where he guided Fortune 500 companies to migrate their services to the cloud, embrace crowd sourcing in the enterprise, and adopt highly available and secure SaaS platforms. From 2001 to 2008, King was the vice president of engineering and software development at eBay. In his interview with Dataquest, King talks about Walmart's plans for the Indian market. Excerpts

- Jeremy King
senior vice president and CTO,
Walmart Global eCommerce

Amazon.com has moved from being an unusual niche competitor for Walmart to a force that can reinvent the industry. What are the measures that you have been taking in this regard?

Mike Duke, our CEO, has publicly stated that Walmart's key priority is to 'win in e-commerce'. Now, we are witnessing a transformation in the way people shop largely due to the proliferation of mobile and social media. This is driving a fundamental change in customer shopping behavior.

Everyday more and more customers expect retailers to offer a seamless shopping experience across physical stores, online, and mobile devices or 'anytime, anywhere' access. With our global scale combined with our commitment to technology innovation - formation of @WalmartLabs and addition of key talent - we are well positioned to succeed in the next-generation of e-commerce.

You recently stated that you will have to start from scratch to build a foundation. How would you describe this challenge and your plans to deal with it?

I spent many years at eBay where we built a platform for e-commerce 1.0 from the ground up. Today, we are at e-commerce 2.0 and we need to build a powerful platform that is mobile and socially ready. We never had to think of this before. It's a huge challenge but it is exciting and gives me and my team the ability to do a once-in-a-lifetime undertaking that will affect millions of people everyday.

Walmart made increased investments like spending more than $300 mn in acquiring 5 tech firms, hired more than 300 engineers and code writers in the US and India. How successful would you rate this effort?

As I said, Mike Duke is committed to 'win in e-commerce' and we will make the right investments in the products and talent to make this happen. In the last few months, we have launched Shopycat, a social gift finder that uses Facebook; Social Sense which gives us an idea of products to stock based on social signal; new iPad and iPhone applications; and 'Get on the Shelf' which enables anyone in the US to submit a product idea over YouTube and have it voted on to get the opportunity to be carried at Walmart.com and in the stores. Today, Walmart is beginning to be seen as a technology innovator in the areas of social and mobile, so I would say we are seeing success that we will continue to build upon.

What is the strategy that you have formulated to deal with the online competition offering stuff at cheaper prices?

I don't believe that physical stores will disappear in India or anywhere else in the world. The shopping experience will change where shoppers will want to have 'anytime, anywhere' access to discover, research, and shop for items, be it on a mobile device, online, or in a physical store.

Please mention any recent steps taken to lure shoppers in India and globally.

Around the holidays, we announced our Shopycat product in the US. Shopycat is a social gift finder that allows you to find the best gifts for your friend and family using Facebook. We have 150,000 installs of the product and the average user session today is at 5 minutes. It was higher over the holidays, as one might expect it to be 15 minutes a session.

In January, we announced our 'Get on the Shelf' contestant where individuals and businesses could submit product entries for a chance to be sold at Walmart.com and in Walmart stores in the US. Videos are put over YouTube and the American public votes on the products. More than 4,000 product entries were received. Over one mn votes were cast in the first round of voting where 10 finalists were selected. The next round of voting will have 3 winners and ends on April 24.

Please highlight your plans for the Indian market.

Over the last 5 months, @WalmartLabs, a unit of Walmart Global eCommerce, has been building its India operations with a focus on social and digital technology. It plans to hire an additional 100 individuals to create a next-generation e-commerce platform.

The new platform is designed to connect Walmart's digital and physical properties worldwide giving customers and suppliers in a seamless way to interact and shop across any device or store anywhere in the world. The company is looking to recruit engineering talent in the areas of high-scale computing, network infrastructure, systems administration, and big data.

At Walmart, we are committed to build the technologies required to power e-commerce for consumers today and in the future. In the past few months, @WalmartLabs India has attracted best-of-the-class talent into the group. As we expand our operations, we look forward to adding to this base to create a team whose focus is to build products that matter to millions of customers around the globe.