Wipro has appointed Subha Tatavarti as CTO. The US-based Information Technology industry veteran has joined Wipro from Walmart where she was senior director of technology commercialisation. Prior to that, she has spent over 10 years with PayPal and was Head of product, data platform and infrastructure. She brings over 20 years of professional experience in product development, delivery, lifecycle management, cloud computing services, data and analytics.
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Amit Atri has joined Kellogg Company as Head of Enterprise Systems. The role will be based out of Bengaluru. Atri, in his new role, would be responsible for strengthening the enterprise systems across Finance, Supply chain, HR process and procurement across the region. Previously, he was VP-Digital Transformation at Walmart. Atri, has close to 18 years of experience and has worked with Unilever, Accenture and SAP in the past.
Walmart is planning to use robots to keep up with a rise in online orders. It is planning to build warehouses at its stores where self-driving robots will collect groceries and build the order in an hour to less to make them ready for shoppers to pick up. A year ago Walmart has started testing the robots at a store in Salem, New Hampshire. The retailer aims to speed up orders that are brought outside to shoppers’ cars as virus-weary shoppers avoid going inside stores.
PhonePe reported a 74% rise in yearly revenue to Rs 147.21 cr in the FY ended March 2020, from Rs 245.8 cr a year earlier. Its total loss narrowed 7% to Rs 1,772.93 cr, YoY. The business unit’s total expenses were up 2% to Rs 2,202.91 cr. Advertising and promotional charges, its largest expenditure, dropped 22% to Rs 1,016,64 cr. Employee costs, another big cost centre, were cut 10% to Rs 478.92 cr.
Digital payment platform PhonePe has raised Rs 150 cr from majority stake owner Flipkart, days after it was hived off as an independent company from the e-commerce marketplace, which had acquired it in 2016. This has come days after PhonePe raised $700 mn in a round led by Flipkart owner, Walmart, at a valuation of $5.5 bn. PhonePe currently has over 250 mn registered users in India and is a completion to Google Pay, Paytm, Facebook.
Walmart’s CEO for the Asia region – Dirk Van den Berghe has quit and likely to step down from the Flipkart’s board also. This has come at a time when Flipkart is planning to go public next year, at a valuation of $50 bn. Berghe joined Walmart in 2014 as CEO of the Canada region, and also served as the chief executive of Walmart China. In his latest stint, he led Walmart’s Asia region and was part of the team that led the $16 bn investment in Flipkart in 2018.
Flipkart and PhonePe have space for other investors and can even go for stock market listings, said Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. McMillon, however, did not share details but said both Flipkart and PhonePe could diversify in a number of ways, including IPOs. Walmart bought around 77% of Flipkart for roughly $16 bn in 2018. Bengaluru based Flipkart, was earlier reported, to preparing for an IPO overseas in the year 2021, which could value the firm at up to $50 bn.
Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal will join PhonePe’s board of directors, as it separates from parent Flipkart to become independent. PhonePe co-founders Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, Rohit Bhagat and two other independent directors from Walmart will be also on the board. Bansal in Nov 2018 had resigned from Flipkart following an internal investigation into an allegation of “serious personal misconduct”. He has now co-founded startup consultancy xto10x Technologies.
PhonePe is “partially” spinning off to kick off a new journey after it has secured $700 mn in a new financing round. The partial spin-off means that Flipkart’s stake in PhonePe will reduce from 100% to 87%. However, the “two businesses will retain their close collaboration.” The round was led by Walmart with participation from some existing investors gave PhonePe a post-money valuation of $5.5 bn. PhonePe has amassed over 100 mn monthly active users.