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Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

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Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#101
post #99
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is crazy! As we all know, online retailers are killing local businesses, in US it might make sense because the profit goes to another sector of economy, Amazon is going to hire more developers and invest in other products that in long run might not be total lose for the whole economy! what a country like India is going to gain by letting American and Chinese companies destroy her local businesses and take the pr…

Amazon.in in India is a Marketplace. Unlike US, Amazon does not sell anything directly to consumers. You will see "Full-filled by Amazon". This in fact presents great opportunity to local and far flung businesses who did not had access to market. The foreign direct investment in retail sector is not all open in India. Also as far as I know, most companies can't move huge amount of money to mainland easily. Double tax…

Amazon does sell directly to consumers via their Cloudtail store, which is a JV between Amazon and Narayan Murty.

https://www.livemint.com/Companies/1EdpKoAY7GoZLh57pXuwkO/Am...

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#102
post #85

I may be completely ignorant but, is it weird that the biggest retailer in India has an English name?

India has 22 official languages & English is the lingua-fraca.( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status... ) Almost everyone middle-class and up can atleast read English so makes sense that online retailers use that.

In the southern parts of the country (Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu), I have seen even the poorer class, auto-drivers, and cab-drivers too speak English fluently. :-)

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#103
post #38
post #33

Walmart has an awesome research and development labs known as Walmart Labs in Bangalore. Flipkart has its development headquarters in Bangalore too. They have awesome engineers too. Both Walmart Labs and Flipkart hire the best computer scientists and software engineering talent from across the country. They pay as much as and sometimes more than what Google Bangalore pays its engineers. With Walmart now acquiring a m…

show me one good thing that came from Walmart Labs.

Their GitHub page is also worth looking at: https://github.com/walmartlabs

How many nice things have Amazon open sourced?

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#104

I work for Flipkart and I am quite happy that it's Walmart who we are going to work with instead of Amazon. As an engineer, Walmart Labs (their research division in Bangalore) is a much better fit to Flipkart's culture than Amazon. The engineering talent pool in Walmart Labs and Flipkart are quite similar. In Bangalore, there are a handful of companies like Google, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Flipkart, and LinkedIn who can…

Regarding the last para, my experience had been the opposite. Whenever I enter my pincode in Flipkart, it would say we don't deliver to your area (which is a small town). Amazon and eBay didn't have any issues. All the items I tried to buy were no bigger than a home router. I contacted Flipkart 2-3 times about it over the last 3+ years. They just gave a generic response that we are trying to expand or something.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This the wrong metric to look at. If you look at number of app reviews per week on Appannie, Flipkart averages roughly twice the number of reviews as Amazon with better average rating (4.6 vs 3.9). ~85% of India only accesses internet via mobile.

I know very little about which metrics to look at but this seems like an even more wrong metric to go by. What does number of app reviews prove other than that the app is good at pushing people to review it?

I think you're right. Flipkart is very aggressive with pushing their app. At one point they converted their website into just a big link to the play store. I never bought a single item from flipkart after that. I'd rather pay more than do business with a user-hostile company.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#106

I work for Flipkart and I am quite happy that it's Walmart who we are going to work with instead of Amazon. As an engineer, Walmart Labs (their research division in Bangalore) is a much better fit to Flipkart's culture than Amazon. The engineering talent pool in Walmart Labs and Flipkart are quite similar. In Bangalore, there are a handful of companies like Google, Amazon, Walmart Labs, Flipkart, and LinkedIn who can…

Regarding the last para, my experience had been the opposite. Whenever I enter my pincode in Flipkart, it would say we don't deliver to your area (which is a small town). Amazon and eBay didn't have any issues. All the items I tried to buy were no bigger than a home router. I contacted Flipkart 2-3 times about it over the last 3+ years. They just gave a generic response that we are trying to expand or something.

What you are reporting is correct and I can understand a customer's frustration due to it.

But what you are saying is not the opposite of what I am saying.

You are saying: Flipkart is weak at delivering small items to small towns. I agree with this.

I am saying: Flipkart is strong at delivering large items to small towns and Amazon is weak at that.

Do you have examples where Flipkart did not deliver a large item (certainly much larger than your home router) such as a fridge or table to your small town? That would be an interesting example that would contradict what I am saying.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#107

I may be completely ignorant but, is it weird that the biggest retailer in India has an English name?

English is the default language if you want to reach a maximum number of Indians. Hindi would probably be second, but why bother? Personally I like our migration to a common language. I feel that our different languages divide us.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#108
post #103
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

show me one good thing that came from Walmart Labs.

Their GitHub page is also worth looking at: https://github.com/walmartlabs How many nice things have Amazon open sourced?

> How many nice things have Amazon open sourced?

Good research need not always be open sourced. That is irrelevant to it's quality.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#109
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their GitHub page is also worth looking at: https://github.com/walmartlabs How many nice things have Amazon open sourced?

> How many nice things have Amazon open sourced? Good research need not always be open sourced. That is irrelevant to it's quality.

Amazon has built a giant business on top of open source technologies. Don't you think it is natural for the open source community to expect that Amazon give something back to them out of courtesy?

The GP asked for a good thing that came out of Walmart Labs hinting at the idea that good things come out from Amazon but not Walmart Labs. Then a few commenters pointed out a few links showing the good things that came out of Walmart Labs. All of these good things happen to be open source. So it is quite natural to ask what good things Amazon bothered to open source after having built a billion dollar business on top of open source.

Re: Walmart Beats Amazon in $15B Flipkart Battle

#110
post #8

What if Walmart and Google actually teamed up? Google technology powering Walmart's supply chain? I wonder how competitive they'd end up actually being vs Amazon.

Walmart has been working with IBM using blockchain technology in their supply chain.

https://www.cips.org/supply-management/analysis/2017/june/ca...

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