Walmart teams up with Adani to take on Amazon, Reliance

Battle lines have been drawn for India e-commerce market with Walmart’s e-commerce division signing a deal with billionaire Gautam Adani to build a large retail warehouse in Mumbai.

A joint statement issued by Walmart and Adani Group on Monday (April 12) stated the warehouse will be available for use by the third quarter of 2022. It will be as big as 11 football fields and able to store 10 million units of inventory.

Analysts see this as Walmart’s (Flipkart Online) direct challenge to Jeff Bezos’s Amazon and Mukesh Ambani’s AJio – both vying to dominate the world’s fastest growing e-commerce space. Adani is now a new entrant in this three-way fight.

At the centre of this competition is an e-commerce market (India) that has the potential to generate $200 billion in sales by 2026. The pandemic has only put this process of transformation from brick-and-mortar stores to online stores on a fast pace.

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As part of the deal, Adani Logistics Ltd will build a 534,000-square-feet fulfilment centre in Mumbai and lease it to Walmart’s Flipkart Online Services.

Karan Adani, chief executive officer of Adani Ports, said, “We see this as a great opportunity to serve Flipkart’s physical as well as digital infrastructure needs.”

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In addition, Flipkart, a division of Walmart, will develop its third data centre at the AdaniConnecX facility in Chennai to help the e-commerce company keep its data within India. Adaniconnex is a joint venture between the US’s EdgeConneX and Adani Enterprises, the conglomerate’s flagship listed unit.