been engaged in a bruising battle with amazon in the us and elsewhere while its home turf is under threat from amazon which is pushing more and more people to shop online and even buying oldschool players like whole foods walmart has been desperate to globalise its business and build its own technological arsenal it has acquired jetcom shoebuy and bonobos to beef up its tech muscle the results have been mixed in china and japan it strug gled to make a mark now flipkarts last steps as an independent company may also be walmarts first steps to redeem its india business global business and india share a symbiotic relationship and the country is the most attractive market in present times when there is a slowdown in many parts of the world krish iyer walmarts india chief said at an event in delhi recently in some categories such as apparel and white goods flipkart will be aided by the bentonvillebased behemoth for example flipkart and its fashion and apparel businesses myntra and jabong want to scale their private label initiatives and could be helped by the vast reach of the giant retailer last year sachin bansal made it clear that flipkart was focused on growth even as it was raising funds and talking quietly to walmart on a possible sale we have some focus areas we continue to invest in whether it is our supply chain expansion of our selection and thinking of new ways of bringing down prices ai and machine learning are also focus areas he told et now on the sidelines of the et startup awards last year several investors partners and vendores who have dealt directly with walmart say flipkart will benefit from the formers focus on profits and bottom line flipkarts margins have improved dramatically from around 50 to 2530 but this will help them think more like a retailer and less like a discountdriven etailer says arvind singhal ceo technopak a retail consultancy in this deal what walmart values the most is flipkarts 100 million users and the access to perhaps the only large market they havent formally entered according to data from his firm and industry sources the total indian retail market as in fy2018 is 650 billion and a tenth of this is occupied by organised retail ecommerce accounts for 3 making it a 195 billion market go cart flipkarts transition is unlikely to be painless in the shift from profligacy to profits flipkart is also expected to look inward and streamline the bloated marketing sales and supply chain teams two senior management consultants told et magazine despite sachin bansals statement stressing on ai and machine learning technology is not likely to be a big priority going forward walmart invests several billion dollars in technology and opened a lab in bengaluru two years ago to build much of this inhouse including walmart pay a service that allows customers to pay from an app flipkart say two senior executives in ecommerce companies