Walmart is betting big on its Indian Global Capability Centres as they take the lead in building Agentic AI and core infrastructure for the retail giant’s worldwide operations.
Suresh Kumar, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer of Walmart, said the company is investing in India to tap into the country’s strong talent pool. “Whether it is the latest Agentic AI capabilities, core infrastructure, or capability. So, it forms a very integral part of how we run global technology,” he explained.
Walmart runs two GCCs in India, located in Bengaluru and Chennai. These centres are focusing heavily on Agentic AI, which are autonomous systems designed as super agents that combine multiple capabilities to carry out end to end tasks for the retail industry.
As part of this push, Walmart has rolled out Wibey, its internal AI agent for developers. Wibey supports the complete lifecycle of software development, from product specifications to design, coding, testing, deployment, and monitoring. According to Kumar, this has already shortened feature development cycles from weeks to just days.
On the customer side, the company has launched Sparky, a conversational multimodal AI assistant. Sparky allows shoppers to interact using text, voice, or images. A customer planning a trip could, for example, ask Sparky for luggage suggestions and receive recommendations not only for suitcases but also for packing essentials. “We believe AI will fundamentally change how our customers shop. It is about making the experience more natural and more delightful,” Kumar said.
Walmart has also introduced Wispik, an AI augmented reality tool that helps store associates locate inventory in back rooms and restock shelves quickly.
When asked about safeguards in AI projects, Kumar said the company uses a human in the loop model to validate outputs. For more subjective tasks such as product recommendations, multiple models are used along with a third agent to cross check results. “Guardrails are very important, but how you implement them depends on the problem you are trying to solve,” he added.
Balu Chaturvedula, Country Head of Walmart Global Tech, noted that the US and India teams work together seamlessly on global problems as one single unit.
On jobs, Kumar said roles will evolve but headcount is expected to remain stable. “We believe that in the long run, we will have roughly the same number of people, give or take,” he stated, stressing that Walmart will continue to be people led and tech powered.
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