Walmart Latest Inkiru, Acquisition drive 30% ecommerce growth

The recent news of Walmart, acquisition of Inkiru, which is a small startup focused on real-time predictive analysis clearly hints Walmarts latest effort latest effort to spur e-commerce.

 Walmart’s  latest tech-centric acquisitions  is all set to build marketshare across the online space and compete againts the Amazons and Target's of the world as the company looks to build upon its online sales. Walmart has already seen a more than 30% increase in ecommerce in the first quater, according to internetretailer.com.

"The similarities between Inkiru and @WalmartLabs are uncanny, with both having an innovative spirit and the ability to leverage big data to improve the customer experience," the company wrote in a blog post. 

Walmart CEO Mike Duke said the company expects online sales to hit $10 billion this year—an estimate that takes into account the recent purchase of Chinese online retailer Yihaodian.

Last year Walmart U.S. reported sales of $328.7 billion, Kroger posted sales of $92 billion and Target had $71.96 billion in top line revenue. The much talked about competitor Amazon, ranked No. 11 with $34.416 million in U.S. sales, but continues to be one to watch in the coming years.

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Online Retail in India Takes off, grow by 43%

Silently, steadily, e-retail has been gaining ground and is expected to touch a market size of around $70 billion (Rs 3,56,000 crore) by 2020 from the present Rs. 2,700 crore. In fact, the industry is upbeat and feels these are estimates are conservative, and the growth and market size could be even higher by 2020.

Apart from local brands and e --shopping portals , there are dozens of generic e-tailers who project themselves as one-stop-shops for everything from lingerie to laptops to luxury goods. Sachin Bansal, CEO of the runaway success flipkart.com, said his aim was to sell anything and everything that can be sold online.

The e-retailers are benefiting from the ever-increasing penetration of internet broadband, and  the rush for internet-enabled computing devices such as smart phones, tablets and laptops, and more consumers shop online.

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