As India is among the top five sourcing markets for the US-based, retail giant, Walmart Inc, the company has launched  its promising ‘Walmart Vriddi Supplier Development Program’ in partnership with Swasti, an India-based nonprofit. The program will be on training about 50,000 Indian MSMEs to enable them in becoming an important part of domestic and global supply chain market. According to this program, 25 institutes will to be developed across Pan-India which will provide training for these MSMEs in the course of five years with first institute being expected by 2020; covering all aspects of business management, from best practices in workforce management, promoting customer-centric strategies and environmental sustainability. This initiative is also expected to provide sustained growth for the Indian MSME sector and help create more domestic jobs. 

“We’re not chasing a headline. We are very thoughtful about it. When we say we’re going to train 50,000 MSMEs, it’s not a small number, but we know we can deliver on that. A big part of our success around the world is that we were able to tap into supply chains in an efficient way,” said Judith McKenna, president and chief executive officer, Walmart International.

“Over the past decade, we have worked deliberately and consistently to bring Indian MSMEs into our supply chain. That’s because not only is it good for business but also because we have a long-term commitment to India. It not only makes good business sense but when the communities we serve flourish, so does the entire local economy,” she added.

According to Judith McKenna, the program will connect the network of supplier communities that the company (Walmart Inc) have today in Flipkart and Best Price. Using their industry rich expertise Wakmart Inc is set to help develop new robust curriculum to expand and accelerate the work further and faster.

Most interesting thing to be noticed is that the announcement was made just when we were witnessing the rising protests against online retailers such Flipkart and Amazon for using predatory pricing strategy which violets FDI policy.