indica News Bureau-
Walmart Labs, the technology arm of US retail giant Walmart, has acquired two Bengaluru, India-based start-ups – FloCare and BigTrade – for an undisclosed sum, according to an IANS report.
FloCare, which also has an office in Palo Alto, California, is a health-tech company that organizes clinician needs to make “aging at home” more affordable and scalable, IANS reported. The company was founded by former Google research scientists Gagan Goel and former InMobi employee Gaurav Gupta and was funded by Accel Partners, according to Business Standard.
BigTrade, offers a B2B trading platform which provides an “end-to-end” business solution from the discovery of the product or supplier to payment of the product according to IANS. The company was founded by former Infosys engineer Kiran L and former Yahoo tech lead Sunil Soni, according to Business Standard.
FloCare has joined Walmart Labs’ customer technology team, and BigTrade has become part of the organization’s supply chain team, IANS reported.
“We are in an exciting phase of transformation and it feels great to add terrific minds from the start-up ecosystem in India to our growing team,” Hari Vasudev, center head & vice president – technology at Walmart Labs India, said in a statement Tuesday. “Walmart’s online pharmacy and supply chain business are renowned across the globe and I am sure the FloCare and BigTrade teams will strengthen our capabilities as we strive to build awesome omnichannel customer experiences around the globe”.
Walmart Labs appears to be on a spree of “acqui-hiring” – the practice of buying a company, getting new tech innovations and hiring key team members. In September, Walmart Labs brought on board key team members of Bengaluru-based Appsfly, which had built a system for micro apps to get hosted and streamed on any platform. Likewise, in December, Walmart Labs added the key tech team from Int.ai, an artificial intelligence firm that had developed expertise in blending machine learning with data analytics to uncover insights that significantly impact business metrics. In February, Walmart Labs acquired machine-learning firm Dataturks, which was founded by former Flipkart employees Mohan Gupta and Gajendra Dadheech.
Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore, has a metro area population of about 8.4 million people and is the capital of the Indian state Karnataka.
