Amazon, Walmart brace for crucial Diwali showdown

NEW DELHI: Around 6 am each morning, more than 150 women troop into a multi-level warehouse in the suburbs of Chennai, a coastal city in southern India.

To the humming whir of giant overhead fans, they scurry around the vast metal-covered depot, sorting parcels by zip code and tossing them into giant cage-like bins, wheeling around enormous package-laden trolleys, and loading boxes on conveyor belts.

“Let’s rock, guys!” a male voice blares in English over the PA system.

The scene at Walmart Inc’s Chennai unit is typical of warehouses across the country, staffed by hundreds of thousands of workers who work at fever pitch ahead of the Diwali holiday season, which kicked off this month and runs through November 4 — the zenith of India’s annual shopping calendar.