Skilling traders: Walmart to train 50,000 entrepreneurs in India

Walmart will continue to invest in its India businesses and build on its growth in the country, the ‘most important’ market for the firm, company officials said on Monday. The US-based retailer, while announcing the Walmart Vriddhi Supplier Development Programme (Walmart Vriddhi), said it will train and prepare 50,000 Indian small businesses and help them gain access to domestic and global supply chains.

The comments come at a time when traders in the country are waging protests against Walmart-controlled Flipkart and Amazon for weaning away customers from small and medium businesses through predatory pricing. Traders claim the deep-pocketed firms have failed to adhere to the foreign direct investment (FDI) norms in e-commerce mandated by the government.