Walmart Hires Global Tech Chief -- WSJ
29 May 2019 - 05:02PM
Dow Jones News
Veteran of Google and Amazon joins retailer as it ramps up its
ad business, e-commerce
By Sarah Nassauer
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (May 29, 2019).
Walmart Inc. is hiring a former executive from Amazon.com Inc.
and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to lead global technology, creating a
new senior role as the world's biggest retailer ramps up its
efforts to take on Amazon.
Suresh Kumar will become Walmart's global chief technology
officer and chief development officer starting in July, the company
said Monday. Mr. Kumar will report to Walmart CEO Doug
McMillon.
Walmart's longtime U.S. technology chief, Jeremy King, left the
company in March.
Mr. Kumar will oversee both consumer-facing and internal
technology efforts. He will help Walmart speed up its digital
transformation, Mr. McMillon said in a blog post. "We have a long
way to go," he said.
Walmart is working to becoming an increasingly tech-focused
company, buying up e-commerce startups, investing heavily to boost
online sales, adding more grocery-delivery options and working to
ramp up its digital ad revenue. The bulk of Walmart's revenues and
profits came from around 4,600 U.S. stores as of the most recent
quarter.
Mr. Kumar, 54 years old, is a vice president at Google where he
worked on the company's network advertising as well as advertising
on Gmail and parts of YouTube. He previously spent about four years
at Microsoft Corp. working on cloud infrastructure. Before that he
spent nearly 15 years at Amazon, where he oversaw about 500
engineers working on core retail functions, such as pricing, supply
chain and vendor management.
Quarterly sales at Walmart have risen steadily for over four
years, as lower prices and online investments help the retail
behemoth grab market share from weaker retail competitors and
online sales rise. Those efforts have hit profits, leading Walmart
to increasingly focus on cutting costs elsewhere. Walmart's
e-commerce sales are still a small percentage of overall sales,
around $15.7 billion in the U.S. as of last fiscal year ended Jan.
31.
Mr. Kumar -- who will be based in Walmart's Sunnyvale, Calif.,
office -- will "set out technical strategy, combining advances in
computing with Walmart's strengths" in customer service, Mr.
McMillon said in the blog post. Walmart's current chief information
officer, Clay Johson, and all unit CTOs will report to Mr. Kumar.
Marc Lore, Walmart's head of U.S. e-commerce, will continue to
report to Mr. McMillon directly, a spokesman said.
Mr. Kumar holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Princeton University
and a bachelor of technology from the Indian Institute of
Technology Madras, in Chennai.
Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 29, 2019 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Walmart (NYSE:WMT)
Historical Stock Chart
From Feb 2024 to Mar 2024
Walmart (NYSE:WMT)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024