Walmart has selected three IT vendors in India — Infosys Technologies, Cognizant Technology Solutions and UST Global — for multi-year contracts worth over $600 million (around Rs 2,750 crore). The amount is roughly equivalent to the value of goods — textiles, handicrafts and other products — that the world's largest retailer sources from India every year.
This development is expected to boost the IT outsourcing landscape in India, given that Walmart typically prefers to develop its retail applications in-house. Walmart gradually started buying packaged retail applications from leading software vendors such as Oracle, HP and SAP only towards the end of 2007. It had, however, given Infosys and Cognizant pilot projects about five months ago.
Initially, the three vendors are expected to earn Rs 250 crore to Rs 300 crore, each, annually. The figure is set to grow as Walmart increases outsourcing of work from its main merchandising division. Infosys and Cognizant are expected to garner a larger share of the pie between them.
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