Not in a hurry to get GenAI agent to India: Walmart's Vinod Bidarkoppa

Walmart is yet to put a timeline on when to introduce its customer-facing generative AI (GenAI) agent Sparky in Flipkart, said Vinod Bidarkoppa, chief technology officer, Walmart International.

 

The world’s largest retailer, which launched the agent in June, expects Sparky to join the company’s growing suite of Gen AI-powered shopping capabilities, which currently includes search within the navigation bar, summaries of product reviews, product descriptions, and product comparisons.

 

“We haven’t specifically put a timeline for it. But our approach is that all the operating Walmart markets should benefit from it. It may not look exactly the same, but the philosophies would still be similar,” Bidarkoppa told Business Standard on the side-lines of its recently concluded Converge 2025 flagship event.

 

The GenAI assistant is now exclusively available to customers in the US and not to Walmart’s international business which covers India, China, Mexico, and Canada.

 

Bidarkoppa, along with other senior Walmart executives, was in India to attend Converge, the flagship event by Walmart Global Tech, the technology arm of the US retailer.

 

Sparky can help customers in numerous ways: search to find items, synthesise reviews, offer insights to prepare for any occasions, answering product questions and even comparing options. The move by Walmart is similar to the one adopted by other retailers – make shopping experience on website and apps as seamless as possible to offer better customer experience and gain traction for more sales. 

 

Bidarkoppa said the core platform has to be implemented before the agents can work in other countries. “We look at how we encapsulate those agents and ladder up to that super-agent, right? So whether it's Marty (agent for seller and supplier) or Sparky, the approach is the same to make this go live.”

 

Walmart Global Tech in India has centres in Bengaluru, Chennai and Gurugram. Walmart earlier this year had also signed a deal to lease an area of 465,000 sq.ft in Chennai for five years.

 

CTO of Walmart Inc Suresh Kumar described the company’s technology transformation in three phases; the first focusing on addressing the legacy systems and starting to build core infrastructure of data and Cloud on which innovations can happen. The second was about building core capabilities of strengthening the supply chain and new businesses like advertising and data ventures. The last involved using AI and agentic systems and scaling up the platform-enabled operations.

 

“One thing was always clear right from the beginning, which is the role that AI was going to play in terms of how we enable our customers to have delightful, natural shopping experiences and how AI was going to transform the way in which we run our business internally as well. In fact, we also believe that agentic capabilities are also going to fundamentally transform how we build technology itself,” he explained.