Walmart, IIT Madras partners to launch center for tech excellence for MSMEs

Walmart Global Tech (WGT) has partnered with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) to establish the Walmart Center for Tech Excellence, aimed at empowering Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the manufacturing and retail sectors.

The center will focus on developing solutions to help MSMEs adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digitization to enhance operational efficiency and profitability.

This partnership aligns with Walmart’s commitment to equipping local entrepreneurs with tools to enhance their businesses and foster sustained growth in the Indian MSME sector.

Suresh Kumar, Global CTO and CDO at Walmart Inc., expressed enthusiasm about the potential of the center to drive AI innovation and positively impact the MSME community in India, emphasizing Walmart’s ongoing partnership with IITM.

The center's objectives include building an open-sourced, domain-agnostic platform to develop engineering analytics solutions and creating a repository of case studies to expedite AI adoption in manufacturing and retail.

Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director of IIT Madras, highlighted the importance of MSME growth for economic prosperity and underscored the value of research conducted through the Walmart Center in assisting MSMEs.

Raghunathan Rengaswamy, Dean (Global Engagement) at IIT Madras, outlined the center's focus on providing MSMEs with cutting-edge AI and IoT technologies, offering domain-agnostic solution platforms for AI/ML implementations, and facilitating manpower upskilling to enhance global competitiveness.