Walmart losing ground as online sales rise

​Hyderabad: Till now, it is a general perception in India and around the world that the ever-increasing online sales will take sheen off small neighbourhood stores and kiran shops, pushing majority of them towards the brink of closure.

But the power of ecommerce seems to be reaching far and wide, putting even Walmart, the undisputed leader of global retail landscape, on a strong notice.

Founded in the US in 1962, Walmart, which operates over 11,500 stores in 28 countries and employs over 2.2 million people worldwide, is currently the world’s largest company by revenue.

And, its annual revenues of $480 billion in 2015 go on to prove its dominance in the global retail space. Also the largest grocery retailer in the US, it has generated 62 per cent of its total revenues from the home market in 2015 and it’s here that Walmart is likely to lose ground to online players like Amazon.

A report by financial services major Morgan Stanley revealed that the e-commerce business accounted for 10.4 per cent of total retail sales in the US during 2015, a significant upswing from 9.3 per cent in the year earlier.

And, Amazon has driven the growth with its sales in North American market clocking a whopping 30 per cent rise in the last calendar year to $107 billion.

Compared to this, Walmart was forced to be content with an upward growth trajectory of over one per cent. Though the retail giant also has its own ecommerce business in the US, the growth there is nowhere close to that of Amazon.