Walmart is now eyeing to acquire the Latin American food delivery service Cornershop for USD$225 million, an announcement made on Thursday specified, as a move to ramp up the company's e-commerce presence in areas including Mexico and Chile.
This acquisition deal, according to Reuters, manifests the shopping company's intent to further grow its investments as it ties up with other online delivery services around the world. It is also believed that Walmart could now be following the examples of Amazon Inc, the second trillion dollar-worth company in history.
As indicated by the report, shares of Walmart's Mexican subsidiary, Walmex, took an upsurge by more than 3 percent as soon as the acquisition deal surfaced on the news. This is a record-high for the Mexican division since late July.
Cornershop, a three-year-old company, offers on-demand delivery through its mobile app. The firm was founded in San Francisco but provides a marketplace platform for grocery, food, and even medical products in Mexico and Chile.
As pointed out by industry analysts, Walmart's purchase of the retail app will help expedite the delivery services of the company as well as of its other subsidiaries like Superama and Sam's Club stores, in the aforementioned regions.
Signum Research, in its report, said that the transaction proves to be very positive, at least in the part of the giant retailer, as this could provide more convenience for its growing customer base. Moreover, it could help Walmart achieve higher growth in terms of online sales.
Reuters added that Walmex will be the one to take over the operations of Cornershop in Mexico. However, as clarified over at Market Watch, the app's present executives and staff will retain their respective posts in the newly-acquired business.
Expanding Global Interests
The deal to buy Cornershop comes after Walmart's overseas investment for the online delivery company based in China, Dada-JD Daojia, a report from Biz Journals indicated. From its initial USD$50 million investment, Walmart poured another USD$320 million of capital last month, upping its ownership stake on the Chinese company by 10 percent.
Dada-JD operates through its JD Daojia online platform which offers delivery service from more than 100 Walmart stores in 30 cities throughout China.
Walmart, according to the business publication, has also made an alliance with the Japanese delivery service, Rakuten, for a joint venture that seeks to establish a new online grocery delivery service in Japan.
This project, which will be taken over by Walmart's Japanese subsidiary, Seiyu GK, will be known as Rakuten Seiyu Netsuper and is slated to launch before 2018 ends.
