Walmart new partnerships to improve the supply chain

A supply chain the size of Walmart’s is less linear than its name implies. It’s more similar to a web: Each connective point, each alternate route to the center, makes the web stronger. Comprising the web are people and products. Each new point strengthens the web, and progress relies on Walmart’s sourcing team, whose search for innovative approaches to supply chain improvements – and ultimately the customer experience – leads them to more than 100 countries around the world. Walmart’s greater goal is augment the supply chain and create more sustainable alternatives for customers

Against food waste in India

In India, Walmart is working alongside an agritech startup GreenPod Labs to pilot a creative solution to food waste. It will help bring better, fresher products to the customer while giving the ability to source fresh produce from totally new countries of origin. GreenPod Labs was created in Chennai to answer one question: How to slow down the ripening of fruit in transit? The benefits here are wide-reaching. It extends the travel time in the supply chain, helping the produce stay fresh longer, and delivering a better product.

GreenPod Labs solution

The company is producing small sachets filled with plant extracts that activate the natural defense mechanisms of fruits and vegetables and slow the rate of microbe growth, which serve to slow the ripening of fruit and mimic that “still on-the-vine” freshness. Testing the product has proven a truly international effort. GreenPod’s team provides the sachets from India, which will be applied to mangoes in Peru before shipping to the U.S. Upon arrival, Walmart partners with the University of California Davis to evaluate efficacy in multiple environments. It’s one example among many of the kind of global collaboration Walmart enables, alongside brilliant people and partners, to bring better to the world.

Open for brilliant partners

“Working with a global player like Walmart revalidates the importance of our work in reducing fruits and vegetables post-harvest losses and quality degradation,” said Deepak Rajmohan, the CEO of GreenPod Labs. “It’s been a great learning experience to interact with the sourcing and innovation team to understand the current challenges.” Pilots like the one with GreenPod Labs build on Walmart’s history of innovation and enable sourcing to provide amazing items to customers around the world.