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Business News/ Companies / People/  We want to get the best talent in India: Target’s Navneet Kapoor
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We want to get the best talent in India: Target’s Navneet Kapoor

Target India is hiring, and investing in digital and in data sciences, says Kapoor

Online retailers in India are growing at a crazy pace and they are throwing ‘big money’ at the same talent that Target wants to go after, says Target India managing director Navneet Kapoor.Premium
Online retailers in India are growing at a crazy pace and they are throwing ‘big money’ at the same talent that Target wants to go after, says Target India managing director Navneet Kapoor.

Target Corp. is paying top dollar to beef up talent in India as the US-based retailer tries to boost its technological capabilities and compete better with Amazon.com Inc. and other rivals on its home turf.

In an interview, Target India managing director Navneet Kapoor talks about its 18-month-old start-up accelerator in India that is incubating retail and technology start-ups. Its Bengaluru office, which has 2,800 employees, works as its second headquarters. It is currently working with start-ups such as Whodat and Wazzat Labs. Edited excerpts:

Why is there a need to speed up the start-up accelerator programme in India?

Target, like rest of the retail industry, is undergoing a massive change globally, perhaps the largest that we have seen in our history, driven by the digital disruption around us over the last decade.

Through the 2000s, most large retailers were disrupted by the likes of Amazon and others. We believe that the future is omni-channel. We believe that it’s our decade to drive the disruption, but we have got to be a technology-led organization, in addition to being a merchandising-and-marketing-led organization and that’s a significant change within the organization.

While we’ve been a successful and profitable brand in the US, we know the future is not going to be like what it has been for the last five decades. It’s going to be highly disruptive and the pace of change is perhaps highest in the history of mankind.

A lot of what we are doing now with the (start-up) accelerator and internally is to enable cultural change, and technology is clearly part of that future.

How is that changing your operations in India?

We are changing our technology DNA, because historically most of our technology has been outsourced to third-party vendors. But now we’re like, “hey we’ve got to build world-class capability", because we are not competing with an average technology company. We are competing with a top technology company like, say, Amazon. It’s a technology company first and a retailer second. That’s our competition and we better be as good or better if we wish to succeed in the future.

It’s a massive change happening and we are leading the charge from here. The accelerator allows us to tap into the ecosystem around here in terms of technology, data and other related capabilities. Mobile is absolutely the future of retail; it’s a window to all shopping in the future. It is the fastest growing channel.

So, yes, our investments are in mobile, data analytics, content. Change has been going on since the last two years, but it kicked in recently; we got a new CEO last August—Brian Cornell. Winds of change were already under way for a while.

The digital story has been going on for us for a while, but we are finally finding our stride. But it’s by no means done.

So will Target invest in any of the start-ups potentially?

We will invest in (start-ups) if they are looking for dollars. But we are not into this for the sake of equity, that’s not the gig for us for now. Our goal is to get them moving faster, to accelerate them and accelerate our technology faster. After the four months (the duration of the accelerator programme), hopefully they have piloted their product in our store, our website, on the app, then there are multiple options we can work on.

We haven’t made an acquisition here yet, but we continue to work with them in some way or the other. I won’t be surprised if in the next, say, one year or so, we would have something substantial coming out of India.

Target announced job cuts last year. Did that affect your hiring in India?

The year before, we had some reduction. We are going through change in the US where we let go of people. We will rationalize and we will also invest in newer areas like in digital, in data analytics, and India will be a big part of that. We are worried about getting the best talent here. The top three check-out engineers in the country, that’s what we are going after. We’re not looking at someone where we can hire at $20 an hour and look at saving costs, I want the best, because my competition is Amazon. If I don’t have the best three check-out engineers, I won’t be able to design the best check-out on my website.

So are you hiring more in India?

Yes we are hiring, we are investing in digital and in data sciences. We were one of the top recruiters in IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) this year and we pay top dollars to get the best talent.

We were not going to IITs five years ago because we didn’t have the cool work for them. Today we have work which is so exciting that we can offer, and everyone is joining. We go to Indian Institute of Science, to Indian Institute of Statistics. We bring returning Indians, we’re hiring from the Valley, we’re hiring from Boston, from other parts of the world.

It’s a talent play. You have to have the best talent if you wish to be a top-tier retailer.

A bunch of American retailers such as Lowe’s have recently opened technology centres in Bengaluru. Will there be a war for talent?

Bengaluru is clearly the hub for this kind of talent. Despite so many new companies coming and competing for the same talent, I think we are looking at a different kind of talent pool, and to attract that kind of talent pool, it’s not just about opening up shop, you got to have great culture, great business impact, great stores to get there and I think we’ve gotten there over the last 10 years.

I don’t lose sleep over losing talent to other retailers, but I do lose sleep over losing to e-retailers in India. They are growing at a crazy pace and they are throwing big money out there at the same talent that we want to go after. They poach from us big time. That’s the worry.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Suneera Tandon
Suneera Tandon is a New Delhi based reporter covering consumer goods for Mint. Suneera reports on fast moving consumer goods makers, retailers as well as other consumer-facing businesses such as restaurants and malls. She is deeply interested in what consumers across urban and rural India buy, wear and eat. Suneera holds a masters degree in English Literature from the University of Delhi.
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Published: 23 Apr 2015, 12:49 AM IST
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