Walmart, one of world’s biggest retail giants is planning to collaborate more with Indian startups for seeking better access to innovative technologies for its supply chain operations and e-commerce operations. Walmart  is looking at getting into partnerships as well as acquisitions of some of the startups.

This venture is being spearheaded by WalmartLabs India, which is the technology branch of the retail company. WalmartLabs India was set up in Bangalore in 2012.K Jayakumar, vice president and managing director, WalmartLabs India told FE, “We are already working closely with four startups to develop the proof of concept and will look at technologies which are likely to bring innovative capabilities for our e-commerce and supply chain infrastructure.”

This retailer giant has 11 e-commerce websites which deals with various business transactions. At present it operates around 11,000 stores and has 240 million customers interacting with it online and offline. It was around four years back that Walmart started getting involved with startups. Today is has made over 15 acquisitions. The present undertaking in India took off last October. But a specific amount of funding has not been allocated for the same.

Through this venture, Walmart mainly aims to function as an idea incubator for catalyzing the ideas and operations of new startups, and through this it also focuses on resolving its issues and challenges in the technological domain.

There are many more non-technological firms who are looking at potential partnerships with Indian startups. Fargo, for example has set up a global startup accelerator, which has already powered about 17 firms in India. Citi Bank is another example. It’s mobile challenge is a project where tech companies can design solutions which will run on the bank’s digital platform.