Walmart has appointed Suresh Kumar as the company’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer. Kumar is replacing Jeremy King, who left Walmart to join Pinterest.

His appointment comes as Walmart is undertaking major investments in its e-commerce business to compete more effectively with Amazon.

At Walmart, Kumar will directly report to the CEO, Doug McMillon. On Kumar’s appointment, McMillon shared in media, “The technology of today and tomorrow enables us to serve our customers and associates in ways that weren’t previously possible. We want to take full advantage of those opportunities.”

He further said that Suresh has a unique understanding of the intersection of technology and retail, including supply chain, and has deep experience in advertising, cloud and machine learning. And, he has a track record of working in partnership with business teams to drive results.

Kumar comes with an extensive experience of over 25 years. Before joining Walmart, Kumar was working with Google where he was serving as Vice President and General Manager of display, video, app ads and analytics. Before joining Google, he was the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and operations.

He was also associated with Amazon in various leadership roles, which included vice president of technology for retail systems and operations, and he led Amazon’s retail supply chain and inventory management systems. Before Amazon, he was a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

On joining Walmart, Kumar shared in media that Walmart is one of the great success stories in how a company evolves over time to serve the changing needs of its customers, and today, it is in the midst of an exciting digital transformation.

ImageCredits: Walmart news