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For Raj Jain, who was replaced earlier this week by Ramnik Narsey as Walmart's country head, investing in India was like running "a marathon". It took long for the results to show. Jain won't be with the company to see what the investments he had visualised soon after the government lifted the curbs on foreign investment in multi-brand retail will lead to.
Jain, 54, had joined Walmart in 2006. After working with the China division of the world's largest retailer for one year, he had taken charge of its promising India business. While waiting to set up retail stores in the country because foreign investment was not allowed in the sector, Jain could only handle the cash- and-carry or wholesale operations of Walmart, in a 50-50 joint venture with the Bharti group, in the six years that he spent in India. And Bharti group's EasyDay, for which Walmart has been providing back-end and infrastructure support, was all the retail experience that he got in this job. Before Walmart, Jain did stints at companies such as Unilever and Whirlpool.
Still, a criticism that has often been levelled against the former president of Walmart India is that he was a misfit in the retail industry. "He was in the wrong job," says an ex-colleague.
While that's a subjective view, another former colleague narrates some of the mistakes that the company made while Jain was the boss. Jain's team wanted several brands of olive oil stocked at a Ludhiana store some years ago, but the packs never moved from the shelves for months. That's a market which perhaps doesn't care much about olive oil. In another instance, hundreds of pieces of denim jeans had to be shredded, resulting in some losses to the company, as sufficient due diligence was not done to check the veracity of the brand, a former colleague says.
Wrong hiring is another allegation flying around against Jain. A critic argues that "his Team A was just not right". Many of these top-rung people at Walmart India were hired from the companies that he worked at earlier, he points out.
The joint venture with the Bharti group, which may be extended when Walmart announces its retail foray, has also gone through some ups and downs with Jain at the helm. An industry watcher indicated that there were chances of the joint venture falling apart in the early days.
In fact, in reply to a Business Standard question last year after the government had allowed foreign investment in multi-brand retail on whether Walmart would sign the agreements for its retail foray, Jain laughed and gave a cryptic reply. "Agreements with whom," he had asked. When the reporter mentioned "Bharti", Jain replied, "Those are on-going discussions. So what agreements we will sign with whom is being discussed."
On Thursday, after Walmart Asia CEO Scott Price announced the leadership changes, Jain didn't take calls or reply to text messages.
His job at Walmart did not end on a cordial note, according to people in the know. Even as the company has been in the middle of many controversies, including internal investigations into anti-bribery laws across markets including in India, the Enforcement Directorate probe into Walmart's investment of $100 million in a Bharti group company in alleged violation of FEMA rules, and its lobbying disclosures to the US Senate, the news of Jain's departure came as a sudden development. And he left the company without the customary farewell or friendly goodbyes.
Nobody quite knows why exactly Jain had to leave Walmart. The company's performance not meeting the expectations of the American bosses is being talked about as one of the reasons. It is possible that Jain may have been the fall guy as well in the cleansing act that Walmart wants to project to the Indian government in the face of so many messy probes.
Jain was often spotted having breakfast meetings with colleagues in hotels, sometimes prior to catching early flights. His office interactions with co-workers were mostly limited to regular weekly updates or scheduled coffee breaks. Whatever the people skills, organisations are getting ultra sensitive about performance, which ultimately means the bottomline and the topline of the companies, as an industry veteran puts it.
What next? "Jain knows how to bounce back," says an industry representative who knows him well.
