Lowe's India to invest $1 mn in STEM education, digital skills

Lowe's India, the global capability centre (GCC) of the US-based $96-billion home improvement retailer Lowe's,  has announced that it will invest $1 million over the next three years in upskilling programs for local communities. These programs will focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, digital skills and technologies in the sustainable energy space, among others. 

As part of this commitment, Lowe’s will partner with the Indian Institute of technology (IIT) Dharwad in Karnataka this year to ​upskill more than 300 underserved youth, innovators, entrepreneurs and teachers and equip them with futuristic technologies. 

On his first visit to India, Lowe’s Chairman and CEO Marvin Ellison emphasised the company’s commitment to its centre in India and the local communities. He said that “technology and the teams in India continue to play a pivotal role in the company’s journey to become a $100 billion omnichannel retailer”. 

In March, Lowe’s India announced the expansion of its operations with a second office in Bengaluru to support its workforce, which reportedly grew by 60% during the pandemic. This expansion enables Lowe’s India associates to continue to grow and provide unique capabilities across engineering, analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, product management, merchandising and finance functions. 

“Technology has been a critical element in Lowe’s transformation, and our team in India has played a pivotal role in driving growth,” said Seemantini Godbole, Lowe's executive vice president, chief digital and information officer. He added that at Lowe’s we recognise that just as technology continues to enable our business growth, it also presents possibilities to do good. Hence, we are enabling the next generation with the right skills to support themselves, their families and the environment”.

Ankur Mittal, senior vice president, technology and managing director for Lowe’s India said, “The company is delivering cutting-edge technology products and business solutions to support the company’s omnichannel experience as well as making efforts to build a workplace where our associates thrive and feel a strong sense of belonging.” 

Since the inception of Lowe’s India’s operations in Bengaluru in 2015, it was adding value to its parent organisation, focusing on analytics, business operations, finance and accounting and shared services. Over the next 12-18 months, Lowe’s started ramping up its operations by hiring more people, transferring more technology projects to the centre, turning into a complete ‘innovation hub’.  

“Today, our teams are doing work on data engineering, data science, AI/ML, robotic and cloud engineering to build platforms that are helping the teams to work on complex business problems,” Mittal said in an interview with Tech Circle in July 2022. He added that the in 2021, the company "rolled out a new kind of retail media sales and marketing service on our ecommerce site that delivers meaningful margin, shopping traffic and product sales growth". 

The India team played a key role in developing the platform. Earlier the global centre had built features around personalisation, seamless checkout and overall site stability, he said.