Desert Island Retail Technology: Walmart’s Dr. Astha Purohit talks digital wallets, AI and drones

To kick off a new RTIH series, in which leading industry figures share the retail soundtrack of their lives, we sit down with Walmart’s Dr. Astha Purohit. In her role at the US retail giant, Astha is leading the enterprise customer privacy platform. A physician (MBBS) and former McKinsey consultant with an MPH from Emory and an MBA from MIT Sloan, she has held product leadership roles at CVS Health and DoorDash, scaling AI and ML at consumer retail scale.

RTIH: Your earliest memory of interacting with retail technology

AP: I grew up in India in the 90s, and back then “retail” meant the small neighbourhood store down the road. You picked up your daily essentials - flour, lentils, fruit and vegetables - and at the end the shopkeeper tallied everything on a piece of paper, told you the total, and you paid in cash.

Then one day I walked in and there was a computer on the counter with a scanner attached. Computers were still new in India then, so it really stood out. I asked my dad what it was for, and he said it was the newest technology - at the store it handled the billing and the records, but it could do far more than that, and it would matter a lot more in the years to come.

RTIH: Most frequently used retail technology in your day-to-day life

AP: My most frequently used retail technology is the digital wallet on my phone. I tap it to pay at the coffee shop, to pay my grocery bill, to scan-and-go in the Walmart app. One tap of my phone, and I walk out with my things.

What I find interesting is how invisible it all is. People forget how much is happening under that one tap. There’s a layer that hides my real card number from the shop, a fraud check - more and more of it run by AI - happening in real-time, my bank approving the whole thing in under a second, and, when I’m in a retailer’s own app, a loyalty and identity layer that knows it’s me. I see none of it. As a Product Manager, I think that’s the mark of a great product

Dr. Astha Purohit: “AI is being applied right across the retail stack, and it’s incredibly exciting to be part of that change.”

RTIH: The most exciting and promising retail technology innovation right now

AP: For me, the most exciting retail technology is how AI is being applied to retail. It’s incredible how broadly it’s being used across so many parts of the business - from how supply chains run, to how products get priced on the shelf, to how customers find what they want. 

A few examples I find really powerful right now: For the last 20-odd years, e-commerce has been built around a person browsing a website. Now AI agents are starting to do that for people - handling routine grocery orders and perishables, comparing options, making choices, and at times even completing the purchase. It sounds like a small change, but it’s fundamentally rewriting the rules of retail: you’re now building not just for humans, but for agents too.

Search is another. AI is changing not only how customers find what they’re looking for, but how the catalogue itself gets built and how related and adjacent products are surfaced - all increasingly powered by AI underneath. AI is being applied right across the retail stack, and it’s incredibly exciting to be part of that change.

RTIH: The retail technology innovation you’d like to take to a desert island

AP: I’d take a delivery drone with me on a deserted island.

Retailers have spent the last few years scaling drone delivery - small autonomous aircraft that fly, navigate and avoid obstacles on their own, using ML, AI and computer vision. On a deserted island, that’s the most useful thing I could own. I can send it up the coastline to look for a town or a passing ship, have it carry a signal out past the horizon, or bring back whatever supplies it can reach. It’s the one piece of retail tech actually built to cross distance on its own - which is exactly the problem I’d have on a deserted island.

5. The most overhyped retail technology innovation you most definitely wouldn’t take to a desert island

The most overhyped thing in retail tech right now isn’t a product - it’s the idea that everything needs AI.

AI is genuinely powerful; that’s not in question. But there’s an old line that to a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and that’s where a lot of the industry is right now. AI has become the one tool everyone’s excited about, so every problem has an AI solution - even ones where a simple rule, a clean spreadsheet, or a person could handle the issue faster and just as well.

And AI isn’t free. Every one of those AI calls costs real money in compute, and there’s an environmental cost behind all that processing horsepower. Defaulting to AI on everything isn’t just lazy - it’s expensive and wasteful. The harder skill, and the one talked about far too little, is using AI wisely: being clear-eyed about the projects where it genuinely earns its keep and pays back the cost, and honest about the many places where it doesn’t.

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