It is a remarkable coincidence that the technology heads of two of the largest general merchandising companies in the United States are Indians, both hailing from Tamil Nadu. One of them, Suresh Kumar, global chief technology officer and chief development officer at Walmart, has been featured in our pages multiple times. The other is Prat Vemana, executive vice president and chief information and product officer at Target. We recently met Prat for the first time at Target's global capability centre (GCC) in Bengaluru.
From Arakkonam to Target's Top Tech Role
Prat Vemana shares his journey: he grew up in Arakkonam, Chennai, earned a degree in computer science engineering from Sathyabama Engineering College, and worked at Rane and Ramco in Chennai before moving to the United States to join Syntel. In 1997, he worked on early mobile healthcare applications, including on Palm PDA and WinCE devices. He then spent time at a think tank in Cambridge, Massachusetts, earned an MBA from MIT Sloan, and worked at Staples, Home Depot, and Kaiser Permanente—one of the largest healthcare non-profits in the US—before joining Target in 2022. Target had been in talks with him for a long time, and it was a brand that made his family 'light up.'
Putting AI into the Hands of Everyone
Now, Prat is focused on putting artificial intelligence into the hands of everyone shaping Target's retail experience, from designers and planners to store teams and digital engineers. Target is recasting retail technology for an AI-first world, and its Bengaluru centre is emerging as a key engine in that shift. The $105-billion US retailer is reworking its app, search engine, store systems, supply-chain platforms, and merchandising workflows to move from 'using AI' to what Prat calls 'running on AI.' 'It's not automating a specific process. It's rethinking the entire process,' he says.
Empowering Designers and Enhancing Store Experience
Target is known for style, design, and curated merchandise. Prat is empowering designers with more tools and intelligence, while strengthening the store experience and investing in digital discovery. Search is no longer just keyword-driven; consumers are becoming more conversational. Instead of typing 'men's red shirt,' they may ask for 'a jacket for extreme weather' or 'help me plan a cozy movie night.' The company has rewritten its search engine and product recommendation systems to be AI-ready and conversational. 'A lot of it is driven from India,' Prat notes.
Rebuilt App and Personalised Experiences
The app has also been rebuilt. 'In the last 18 months, we have completely rewritten 60% of the code,' Prat says. The goal is to make every experience composable and personalised. A guest looking for bottled water should not get the same digital experience as someone shopping for swimwear or apparel. 'We could manually create those templates, but we could also now have AI create the templates,' he explains.
Multi-Agent System and ThinkTank Platform
AI is also transforming the back end of retail. Prat points to supplier onboarding, which traditionally involves checking financial viability, industry credibility, product fit, ingredients, and compliance with Target's assortment standards. Target is building a multi-agent system to handle much of this groundwork. 'We go from a three to four-week vetting process to a three-hour vetting process,' Prat says. AI surfaces exceptions and areas needing human attention. A foundational platform for this is ThinkTank, initially developed by a US team but soon expanded to a global team spanning the US and India. It provides a control plane for AI agents, allowing teams to see which agents are running, what they are doing, and how they are orchestrated. Andrea Zimmerman, SVP and president of Target in India, says ThinkTank now operates as an integrated global platform and continues to evolve. Prat says ThinkTank 2.0 will include multi-agent orchestration, auditability, and context graphs. 'When we go from using AI to run on AI, we know where we are running,' he says.
Bengaluru Centre: An Integrated Headquarters
The India centre's role extends well beyond technology. Target in India has been around for 21 years and employs about 5,500 people. Andrea says it now operates as an 'integrated headquarters.' 'We have representation across just about every single business unit in our corporate centre in the US,' she says, including marketing, digital, supply chain, store operations, technology, merchandising, and design-linked functions. Prat says the platform that decides which product should be fulfilled from which store is run from Bengaluru. 'It's billions of calculations in an hour,' he notes. The India team also works on planograms, store layouts, product presentation, and store transitions. Every Target store varies by neighbourhood, weather, space, and customer profile. A Manhattan store may look very different from a suburban store or a college-store format. Much of that intelligence is data-driven and operated from India. Andrea says the India team is 'obsessed with the guest experience in the store.' Around 90% of Target's store remodels are delivered by teams in India.
