In India in particular, we set a goal to purchase at least $10 billion annually out of India for export by 2027. We made that a public goal recently, and we’re excited about working with businesses in India to not only sell things in India, but to export to the United States and other countries around the world. Doug McMillon, President and CEO, Walmart Inc is of the opinion that would help create value for customers, help with our supply chain diversification, and also send another signal to the people of India that we want people in that country to prosper.
Doug underlines that there has been a lot of progress in becoming more of a digital company and being powered by technology in different ways. Historically, there were parts of our business where we really leaned on technology and our supply chain and communication with our associates in other areas. But what’s happened in recent times is that there’s a holistic digital transformation of the company that starts with our data. It relates to how we’ve connected up our systems with software and starting to put ML and AI to work. It has a front end that looks like ecommerce in the form of an app or site.
Today, in the future, increasingly AR someday, VR, voice. All these things get built on a tech stack that is more modernized than it was before. A few years ago, we’ve made some significant investments, but what we’ve learned is the change actually is more difficult as it relates to people and behavior. Building the tech, making the investments, attracting the talent to build strong tech is something we’ve been able to do. But we actually, all of us had to change our mindset in a way of working to start to design digital products differently, to work in more of an agile fashion, to collaborate with engineering and other parts of the company, data scientists and others in different ways than we had before, says Doug.
On the difficulties on handling the whole unprecedented once in a century kind of pandemic. Doug elaborates saying that it was a real challenge. We’re very proud of how our team responded, how our frontline associates in particular responded. Around the world. We operate in 24 different countries, 2.2 million people. And when the first stage started happening, of course, there was a lot of uncertainty. We figured out fairly quickly. We had five priorities, and the first priority was to keep people safe. Those that were working in our stores and our distribution centers, those that were shopping with us. The second priority was to keep the supply chain moving. We wanted to make sure we had product.
There was a lot of concern, as you’ll remember in those early days and just having product available at a good price had a bit of a calming effect. And with people, in many cases, staying home more. They were eating at home, they were entertaining at home, they were educating at home. They needed things. And so that supply chain was critical. Our third priority began to emerge quickly, which was to help others. We were going to have cash flow. We were going to be open. There were a lot of people needing employment and we needed to hire because we had higher volumes going through our system.
We hired bartenders and other people from restaurants, people from all walks of life around the world and helped many of them with temporary employment until their businesses opened again. The fourth priority for us was to manage the business during a crisis and not run into issues with inventory or cash flow or things like that. That was a concern in the beginning that became less of a concern over time. And then the fifth priority was to make progress on our plan. Our strategy. We had a strategy when the year started before 2020 got interrupted. And it turned out that the tailwinds that were associated with retail furthered our strategy. We’ve become more digital. Our delivery business has grown around the world. Our pickup business in some countries has really grown. Many of the things we’d already started just really accelerated.
While expounding on the supply chain issues and its challenges due to geopolitical tensions between the US and China. Doug says the supply chain is definitely global, and I think it will remain that way and should remain that way to a degree. In the US, two thirds of what we sell, we buy from the US. It’s either made or grown here in the United States. That other third comes from China, India, Canada, Mexico, and then a list of other countries. Those are the prominent ones in the mix around the world. That two thirds number is actually higher.
Like we will buy a larger percentage of the goods we sell in India, in India. And that’s true of every other country that we operate in beyond the US, primarily because we’re selling in those countries, with the exception of India food items. So that drives that number up. You buy a lot more locally when you’re buying and selling food. In the case of how things are changing, our goal is to buy locally as much as possible. We would like to buy more goods in the United States, to sell in the United States. We’d like to buy more goods in India, to sell in India. And then for those items where we need a global supply chain, we will buy goods from China, India and other countries. Further adding In India in particular, we set a goal to purchase at least $10 billion annually out of India for export by 2027.
On digitization Doug feels that digital transformation, unlocks opportunities. And in many of our countries, we’ve got an opportunity to help with healthcare. As I travel around the world, I don’t find very many people that are satisfied with their health care services in their country. Here in the US, we’ve got a tremendous opportunity to give people access to quality care at a more affordable price right there in their Walmart store, should they need it. And we’ve also purchased a telehealth company, and we’re building a financial services business around the world. We, as you know, have phone pay in India, which we’re very excited about. But we’re also building a financial services business in Mexico, in the US and in other places. And there’s a bit of a flywheel, a strategic flywheel that we’re building together that starts with selling products, things that people want to need moves to services. And those services can include healthcare services and financial services, which ultimately cause our customers, we think of families in particular to have a more holistic relationship with our company and to access value of products and services in a broader fashion and actually change the business model of the company.
Walmart, if you were to look at us a few years ago, the vast majority of the profitability of the company was driven just by buying and selling merchandise. That’s what we grew up doing. If you look at the composition of both top line and bottom line today, the shape is changing. We shared in our last earnings result that we’ve now crossed the $2 billion threshold in advertising income. That’s just one example.
