Amazon is set to lay off more than 500 employees in India as part of its latest global workforce reduction, which will see about 16,000 roles cut worldwide, according to people familiar with the matter.
The India impact is expected to be split almost evenly between the company’s e-commerce operations and Amazon Web Services (AWS), with AWS likely accounting for a slightly higher share of the exits.
The latest round of job cuts follows a similar exercise in October, when Amazon had announced the elimination of around 14,000 roles globally. Taken together, the two rounds amount to nearly 30,000 job losses, or close to 10% of the company’s global corporate workforce, marking the largest downsizing in Amazon’s history.
Local Market Pressures
In India, Amazon employs about 130,000 people across its e-commerce, cloud and corporate functions. Sources said the layoffs in the local e-commerce business come against the backdrop of weaker performance in recent months, particularly during the last three major sales events, where the company lost ground to rival Flipkart in terms of traction and volumes.
At AWS, the impact is linked largely to the nature of work handled out of India. A significant portion of the India-based workforce supports global teams and leadership roles. “When a global role is eliminated, the corresponding support roles in India are also affected,” a person familiar with the matter said.
In some cases, employees may be redeployed internally, depending on requirements and skill alignment.
In a blog post announcing the global cuts, Amazon said the move was part of an effort to simplify its organisational structure. “We have been working to strengthen our organisation by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy,” the company said.
“While many teams finalised their organisational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now.”
Employee Transition Support
The company added that employees in the US would be given 90 days to look for other roles internally. Those who do not find alternative positions will be offered severance, healthcare benefits and outplacement support. Similar support is expected to be extended in other geographies, including India.
Amazon said it would continue to hire selectively in areas critical to its long-term strategy, adding that broad-based layoffs were not its preferred approach.
Earlier in 2025, CEO Andy Jassy had indicated that the increasing use of generative artificial intelligence and automation would gradually reduce the need for certain corporate roles over the coming years, even as new types of jobs are created.
The total layoffs in the last three months surpass the roughly 27,000 jobs Amazon cut across 2022 and 2023. Amazon currently employs about 1.57 million people globally, the bulk of whom work in warehouses and fulfillment centres.
Around 350,000 are part of its corporate workforce. The latest round of cuts underscores the pressure on global technology companies to rein in costs amid slowing growth and changing business priorities.