Amazon revealed in October that about 14,000 positions would be eliminated, affecting close to 10% of its white-collar staff. In India, the cuts touched roughly 800 to 1,000 jobs across departments such as finance, marketing, HR, and technology. Amit Agarwal, Amazon’s senior vice president for emerging markets, told the Economic Times in an interview that the layoffs are intended to simplify the company’s structure by reducing layers of management, not as a cost-cutting measure.
“To operate that way, we need fewer layers. The workforce reductions are primarily about removing those layers, and we’ll continue to do that because we want to stay lean and move like a startup. At the same time, we’ll keep hiring where we need to,” Agarwal told ET.
Layoffs are not mainly the result of advances in AI or budget pressures:
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy emphasized during the company’s quarterly earnings call that the layoffs are not mainly the result of advances in AI or budget pressures. He made it clear that other factors are guiding the decision. He said, “The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven, not right now at least. It really, it’s culture.”
After committing $35 billion to the country, Amazon has announced one of its most ambitious commitments yet to the Indian market – facilitating the creation of an additional one million (10 lakh) new job opportunities in the country by 2030.
Amazon doubles down on India’s digital ecosystem
The $35 billion investment will be channelled into three major priorities: accelerating AI-driven digitisation, strengthening India’s export ecosystem, and generating new employment opportunities. This fresh pledge comes on top of the nearly $40 billion Amazon has already invested in India since 2010, which has supported the development of large-scale fulfilment centres, logistics networks, and cloud infrastructure across the country.
“We are humbled to have been a part of India’s digital transformation journey over the past 15 years, with Amazon’s growth in India perfectly aligned with the vision of an Atmanirbhar and Viksit Bharat,” says Amit Agarwal, Senior VP Emerging Markets, Amazon. “We have invested at scale in growing the physical and digital infrastructure for small businesses in India, creating millions of jobs, and taking Made-in-India global.”
