Exclusive: Amazon To Cut 2,000 Jobs In India In Restructuring Drive

Ecommerce giant Amazon laid off 1,000 employees in India over the last week as part of its ongoing global restructuring exercise, sources told Inc42.

The exercise is ongoing in the current week as well and will impact mid-senior and senior level employees. Overall, the number of employees being impacted by the exercise in India may go to up to 2,000, the sources added.

Layoffs are currently underway at Amazon’s Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru offices, with Prime Video, people experience and tech/ human resources, Q&A devices, retail stores and AWS verticals hit the hardest.

“In some verticals entire teams have been laid off. Mostly, L3 to L7 levels have been impacted,” one of the sources said.

L3 to L7 represent a progression from entry-level support roles to senior individual contributor and management positions.

The entire retail business services (RBS) division of over 20 employees in India was laid off last week on a single day. “They are giving two months’ salary and two months’ time to find a job internally. For L4 and above positions, an outside job placement support is being provided in addition to remuneration,” one of the impacted employees said.

Meanwhile, the sources also said that Amazon India is likely to undertake another restructuring exercise in January this year.

Responding to Inc42, Amazon India directed us to a note written by Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti, and said it had nothing more to add.

Notably, Amazon announced in October-end that it would undertake a restructuring exercise which would result in reduction in 14,000 job roles at the company.

“We’re working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted, including offering most employees 90 days to look for a new role internally (the timing will vary some based on local laws), and our recruiting teams will prioritize internal candidates to help as many people as possible find new roles within Amazon,” Galetti said in the note.

Severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits will be offered to those who do not find another role in Amazon.

Amazon’s AI Push

The ecommerce giant said the restructuring exercise was being undertaken to reduce bureaucracy, remove layers, and shift resources to ensure investments in its “biggest bets” amid the rapid evolution and adoption of AI.

“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones). We’re convinced that we need to be organised more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business,” Galetti added in the note.

Notably, Amazon is betting big on AI and has invested at least $8 Bn in Anthropic. This is besides the in-house LLM models being developed by the company.

Amazon is not the only major company to cut jobs amid the AI push and rising automation due to AI. Earlier this year, Microsoft also cut thousands of jobs. A number of Indian startups have also attributed their layoffs in recent times to automation due to AI adoption.

Amazon reportedly employs about 1.2 Lakh people across India. Besides fuelling its global operations with Indian talent, the country is also an important market for the ecommerce giant.

While Amazon India has struggled to make profit in the country so far, its units managed to cut their losses in FY25.

 

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