Amazon To Fire Around 1,000 Employees In India As Part Of Global Layoffs

Ecommerce major Amazon is set to fire around 1,000 employees in India as part of its global layoffs which are set to impact as many as 18,000 of its global employees.

According to sources cited by the news agency PTI, Amazon’s retrenchment exercise will impact 1% of the 100K employees Amazon has in India. The ecommerce major has cited an uncertain economic environment as a reason for the layoffs.

“The decision to eliminate 18,000 job roles across the globe will impact about 1,000 employees in India,” the PTI source said.

The layoffs at Amazon have resulted in the elimination of various roles across tech, human resources and Prime verticals in India, according to Inc42 sources at Amazon India. The retrenchment exercise was notified by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a blog post earlier this week.

In the blog post, Jassy said, “In November, we communicated the hard decision to eliminate a number of positions across our Devices and Books businesses, and also announced a voluntary reduction offer for some employees in our People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organization. I also shared that we weren’t done with our annual planning process and that I expected there would be more role reductions in early 2023.”

At the same time, Amazon India also informed the Indian labour ministry in November 2022 that the company has seen employees leave voluntarily. The development came after the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) requested the government to intervene over the alleged layoffs at Amazon India.

According to an Inc42 source, software development engineers have started resigning under the company’s voluntary separation program (VSP). Employees have been offered to either join other business verticals or resign and take a severance package, sources told Inc42 in November last year.

The VSP package includes a lump sum severance payment equivalent to the base pay of 22 weeks, a one-week base salary for every six months of service (up to a maximum benefit of 20 weeks paid severance), medical insurance coverage for six months and a notice period or pay in lieu.

Amazon’s layoffs come at a time when tech layoffs and Indian startup layoffs have continued in 2023 as well. Since the start of 2023, Indian startups such as Moglix, UpScalio, Bounce and Harappa Education have laid off employees, as the startup layoffs near 20,000 since the start of 2022.