Amazon India Lays Off 500 Employees Across AWS, HR And Support Verticals: Report

E-commerce giant Amazon has laid off about 500 staff in India across different verticals, say media reports.

E-commerce giant Amazon has laid off about 500 staff in India across different verticals, say media reports. The fresh round of job cuts at Amazon India is part of broader layoffs announced by CEO Andy Jassy in March, affecting approximately 9,000 employees. The impacted employees include the ones from Amazon Cloud division AWS, People Experience and Technology Solutions (PXT) or HR and support verticals.

To recall, the company initially cut 18,000 positions in January and as "we completed the second phase of our planning this month, it led us to these additional 9,000 role reductions", according to the memo by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy shared with employees in March.

"I'm writing to share that we intend to eliminate about 9,000 more positions in the next few weeks -- mostly in AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch," he had mentioned.

"This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term," he added.

AWS CEO Adam Selipsky had also announced the layoffs at AWS would begin from North American, and then reach globally. "Both our company size and the size of our team have grown significantly in recent years, driven by customer demand for the cloud and the unique value that AWS offers. This growth has come quickly as we have moved as fast as we could to build what customers needed," Selipsky had earlier said.

Given this rapid growth, as well as the broader business and macroeconomic climate, "it is critical that we focus on identifying and putting our resources behind our top priorities -- the things that matter most to customers and that will move the needle in our business," Selipsky had said in another memo.

Amazon's shares experienced an increase of more than 11 per cent following the announcement of first-quarter earnings that exceeded industry estimates last month.

Despite the e-commerce giant laying off 27,000 workers and focusing on cutting costs, its revenue increased to $127.4 billion, marking a 9 per cent growth compared to the $116.4 billion reported during the same period last year. Profits also surpassed expectations, with the Seattle-based company reporting $3.17 billion or 31 cents per share, which is higher than the $2.24 billion anticipated by industry analysts.