Amazon is likely to lay off several employees in India across divisions as part of a global plan to deal with slowing sales as consumers scale back on online shopping, according to a report.
The layoffs in India could be more than a few hundred employees out of its large workforce of about 100,000, however, the exact number of affected people in India is not yet finalised, an Economic Times report noted, citing multiple sources.
“The retrenchment is happening here (India) and discussions are underway on the numbers. There is a sense it might be relatively higher as compared to peers like Meta-owned Facebook and others where India was not affected in a big way,” an individual aware of the matter, told ET.
The New York Times said in a report on Monday that Amazon plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in “corporate and technology jobs starting as soon as this week”. The 10,000 people who could be let go represent roughly 3% of Amazon’s corporate employees and less than 1% of its global workforce of more than 1.5 million, according to the report.
In India, Amazon runs several businesses, including ecommerce, data centre, and Prime Video. The layoffs in India would be across engineering and other departments, and could impact a relatively smaller part of its total workforce in the country, according to ET.
Last month, Amazon’’s muted third-quarter earnings as well as disappointing fourth-quarter projections led the company’s stock to plummet as much as 20%. Its third-quarter earnings were severely impacted by unpredictable consumer shopping habits and inflation.
Globally, tech companies have announced layoffs as part of their cost-cutting efforts. Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company has decided to reduce the size of its team by about 13%, cutting over 11,000 jobs. Earlier this month, Elon Musk reduced half of Twitter’s workforce, or about 3700 jobs, at the social media firm.
(YourStory has reached out to Amazon India for comments on India layoffs. The article will be updated accordingly with its response.)
