Amazon Layoffs Hit India Right As the Great Indian Festival Begins

Amazon Layoffs Hit India Right As the Great Indian Festival Begins

 

The Great Indian Festival went live at midnight on October 8 and my feed has been full of deals ever since. There are offers like up to 65 per cent off on home appliances and a 10 per cent instant discount on SBI cards. Then another headline landed right next to the sale banners. Amazon is cutting jobs in India in the exact same week. Both stories are true and both are happening at once.

Let me start with what is actually confirmed. Staff learned about the cuts on October 6 through email and many talked about it on an internal Slack channel. Employees in the US and India and the UK received notices. Reuters reported that fewer than 1000 corporate employees are affected worldwide and the cuts are mainly in the Stores business. Indian reports say at least 100 people in India were hit mainly across retail and customer service. Some coverage also points to selling partner services teams and engineering roles tied to retail.

Now the part nobody can pin down. Amazon has not said how many roles went in each country. One outlet claimed around 1000 retail employees in India were affected while others put the number far lower. I would treat the bigger figure with caution until Amazon or a stronger source confirms it. Amazon confirmed the reduction but described it as a small number of roles and said it adjusted parts of its Stores business to match current priorities.

This is not a one off. Amazon cut 14000 employees in October last year and then announced about 16000 more worldwide. The latest round comes after roughly 30000 corporate job cuts. Reports connect the newest cuts to a larger plan by CEO Andy Jassy to cut costs and reduce corporate bureaucracy. Coverage also mentions that Amazon plans to invest around 220 billion dollars in AI related areas. So the pattern looks like money moving from some desks to different bets.

Here is what makes India feel strange. Amazon says it created more than 160000 seasonal work opportunities across 400 cities for the festive rush. It also plans 20 new fulfilment centres and six new sort centres and 150 new last mile delivery stations. A large new Bengaluru campus has opened too. So no this is not Amazon packing up and leaving India. One analysis even warned that subtracting layoffs from seasonal jobs gives a misleading picture of net employment. That is fair. But a warehouse worker hired for the festive season does not replace a salaried employee with a career path. They are very different kinds of work.

Then there is the human side. Behind every number is a person who opened an email two days before one of the biggest sales of the year. Imagine your team prepping for peak days and then the notice lands. For people my age early in a career this is the scary part. Tech used to feel like the safe lane. Now even the biggest names are trimming roles in the middle of record shopping season. It makes you wonder what job security even means anymore.

 There are also open questions for customers. The cuts touched customer service and seller support which are the teams people rely on when an order goes wrong. Whether the restructuring changes service levels during peak sale periods is not yet clear. Amazon has also not said whether more cuts are planned. If your festive order gets stuck you may find out the answer the hard way.

Amazon says the changes are about structure and priorities. Maybe that is true. But timing matters and optics matter. Announcing a huge sale with one hand while sending notices with the other is a bad look even if the business logic checks out. It is hard to feel excited about a Diwali discount when the people keeping the sale running are wondering if they are next.

I will probably still shop a little. Most of us will. I will just think about who is behind the buy button while I do it.