We are committed to India; review process is normal: Amazon India's Tiwary

Amazon will continue to hire in India and invest to create infrastructure in this market, Manish Tiwary, vice-president and country manager, consumer business, Amazon India, told Peerzada Abrar in an interview. Edited excerpts:

There are reports about Amazon laying off 10,000 to 20,000 employees. What’s the impact on the India business?

In India, we are excited about where we've reached and about our plans for 2023 across businesses. We will continue to invest. At the beginning of 2022, we used to do same-day delivery in 23-24 cities. Now we do it in 50 cities. We'll keep on building the infrastructure and technology. We are innovating, be it Amazon Pharmacy, Glowroad (social commerce startup acquired by the firm) or Amazon Pay. I don't think there are too many countries still projecting 6.5 per cent or 7 per cent (GDP) growth….. We would evaluate and sometimes, some people would be asked to separate. But those are normal processes. People are linking that with some of our experiments (new businesses), which is factually incorrect. We would continue to do these experiments…. We are very bullish about the business.

Amazon has said it will cut jobs again in early 2023 as part of the annual planning process… Isn’t that a concern for India employees too?

It is a normal process, where we review businesses. It is about where you should invest and not invest. It happens every year and yes, it always spills over to the next year. This is peak season. We just had Black Friday and we would be getting into the New Year sale season worldwide. There is nothing odd about that spilling over. In some parts of the world including India, we would look at our investments and see where we should double down. For example Amazon Business versus (Amazon) Distribution, we are doubling down on Amazon Business. And when you do that, you have to put more people and resources and that is what is happening.

The labour ministry recently summoned Amazon officials following a complaint by an employee union over forced quitting. Your comments?

Our bar related to (taking care of) customers, sellers and employees is very high. There is no question about that. When you use the words such as ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ (VSP), it is not true. In any review, just like any other business, there would be some people implications. But nothing of the sort you are referring to…. There is a review process and it would go on. Would some people separate? The answer is yes. It would happen by following rules and regulations.

India is soon expected to become a $313 billion education and skills market. What sense does it make for the company to shut down its edtech platform Amazon Academy in India?

It is a big market. But we have four ways of looking at a business, like is it going to be big enough, do we have a point of differentiation, is technology going to be the key and is business going to be economically sustainable? Amazon Academy didn’t meet one of the bars for those four questions. We rolled it back. All these are sandboxed experiments.

Amazon entered online food delivery in India during the peak of the pandemic in 2020. Now the firm is pulling down the shutters there. Was it a challenge to compete with players such as Swiggy and Zomato?

We never say ‘no’ to new ideas. Our strength is that we focus very sharply on customers and always use technology to do it better. But we will keep on innovating even on the last mile side or delivery. It is not about competing. It is not that Swiggy was not there two years back. One of the key questions I ask is: is there a differentiator? If we can't establish that, then we take a relook. We observe competition but we always work with the 'customer backwards' approach.

How did 2022 go and what are expectations for the next year?

Till February,  it was still a Covid-impacted world in India. We had so many new customers and sellers that came online.  We were nervous as there were many unknowns after 2.5 years. By the time we hit the second half, we could see momentum coming back. We had a great Prime Day which was followed by an awesome Diwali. … We continue to invest in machine learning. When it comes to delivering 100 per cent of pin codes, you need to improve the address quality. We have almost doubled the Black Friday sales for our sellers who do exports. All the signs are positive.

This wedding season is going to be great. The fashion sale has just started. We'll continue to do more of the things which customers like which are selection, value and speed and we will double down on a few businesses which we are very excited about. Glowroad would play a key role because it focuses on social resellers. It has been just 6 months (since the acquisition) and the number of resellers is already up by six times. We are going to double down on that. For Pharmacy, we believe we have a good product and we have a tie-up with Apollo.

We are very excited about Amazon Business, where we have more than doubled the business this year, in terms of output. There are signs including the 7 per cent GDP growth of India, and consumer confidence metrics moving in the right direction. It will be a good year for us. And there are some new businesses which would really take off. Customers revisiting our app this year is in high double digits. We will continue to make our network faster and more reliable. I am very excited about how the year 2023 is looking.

How important is India for Amazon and do you see the company cutting down spending amid an uncertain macroeconomic environment?

Even when an experiment works or doesn’t work, the most important thing is what you learn from it. Amazon didn’t do well in the China market. Here we have been given the licence to innovate for the country. Whatever we were doing in Amazon India, now we are doing it everywhere. Whatever we've learned and executed so well in India, we are taking to other regions like Latin America.

India has become the hub for emerging innovation for the rest of the world. Its importance is far beyond just its contribution to numbers. The innovations will help Amazon get the next 500 million users from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. But Amazon would continue hiring in India, wherever we need people and invest in areas where we can delight our customers and create infrastructure.