Amazon’s third big decision: After Edtech and Food, now the company will also close its wholesale distribution service in India.
Veteran tech and e-commerce company Amazon has now decided to shut down its wholesale distribution services in India after EdTech and food delivery business. However, the company has said that Amazon is committed to India and will continue its investments in the country despite shutting down its verticals.
Will continue to invest in India
An Amazon spokesperson said, “We are committed to India and will continue to invest in verticals where we can bring value to our customers.” According to a Business Today report, the company had shut down its wholesale distribution vertical operating out of Karnataka following its annual operating planning review process. Confirming this development, the company said in a statement, ‘As part of our annual operating planning review process, we have decided to discontinue Amazon distribution. Our wholesale e-commerce website is for small neighborhood stores around Bangalore, Mysore and Hubli.
Will shut down operations in a phased manner
The spokesperson further said, ‘We are not taking these decisions lightly. Not only this, we will be shutting down operations in a phased manner to avoid inconvenience to our customers, partners and employees. We will also support our affected employees during this transition.
We think about delighting customers
The spokesperson said, “At Amazon, we put a lot of thought into delighting our customers. For this, we do experiments and also invest in new ideas. Not only this, we constantly evaluate the progress and potential of our products and services to provide value to our customers. Then we also do continuous assessments on the basis of all those evaluations.
‘Amazon Academy’ and food business also closed
Amazon on Thursday (24 November) decided to shut down its online learning vertical ‘Amazon Academy’ in India. Then a day after this, on November 25, Amazon announced the closure of its food delivery business from December 29.
‘Amazon Academy’ was launched in 2021
Amazon launched ‘Amazon Academy’ in India in early 2021. Amazon provides virtual coaching and ‘test preparation’ segment on its platform for entrance exams like IIT-JEE and NEET. At the same time, Amazon started the food delivery service in May 2020.
The company will lay off 10,000 employees
A few days ago, Amazon announced to lay off 10,000 employees. After this, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed that the company will continue to lay off employees till 2023.
According to the figures of 31 December 2021, Amazon has more than 16 lakh full time and part time employees. The layoff of 10,000 employees will be the biggest layoff in Amazon’s history. The reason for the layoffs has been attributed to cost cutting due to the economic slowdown.
