Amazon has decided to shut down its Amazon Food grocery delivery business in India, the company announced on Friday. The Company’s grocery delivery business caters to customers across Bengaluru and competes in this segment with online grocery aggregators such as Swiggy and Zomato.
In a letter to restaurant partners, the e-commerce giant said its meal delivery services will be suspended on December 29 as part of the company’s annual operational plan review process.
The letter reads: “After careful consideration, we have decided to discontinue Amazon Food effective December 29, 2022. This decision means you will no longer receive orders from customers through Amazon Food after this date. You will continue to receive orders until then and we expect that you will continue to fulfill those orders.”
The Company started its operations in whole food delivery segment in May 2020 in Bengaluru. The company said it will gradually close the grocery delivery segment to take care of its current customers and partners.
A spokesman for Amazon said: “As part of our annual operational plan review process, we have made the decision to discontinue Amazon Food. We do not make these decisions lightly. We are gradually phasing out these programs to attend to current customers and partners.”
The development comes a day after the e-commerce giant announced it will be ceasing operations of its edtech services Amazon Academy from August 2023 when its existing batch completes the test prep module. The company has stated that the decision was made after its evaluation.
“At Amazon, we think big, experiment and invest in new ideas to delight customers. We also continuously evaluate the progress and potential of our products and services to deliver customer value, and regularly make adjustments based on those evaluations. After an evaluation, we made the decision to discontinue Amazon Academy,” the company said in a statement.
The company has said it will phase out the program to take care of existing customers. She will cease operating the online academy from August 2023 when her existing stack completes the exam preparation module.
In addition, the company has announced that its customers will be able to access all course material online for an extended period of one year until October 2024. Additionally, Amazon Academy will refund full fees to those enrolled in the current academic stack.
Notably, the company is also reportedly planning to pull the curtain on its Amazon distribution services in India, which sells fast-moving consumer goods from companies to retailers. The Company’s distribution services are mainly operating in Bengaluru, Hubli and Mysore.
Inquiries to Amazon India about this did not result in an answer. The copy will be updated as responses are received.
The development is accompanied by mass layoffs of up to 10,000 employees by the company worldwide. This will be the largest layoff in the company’s history. In India, the layoffs are likely to affect hundreds of employees. The company employs up to 1,000 people in India.
Last week, the Department of Labor invited the e-commerce firm to talks about the redundancies in India, following a complaint from the workers’ union Nascent Information Technology Employee Senate (NITES). NITES has claimed that the company’s layoffs and voluntary redundancy program were unethical and illegal, asking for interference, and that the union has received several complaints from employees that they are being forced to leave the company.
However, Amazon has claimed that no employee was forced to resign.
Meanwhile, the company plans to invest $4.4 billion and support over 48,000 full-time jobs in India by launching its second cloud service entity of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure region in India – the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad). ) Region.
