Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, said that it plans to create one million new jobs in India by 2025 through investments in technology, infrastructure, and its logistics network. The jobs – created directly and indirectly – will be across industries, including information technology, skill development, content creation, retail, logistics, and manufacturing, and are in addition to the 700,000 jobs Amazon’s investments have enabled over the last six years in India.
On Wednesday, Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos also announced the company's plans to invest $1 billion to help bring 10 million traders and micro, small, and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs) across India online, enabling $10 billion in cumulative exports by 2025 and supporting India’s economic diversification.
“We are investing to create a million new jobs here in India over the next five years,” Bezos said. “We’ve seen huge contributions from our employees, extraordinary creativity from the small businesses we’ve partnered with, and great enthusiasm from the customers who shop with us—and we’re excited about what lies ahead.”
The Indian government has prioritised job creation and skilling initiatives – including the training of more than 400 million people by 2022 – in rural and urban areas. Seattle-headquartered Amazon said its job creation commitment and investment in traders and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) complement this social inclusion and social mobility efforts by creating more opportunities for people in India to find employment, build skills, and expand entrepreneurship opportunities.
Hiring talent would fill roles across Amazon in India, including software development engineering, cloud computing, content creation, and customer support. Since 2014, Amazon has grown its employee base more than four times, and last year inaugurated its new campus building in Hyderabad – Amazon’s first fully-owned campus outside the United States and the largest building globally in terms of employees (15,000) and space (9.5 acres).
The new initiative would also support Amazon’s operations in India in areas like logistics, engineering and facilities management, packaging, and customer fulfillment. Amazon said its operations network has created inclusive job opportunities across the country, including hundreds of associates with hearing and speech impairment at its fulfilment centres, sortation stations, and delivery stations. It also has an all-woman delivery station, along with a pilot internship program for individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities.
The company said it is also expanding growth opportunities for the more than 550,000 traders and micro, small, and medium-sized businesses – including local shops – through programmes like “Saheli, Karigar, and I Have Space.”
The company’s new investments would also help in its skills-building initiatives, including through Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, ongoing Amazon Seller training modules and 100 Digital Haats. It would also help in upskilling opportunities through AWS Educate’s cloud computing certification programmes, and recently-launched AWS effort to deliver more than 2,000 artificial intelligence and machine learning certifications.
Amazon has announced plans to create one million new jobs in India at a time when antitrust regulatory body Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered an investigation against Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart on complaints of deep discounting practices and tie-ups with preferred sellers. Amazon’s Bezos also faced protests from thousands of small scale traders during his visit to the country. Also, a day after Bezos announced fresh $1 billion investment in India, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said his firm Amazon was not doing a favour to the country by the investments and questioned how the online retailing major could incur such "big" losses but for its predatory pricing.
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