E-commerce giant Amazon has decided to shut down its food delivery business, Amazon Food, in India from December 29, according to a communication sent by the e-commerce firm to its restaurant partners in the country. The decision comes a day after it announced to close down its edtech business, Amazon Academy.
“This decision means that you will no longer get orders from customers via Amazon Food after this date. You will continue to receive orders till then and we expect you to continue fulfilling those orders,” according to a mail by sent Amazon to restaurant partners. Amazon Food was launched in May 2020.
Amazon also told its restaurants that it is committed to meeting all its payments and other contractual obligations. Restaurants will have access to all Amazon tools and reports till January 31, 2023. And, for any compliance-related issues, it will also provide support till March 31.
“As part of our annual operating planning review process, we have made the decision to discontinue Amazon Food, our pilot food delivery business in Bengaluru… We don’t take these decisions lightly. We are discontinuing these programs in a phased manner to take care of current customers and partners and we are supporting our affected employees during this transition,” Amazon said.
On Thursday, Amazon said it would shut down its online education platform for high-school students in India. The company did not cite any reason for the shutdown of the edtech platform, Amazon Academy, in less than two years of its launch.
Launched in January 2021 amid a boom in online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Amazon Academy platform offered coaching for competitive exams including JEE, which allows entry into top engineering colleges across India.
The move to shut the businesses comes after Amazon India was summoned to appear before the deputy chief labour commissioner in Bengaluru on Wednesday, in connection with the alleged forced terminations by the company.
The e-commerce giant has started laying off employees across the company amid an “unusual and uncertain macroeconomic environment” and plans to cut 10,000 or 3 per cent of its workforce. Its CEO Andy Jassy has also said Amazon will continue to cut jobs into 2023 as it adjusts to business conditions and the decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023.
In IT sector layoffs, before Amazon, Twitter and Meta also laid off employees. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms, on November 9 said the company has decided to reduce the size of its team by about 13 per cent and let more than 11,000 employees go. Twitter has also laid off 50 per cent of its employees.
Google and HP are also now planning layoffs. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is reportedly gearing up to lay off about 10,000 “poor performing” employees, or 6 per cent of its workforce. US tech giant HP CEO Enrique Lores has also said the company will cut the size of its workforce in the next three years and expects to reduce it by 4,000 to 6,000 persons. He added that while these are difficult decisions, he is doing what is best for the company’s business.
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