'India is Amazon's second-largest technology hub'

India is the second-largest technology hub for Amazon globally and its teams are powering innovations not only for customers in the country but globally as well, a top company executive said on Thursday.

Speaking at Amazon India Career Day, Amazon global senior vice president and country head India Amit Agarwal said the e-commerce company employs over one lakh professionals in India across diverse areas from engineering, supply chain, content creation, marketing, video and others.

"India is also the second-largest technology hub for Amazon globally, with some of the most talented software developers, product managers, machine learning scientists, and research scientists as part of the team," he said.

The teams are powering innovations not only for India, but also for customers globally, building services that practically touch every aspect of the customer journey with Amazon, he added.Agarwal cited the example of its team in Bengaluru that has built a cloud-based warehouse management system to help sellers streamline their warehouse operations, and ship orders to customers fast and reliably.

"While this service launched in India first, it is now being used by selling partners worldwide to serve millions of customers.

"Another team developed vision-based information extraction capability used to automate identity verification, helping streamline the new seller onboarding experience worldwide," he added.

The company had started its Development Centre in Bengaluru in 2003.

The executive pointed out that AWS India teams are working on the AWS Quantum Computing Applications Lab in partnership with the ministry of electronics and information technology.

"Amazon has also helped bring technology to strengthen India's societal infrastructure.

"A case in point is Alexa, spouting schools in a remote town in central India and enabling students to engage with Alexa in Hindi, and improving their grasp of math, science, English, and general knowledge.

"Across all of these innovations, what really drives us is our unique workplace culture," he added.

Amazon is planning to hire more than 8,000 people across 35 cities in India this year.

These job openings are spread across corporate, technology, customer service and operations roles in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Noida, among others.

Agarwal said the company believes that building a culture that is "welcoming and inclusive" is integral to diversity, and it has numerous initiatives to attract the best builders out there.

"Be it hiring women, who have taken a career break through our rekindle program, being inclusive of the LGBTQ community, attracting military veterans, or focusing our efforts on PWD candidates.

"We seek out diverse representation... We are committed to creating a safer, more productive, high performing, more diverse, and inclusive work environment that builders can thrive and ensure personal success," he added.

He added that Amazon's global scale and local momentum over the last few years has uniquely positioned it to play a critical role as a catalyst in fueling India's transformation.

"At the same time, I strongly believe that our local innovations will also shape the experience for our next 500 million customers globally...with Amazon India, I feel we have once in a lifetime opportunity to tap into India's potential in the 21st century, transform daily lives and livelihoods, and leave behind a lasting legacy," he said.

The inaugural edition of the Amazon India Career Day brought together Amazon leaders and employees to share what makes Amazon an exciting workplace.

Amazon has also launched 'Virtual Recruiter', an Alexa skill that will enable interested candidates to access relevant information about the company.

The newly launched skill will make it easy for candidates who aspire to join Amazon to get information about the company's interview process, policies, and also custom guides and training resources that will prepare them better for their selection process.

Available across all Alexa-enabled devices, Alexa app and Amazon shopping app (Android only), the skill can be used by candidates to get learning feed, access training resources, watch videos and receive periodic updates.

The Alexa skill also has an option where users can agree to receive additional details on their queries or follow up information on their email.

Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters