The sudden exit of Manish Tiwary from his position as Vice President and Country Manager of Amazon India's India Consumer Business has caused a stir in the fiercely competitive ecommerce market in India. This week, Tiwary left Amazon to take a position at a different organisation. Amit Agarwal, Senior Vice-President (SVP) of Amazon for India and emerging markets, will take over as the country's operations manager after Tiwary leaves, with Tiwary's team answering to Agarwal. To facilitate a seamless transfer, Tiwary will stay on staff at Amazon until October.
Reports claim that Amazon had established a dual leadership structure in India, with Tiwary and veteran Agarwal at the top, leading to a power struggle inside the company's executive levels. Tiwary, a senior executive at Unilever, joined Amazon in 2016 to oversee the company's consumer division in India. As a member of Jeff Bezos's core team, Agarwal was tasked with developing Amazon's operations throughout the company's early years. He is an Amazon insider. In 2022, he moved to the US.
Agarwal has a B.Tech. degree in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur and a master's from Stanford University. In February 1999 he joined Amazon in Seattle when the ecommerce major was only selling books.
He started as a software developer and rose through the ranks to become one of the youngest team members of Jeff Bezos's Senior Leadership Team (S-Team). In 2004, he moved to India to head the AWS team as a Managing Director and returned to the US in 2007. Agarwal was promoted promoted to VP of International Expansion in 2009 and Vice President and Country Head, Amazon India, in 2013. In 2017, he was also named Global Senior Vice President.
Agarwal was appointed as the new Chairman of the Internet and Mobile Association of India [IAMAI]. He assumed office at a time when the industry is going through a growth trajectory with more than 500 million internet users in India.
