Amazon India names Samir Kumar as successor to Manish Tiwary as India head

Samir Kumar, Amazon’s Washington-based vice president of international consumer business, is set to take over as the e-commerce giant’s country head for India, a month after Manish Tiwary stepped down from the post.

The new position will complement his current responsibility for managing Amazon’s consumer business in the Middle East, South Africa and Turkey, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.

Kumar joined Amazon in 1999 and was part of the original team that planned and launched Amazon.in in 2013. He has been working closely with Tiwary on the transition to the new company and will take over operational responsibility for India from October 1, Amazon said.

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Tiwary resigned as Amazon India CEO in August to pursue other opportunities, ending an eight-year association with the e-commerce giant.

Amazon India has made changes to its leadership team with Saurabh Srivastava (categories), Harsh Goyal (daily essentials), Amit Nanda (market) and Aastha Jain (growth initiatives) now reporting to Kumar. Kishore Thota (emerging markets shopping experience) will report directly to Amit Agarwal, senior vice president, emerging markets.

Key Market

Amazon’s India unit continues to face stiff competition from Walmart-owned Flipkart and Tier 2-focused Meesho in India’s growing e-commerce market. The market is currently valued at $70 billion and is expected to grow to $325 billion by 2030, driven by rising internet penetration and smartphone users.

India has emerged as a key market for Amazon, prompting it to invest more in the past few years. In February, the US entity invested around $100 million in Amazon Seller Services. Tiwary had said last year that the tech giant would digitize over two million small businesses in India in 2022 alone and was on track to achieve its goal of digitizing 10 million of them by 2025.

“India remains an important priority for Amazon and I am very excited about the opportunity that lies ahead as we continue to transform lives and livelihoods. We have a strong local leadership bench and, together with Samir’s experience in emerging markets, I am even more optimistic about our future plans to serve customers and businesses in India,” Agarwal said.