Manish Tiwary’s seemingly sudden departure as vice president and country manager, India Consumer Business at Amazon India, has created a stir in the country’s competitive ecommerce space. Tiwary quit Amazon this week to pursue a new role at another company. Following Tiwary’s exit, Amit Agarwal, senior vice-president (SVP) India and emerging markets, at Amazon, will oversee the operations in India, with Tiwary’s team reporting to Agarwal. Tiwary will continue with Amazon until October to help ensure a smooth transition.
Amazon had created a dual leadership in India with both Tiwary and old-hand Agarwal at the top, which allegedly created a power-struggle in Amazon’s leadership ranks, according to reports. A former Unilever executive, Tiwary joined Amazon in 2016 to lead the consumer business for Amazon in India. Agarwal is an Amazon insider and, in Amazon’s early days, he was tasked with building its operations as part of Jeff Bezos’s core team. He relocated to the US in 2022.
Agarwal has a B.Tech. degree in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur and a master’s from Stanford University. He joined Cambridge Technology Partners in Silicon Valley for a brief stint and later joined Informatica. In February 1999 he joined Amazon in Seattle, when the ecomm 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 International Expansion in 2009 and Vice President and Country Head, Amazon India in 2013. In 2017, he was also made global senior vice president.
Agarwal was appointed as the new chairman of Internet and Mobile Association of India [IAMAI]. He assumes office at a time when the industry is going through a growth trajectory with more than 500 million internet users in India.