Amazon India has elevated its chief financial officer Raghava Rao to the rank of vice-president, a development that comes amidst India unit’s move towards more fiscal prudence as its operations here mature.
Rao took over as vice-president, finance, since March, according to his LinkedIn profile. Amazon confirmed that Rao has recently been promoted. “There is no change of role — he continues to lead the finance function for Amazon India,” a company spokesperson said.
Rao joins the rank of several vice-presidents at Amazon India including Manish Tiwary, vice-president, category management; Akhil Saxena, vice-president, customer fulfillment; and Sriraman Jagannathan, who looks at financial services. Its operations in India are headed by senior vice president Amit Agarwal. Rao had joined Amazon in 2014. Before that, he had largely worked at Unilever for about two decades. He has been the chief financial officer for the online ecommerce business at Amazon India, which has been in an intense competition with Flipkart in India.
ET had reported two weeks ago that Amazon has started laying off a small section of its workforce in India last week as part of a global restructuring, and more employees could be asked to leave following annual appraisals.