Amazon loses second AWS India and South Asia top exec in less than a year

Vaishali Kasture, the executive Amazon appointed as the interim head of AWS India and South Asia, has quit the firm, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, merely seven months into the top role.

Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by email and phone. Amazon counts India as one of its key markets for AWS, which has aggressively courted hundreds of thousands of companies in the world’s second largest internet market and has also onboarded many government undertakings.

The e-commerce giant additionally said in May this year that it plans to invest $12.7 billion into its cloud business in India by 2030, a quantum of capital unmatched by rivals. To put things into perspective, the overall India public cloud services market is expected to reach only $13 billion by 2026, according to IDC.

Kasture, who joined Amazon about five years ago, served as the interim leader of commercial business at AWS India and South Asia starting in June this year. A reason for her departure couldn’t be learned.

She was elevated to the top role after her predecessor Puneet Chandok abruptly quit the firm, jumping ship to assume the top position at Microsoft India. Up until two weeks ago, Kasture had been enthusiastic and optimistic about the growth prospects and momentum of Amazon Web Services in India.

“Our total planned investments in India will be more than $16.4 billion or 1.36 lakh crores by 2030, and we expect this to contribute $23 billion to India’s GDP by then,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post.

“In addition to investments in infrastructure and services, we are also investing in people and skilling and AWS has trained over 4 million people in India through various education and training programs.”