Following its recent announcement of setting up a second AWS Region in India, Amazon has now confirmed that it will be closing Amazon Academy, an online learning platform for high-school students in the region.
The e-commerce giant started the learning platform in India just a year ago and offered preparation courses for JEE/NEET and 10th board exams through expert faculty.
The rationale behind shutting down the online service was not clear but the Economic Times, which first reported the incident, hinted that the change in the scheme of things was part of the company’s ongoing cost-cutting measures. We had reported earlier that Amazon was planning to lay off its workers amid economic turmoil.
With the new plan in action, the Seattle-headquartered big tech will shut down Amazon Academy in a phased manner to take care of current customers. It has also assured that those who had signed up for the current academic batch will receive a full refund.
It is estimated that the school-going children population in India exceeds 260 million. Moreover, much of the country’s population looks at education as a key factor in making economic progress and living a better life. That’s one of the reasons bigwigs like Facebook, Google, and Amazon are trying to enter this market and help digitize the education experience in the nation to help it reach more people.
Source: Economic Times (paywall) via TechCrunch