After country head's exit, AWS assigns Jaime Valles to oversee India operations

Jaime Valles, Vice President, Asia Pacific & Japan, AWS Global Sales

Following the exit of AWS India & South Asia's interim country head Vaishali Kasture, Jaime Valles, Vice President, Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ), AWS Global Sales will continue to oversee the AWS India operations, according to sources in the know.

Kasture's last day of work will be on April 1, 2024.

"Jaime Valles, Vice President, Asia Pacific & Japan, AWS Global Sales will continue to oversee the AWS India operations while actively searching for the right leader to take AWS India & South Asia forward in the long term," the source said.

Valles was appointed as the head of APJ region in January 2023, after managing director for APJ, Phil Davis, stepped down to join Google Cloud.

Moneycontrol exclusively reported on December 11 that Kasture's resignation seven months after she took over the role from former president of commercial business Puneet Chandok.

Interestingly, these country head resignations follow the global cloud service provider's ambitious plans to invest $12.7 billion in building cloud infrastructure in India by 2030 and contribute over $23 billion to the country's GDP by 2030, which were announced less than year ago.

In fact, Chandok resigned only a few weeks after the company hosted AWS Summit in Mumbai, where these investment plans were announced.

Kasture's tenure at AWS spanned nearly five years. Before becoming the interim country head, she served as the head of top enterprise, mid-market, and global businesses in India and South Asia.

These developments come at a time when there is an ongoing slowdown in cloud adoption, driven by customers globally reducing technology budgets in a challenging macroeconomic environment. India, meanwhile, has emerged as a key focus market for cloud service providers, given its early stage on the digitization journey, particularly for its numerous small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Not only AWS, but also its rivals—including Microsoft, Google, and IBM—are betting big on the India opportunity.