Amazon Web Services booked for mismanaging data of Bengaluru-based real estate company

A city-based real estate company has filed a complaint against a cloud computing service for allegedly mismanaging the company’s data which reportedly caused them a loss of ₹150 crore.

Based on the complaint by Sridhar Rajendran, chief human resource officer, Adarsh Developers, the cybercrime police registered a case against Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others charging them under the IT Act and also under Section 318(4) (cheating and fraud) and Section 319(2) (impersonation) of BNS.

According to the complaint, Adarsh Developers, for the last 36 years, has been engaged in developing residential, commercial, and hospitality projects across the city. It has 1,800 employees on its rolls and over 10,000 labourers through various contactors in over 35 residential projects across Bengaluru with a turnover of ₹2,100 crore. The company was using a system stored with Amazon cloud services for storage of financial data and customers’ personal data.

On May 2023, Saidalawi Safan, a business development representative from AWS, allegedly contacted the company and insisted they use an upgraded service assuring retrieval of data even in the event of cyberterrorism or sabotage, said the complaint .

In December 2023, the company procured the new storage facility. However, on January 9, 2025, at 10.48 a.m., the data environment hosted on AWS was completely deleted, said the complaint, adding that upon contacting implementation partner SAVIC Technologies Pvt. Ltd., they conveyed that there had been data loss owing to the action of a few individuals at Redington, a vendor, and AWS.

“This resulted in the loss of over six years of company business data causing substantial financial and operational loss to the company. Vital financial records, supply chain data, customer information, and operational insights accumulated over years were now is inaccessible,” said the complaint.

The complaint added that the company was unable to collect payments from customers, pay statutory taxes and interest payments to lenders, which caused a loss of approximately ₹5 crore per day starting from January 9, and the total loss till January 31 was around ₹150 crore.

The cybercrime police have initiated investigations.

Meanwhile, an AWS spokesperson told The Hindu: “The claims against AWS are false. AWS operated as designed and is not responsible for the deletion of Adarsh Developers’ data.”