I was talking to a friend of mine and she says it's pretty straightforward to switch to some overseas team in Amazon, once you're with the org for 1-2 years. Is this correct? Also, is it worth joining Amazon India having this as the primary motivation?
Needing to be a SDE2 to move is fake news. Use jobfinder, talk to the hiring manager and it's the standard internal transfer process. Visa process is pretty straightforward too, you get a L1 BLANKET from Madras. Pay sucks because they have you by your balls but gets better if you win the H1 lottery. It's easiest to move to Seattle but Amazon has presence in other places as well as subsidiaries. You'll likely have to take a full interview loop as a SDE1 and only a couple of rounds for SDE2 and beyond.
You'll have to wait until you're promoted to SDE 2 plus a year to switch, unless it's within your own org. And the promo guidelines have recently been updated to say someone with "about three years of experience" would be suitable for SDE 2. (This is just suggestive though, not the actual promo criteria, but it helps you understand what they have in mind.)