Barely a fortnight into the year, Flipkart employees received what should have been a routine agenda-setting email from their top boss. With a public share listing in their sights, a doubling down on various initiatives was expected. But one thing stood out, particularly in light of how matters had gone down a few years earlier.

In that email, Flipkart, its market leader position secure with its roots entrenched in India’s small cities and towns, signaled a return to the big cities. These were markets it had ceded to Amazon some years earlier to avoid a bleeding chase of big-spending shoppers—the top 2% of India’s ecommerce customers by purchasing power.