Binny Bansal carries the weight of India’s web sector on his shoulders. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Flipkart, the country’s most prominent homegrown web company, an e-commerce firm whose mistakes allowed Amazon.com to catch up to it in terms of sales. 

Flipkart, once valued at as much as $15 billion, has a symbolic significance in India that cannot be overstated. Now it faces a rival in Amazon that can afford to lose a lot of money to take market share. After all, Flipkart, started in 2007, doesn’t have a cash cow like Amazon Web Services or well-off American customers in its back pocket. Barely 3% of India’s population can afford to shop for goods online.