BigBasket is the most popular online grocery retailer in India, with a projected $10.5 billion market share by 2023.
The company was founded in 2011 by survivors Hari Menon, V.S. Ramesh, Vipul Parekh, and Abhinay Choudhari, and later renamed BigBasket
BigBasket – About
BigBasket is a company that specializes in delivering a total of over 40,000 items, to customers to help them shop from. The target is to reduce traffic and supermarket visits, while also providing an online platform for customers to order food.
The company has launched three new businesses to explore new opportunities – BB Daily, BB Instant, and BB Beauty.
BBDaily Customers can purchase milk and groceries before 10 p.m. and have them delivered between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. through the BBDaily subscription service.
BB Instant BigBasket’s unmanned vending machine is available in Tier I cities.
BB Beauty Online shopping allows consumers to purchase beauty and personal care products.
BigBasket has launched Fresho stores in Basaveshwar Nagar, offering technology-driven, self-service stores for customers.
BigBasket – Founders and Team
The BigBasket was founded in 2011 by V.S. Sudhakar, Hari Menon, and Abhinay Choudhari. Previously, the founders established Fabmart.com, an online marketplace for books, toys, and food. In 2006, Fabmart was sold to a grocery company..
Tata acquired BigBasket in May 2021, and Abhinay left the same firm in August to build another company from scratch due to the start-up itch. Choudhari hinted to “solve another painful chore for many Indian households” in the form of new business, and he is now looking forward to an online laundry business.
TN Hari, a former Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at BigBasket, has decided to take a different approach to his Linkedin handle and has already spent 20 years in the Indian startup ecosystem. He has been a part of 5 startups to date and has been identified by Linkedin as one of the top voices of India for 3 consecutive years. The Artha School of Entrepreneurship is established to accelerate the “journeys of entrepreneurs in scaling their ventures and contribute to economic and social prosperity of their communities.” The new goal of this top executive of BB, along with the help of the Sounding Board to Founders, Author, and Columnist, is to provide a platform for entrepreneurs to share their entrepreneurial success.
RainCan, which was originally a subscription-based startup, was rebranded as BBDaily in 2018. Abhijeet Kumar and Munendra Singh eventually decided to exit Tata-owned company to start their own venture, with the aim of digitizing other startups.
BigBasket – Startup Story | How BigBasket Started?
The BigBasket founders created a unique website, Fabmart.com, to capitalize on the success of the dot com bubble and gain experience in eCommerce.
In 1999, Fabmart.com was an internet store that sold books, toys and groceries.In 2006, it was merged with a brick-and-mortar grocery chain and the founders sold it for a lump sum amount, realizing that the world was not ready for digitization.
The most important idea is that the team reunited in 2011 and started re-evaluating the idea of coming up with something new and exciting, leading to a golden year of excitement and a surge in the smartphone market.
BigBasket – Business and Revenue Model
BigBasket purchases products from major suppliers such as P&G, HUL, mills, and farmers, stores them in warehouses, and delivers them to customers on demand. BigBasket has agreements with local farmers and suppliers to acquire and supply perishable items as needed.BigBasket has tie-up with over 2000+ grocery stores in India to deliver products within one hour.
BigBasket’s opening of a physical store, Fresho, is a step forward in the physical grocery space, which is expected to generate revenue for the company.
BigBasket – Startup Challenges
BigBasket is a startup in India that faces a challenge in getting customers to try out its services due to the high resistance level and local vendors’ buying habits. It took a while for consumers to place trust in the brand and start using its services, and BigBasket used to fulfil its orders by purchasing products from Metro Cash and Carry stores.
BigBasket – Funding and Investors
BigBasket, the holding company of the grocery unicorn, has raised a total of $1.3B in funding over 19 rounds. The latest funding was raised on June 2, 2022, when it raised Rs 350 crore ($45.10 mn). According to reports, BigBasket earlier allocated 3.5 crore shares to Supermarket Grocery Supplies on May 24, 2022 for INR 100 per share. Tata Digital, which owned a majority stake in Supermarket GRPG Supplies when it acquired majority stakes in bigBasket in May 2021, has also invested twice previously in the company, including a $200 mn investment at the time of the acquisition. This investment becomes its 3rd investment of Tata.
Tata Group is believed to have acquired a 64.3% stake in BigBasket, providing a post-money valuation of over $2 Billion. This funding round was triggered by the previous round of Debt Financing, which raised $131 mn in the company.
BigBasket – Acquisitions
Big Basket has made 6 acquisitions to date, the most recent being of Agrima Infotech, which the company acquired on February 19, 2022. This deal will allow the company to implement Psyight, a computer vision technology platform, at the self-checkout counters of the retail stores of BigBasket, to differentiate raw, cooked, and packaged food items, helping its parent ahead.
DailyNinja was acquired by BigBasket in 2020, with a deal closing on Mar 24, 2020.
Big Basket has a wide range of companies, including Delyver, Raincan, KWIK24, and Morning Cart, an online platform connecting offline retailers with customers in a neighbourhood. In October 2018, Big Basket acquired ‘Raincan’ in Pune, and in October 19, 2018, it acquired ‘Morning Cart’, a Bangalore-based startup.
BigBasket – Growth and Revenue
Bigbasket recorded $1.1 billion (INR 8000 crore) in 2021, 80% growth from the previous year.
BigBasket’s revenue totalled Rs 7,098 crore in the 2022 financial year
BigBasket – Future Plans
BigBasket has strong plans to be the largest grocery delivery platform in India, setting up warehouses in all 26 operating cities to reduce delivery time to 3 hours.
The plan is to expand the farmer base to 5,000 SKUs and expand BigBasket’s private label range by using Alibaba’s muscle to source and import a range of merchandise to six times that of large-format supermarkets.
Big Basket, founded by Hari Menon, has launched Fresho stores in Bengaluru, becoming the first of their kind in the offline retail market. Plans for 800 more stores in the next 5 years are estimated to be Rs 12,000 crore in sales.
