Online grocery shopping is fast gaining popularity among the Indians. According to a Redseer report, India's online grocery retail market is all set to touch $10.5 billion by 2023. A company that holds a huge share in this fast growing market is Big Basket. Started in 2011, by dotcom bust survivors V.S. Sudhakar, Hari Menon, V.S. Ramesh, Vipul Parekh and Abhinay Choudhari, BigBasket today is the India's largest online grocer that receives over 100,000 orders per day.
BigBasket - Company Highlights
| Startup Name | BigBasket |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Bangalore |
| Founders | V.S. Sudhakar, Hari Menon, V.S. Ramesh, Vipul Parekh & Abhinay Choudhari |
| Sector | E-commerce |
| Founded | October 2011 |
| Parent Organization | Supermarket Grocery Supplies Pvt Ltd |
| Website | bigbasket.com |
About BigBasket
BigBasket - Founder / CEO
How was BigBasket Started
BigBasket - User Acquisition
BigBasket - Revenue Model / Business Model
BigBasket - Startup Challenges
BigBasket - Competitors
BigBasket - Funding and Investors
BigBasket - Acquisitions
BigBasket - Growth / Revenue
BigBasket - Future Plans
BigBasket - FAQs
Check it out - HiGrocer - Catering to the Needs of Your Neighbourhood Grocers
About BigBasket
BigBasket is into delivering everyday cooking essentials like ghee (clarified butter), diced coconut and fragrant basmati rice and over 18,000 other items from bread to laundry detergent for their customers to shop from and get it delivered at their doorstep. Their target motive is to enable the ease of doing grocery shopping online to avoid traffic and the drudgery of supermarket runs.
To explore new opportunities, the company has also launched 3 new businesses BB Daily, BB Instant and BB Beauty.
BB Daily is a subscription based service that allows customers to order milk and fresh groceries. Customers has to place the order before 10 PM, and get the goods delivered with 5AM - 7AM the next day.
BB Instant is BigBasket's unmanned vending machines that are mostly available in corporate offices, tech parks, and apartment buildings in Tier I cities.
While BB Beauty, that allows the consumers to choose from a wide range of beauty and personal care products and order online.
BigBasket - Founder / CEO
BigBasket was founded by V.S. Sudhakar, Hari Menon, V.S. Ramesh, Vipul Parekh and Abhinay Choudhari in 2011. Prior to BigBasket, the founders also founded Fabmart.com, an online platform that sold books, toys, and groceries in the year 1999. Fabmart was sold to a grocery chain in 2006.
BigBasket CEO Hari Menon comes with a vast experience in diverse fields. Prior to Big Basket Mr Menon was the CEO of Indiaskills, the Vocational Education joint venture of Manipal Group with City & Guilds, UK. An alumni of BITS Pilani, Hari Menon also worked as the Country Head at Planetasia, one of India’s first Internet services businesses. Hari also held top positions with IT majors like Wipro Infotech.
BigBasket co-founder V S Sudhakar was the CEO of Planetasia. He has vast experience of working in the IT sector.
V.S. Ramesh is the Head of Logistics & Supply Chain at BigBasket. An Electronics Engineering graduate from Karnataka University, V.S. Ramesh has over 21 years of experience in the Indian Navy handling Operations and Logistics.
Vipul Parekh is the Head of Finance & Marketing at BigBasket. Vipul is an alumni of IIM Bangalore, and worked with Peepul Capital, a leading Private Equity Fund as an investment Director. He also worked as business development head in the Wipro Infotech Group.
Abhinay Choudhari is the Head of New Initiatives at BigBasket. Abhinay is an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus. Besides working with leading IT companies like iGATE & Infosys, Abhinay also founded Stylecountry.com, one of India's first online fashion retail stores. Stylecountry.com had to be closed down as it did not turn out to be profitable.
How was BigBasket Started
All of this began when the BigBasket founders decided to exploit the experience they got post the massive failure of the dot com bubble. Hence, they decided to create a unique website that was never done before. All the founders of Big Basket had relevant and recent experience of the e-commerce when they had created Fabmart.com.
Fabmart.com was an online platform that sold books, toys, and groceries in the year 1999. Back then, only within a few months, they had realized that not just our country but the whole world was not ready to take this buzz of digitization. In the year 2006, Fabmart was merged with a brick and mortar grocery chain and the founders ended up selling their startup for a lump sum amount.
Then came the golden year of 2011, when the team reunited and started re-evaluating the idea of again coming up with something new and exciting. Despite all the criticism they had received back in 1999, they stood very strong on the fact that the time to do something that’d put them on the map was then. In 2011, the smartphone market was booming and anything and everything was available except groceries, of course. And that, right there was their Eureka moment.
Also Read: Grofers - Bringing Grocery at Your Home in a few Clicks
BigBasket - User Acquisition
An interesting strategy that BigBasket follows to attract customers is that, the company keeps into account the varied needs and different shopping habits of its customers belonging to different cities. The amount of attention the founders paid to little details put them in a competitively better position.
The team did their planning city wise. They increased the leafy greens numbers in Mumbai, supplied a special kind of rice (called Sona Masoori) in Bangalore and went as far as providing eight different kinds of eggplants to picky customers. All in all, the company ensured their quality was nothing short of perfection.
Timely delivery is the essence of online shopping hence the team put a focused approach to this. They devised a model of customized software that automatically guides drivers to their destinations and helps the company achieve a near-perfect on-time rate. Late deliveries earn customers a 10 percent discount. Missing items are refunded on a cost that is 50 percent of whatever the item cost is.
BigBasket - Revenue Model / Business Model
BigBasket’s private label business is driven by lower prices and higher margins. Roughly 35% of the revenue comes from private labels. The aim here is to fill the gap in distinct categories like organic food, high-end consumer products, to name a few. Also, the company offers a lower price point for staples and fruits and vegetables. They also provides idli/dosa batter on their online platform which is very rare and does not have a lot of competition.
Moreover, on the B2B side, BigBasket serves its private-label to about a thousand Kirana stores, huge corporates, and HoReCa (hotels, restaurants, cafes). Regarding Big Basket's Business Model, Big Basket follows both 'inventory model' and ‘hyper-local model’.
Under the inventory model, the company buys products from leading suppliers like P&G, HUL, mills, farmers, etc., store the products in warehouses, and supplies the same to the customers on order. While in case of perishable goods, they have tie ups with local farmers and suppliers from whom they procure the goods as per order and supply the same to the customers.
Under the 'hyper-local model', BigBasket has tie-up with 2000+ grocery stores across India to deliver products within one hour from the neighborhood.
BigBasket - Startup Challenges
One of the main challenges of any startup in India primary includes getting customers to try the service first since the resistance level is much higher. This is followed by retaining these consumers despite all the other factors in the market like competitors, local vendors, and buying habits.
Also, since it was one of a kind startup dealing with groceries which was never the case before, it took a while for the consumers to place trust in a brand like that and start using their services.
Also Read: Watasale - India's First Cashier-free Grocery Store
BigBasket - Competitors
Despite growing at an increasing rate, BigBasket faces cut-throat competition in the market. Major competitors are startups like LocalBanya, Sequoia backed PepperTap and SoftBank funded Grofers. Though these players are acquiring strong market standing with the time, the company tends to stand fit and fine win the market with its large and ever-increasing consumer base.
BigBasket - Funding and Investors
To date, BigBasket has raised a total of $1.1B in funding over 16 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Apr 15, 2020 from a Debt Financing round.
Here is the details of the funding raised by Big Basket till date -
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 2012 | Series A | $10 Million | Ascent Capital |
| April 2014 | Bridge Round | $3 Million | Singapore-based private investor |
| September 2014 | Series B | $33 Million | Helion Venture Partners |
| August 2015 | Series C | $50 Million | Bessemer Venture Partners |
| March 2016 | Series D | $150 Million | Abraaj Group |
| March 2017 | Debt Financing | $6.9 Million | Trifecta Capital Advisors |
| September 2017 | Series E | $280 Million | Alibaba Group, Paytm Mall |
| October 1, 2017 | Venture Round | $5 Million | Bessemer Venture Partners |
| October 10, 2017 | Debt Financing | $838.1K | Trifecta Capital Advisors |
| October 25, 2017 | Venture Round | $4.3 Million | Helion Ventures Partners |
| February 2018 | Series E | $300 Million | Alibaba Group |
| January 2019 | Venture Round | - | Growth Story |
| May 2019 | Series F | $150 Million | Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund |
| July 2019 | Debt Financing | $14 Million | Trifecta Capital |
| April 9, 2020 | Venture Round | $60 Million | Alibaba Group |
| April 15, 2020 | Debt Financing | $51.8 Million | Alibaba Group |
BigBasket - Acquisitions
Big Basket has made 5 acquisitions till date. Their most recent acquisition was hyper-local delivery platform - DailyNinja on Mar 24, 2020.
In June 2015, the company acquired 'Delyver' , an online platform that connects offline retailers with customers in a neighborhood. In October 2018, Big Basket acquired 'Raincan' a subscription based service provider for morning and breakfast essentials, headquartered in Pune.
In October 2018 itself, Big Basket also acquired 'KWIK24' a company that manufactures and designs smart vending machines. On October 19, 2018, Big Basket announced acquisition of Bangalore based startup 'Morning Cart' . Morning Cart is a daily essential ordering platform.
Here is the details of Acquisitions by BigBasket -
| Acquired | Date |
|---|---|
| Delyver | June 12, 2015 |
| Raincan | October 18, 2018 |
| KWIK24 | October 19, 2018 |
| Morning Cart | October 19, 2018 |
| DailyNinja | March 24, 2020 |
Relevant read: Milkbasket’s founder says no to Subscription model for Online Grocery
BigBasket - Growth / Revenue
- Aggressively present in over 26 cities of India
- Serving to 125 million customers all around the country
- Endorsed by the most celebrated celebrity of Bollywood - Shah Rukh Khan
- Aims to double sales each year to hit $2 billion by 2021
- Bigbasket has generated Rs 3,200 crore in revenue in FY19.
- Partnered with the Chinese brand - Alibaba
BigBasket - Future Plans
The company is aiming to generate a revenue of almost INR 6,300 crore in the year 2020. BigBasket has strong plans of retaining its post as the largest grocery delivery platform in India. So the plan is to set up warehouses in all the 26 operating cities of India to bring down the delivery time to 3 hours.
By 2022, the plan is to grow to 60,000 SKUs and double the farmer base to 5,000. Further, the plan also includes expanding 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.
BigBasket - FAQs
Which is BigBasket origin country?
Big basket was originated in India.
Is BigBasket a Chinese company?
BigBasket is an Indian company but has Chinese investors like Alibaba Group and TR Capital. Online grocery retailer BigBasket has so far received greater than $250 million from Chinese companies. It recently received funding of close to $50 million from Alibaba.
Who is owner/founder of BigBasket?
BigBasket was founded by V.S. Sudhakar, Hari Menon, V.S. Ramesh, Vipul Parekh and Abhinay Choudhari.
Does BigBasket have offline stores?
No, it is a purely internet based company and do not have any brick and mortar stores.
What is bigbasket Wallet?
The bigbasket Wallet is a pre-paid credit account that is associated with your bigbasket account. This prepaid account allows you to pay a lump sum amount once to bigbasket and then shop multiple times without having to pay each time.
Link : https://startuptalky.com/big-basket/
Author :- Chayanika Goswami
June 20, 2020 at 08:00PM
startuptalky