BigBasket Success story in India

Grocery is an essential item for each individual. India accounts for over $1 trillion in markets for groceries.

Earlier to buy groceries was like a hectic task. Initially, we have to reach the store with heavy traffic. Then we have to purchase it and wait in cue for the billing. It was a tedious job for consumers a lot of time.

After all this, customers are not satisfied with the quality of the products. So, eventually buying grocery run down your energy and time.

To, tackle this problem, a super app was launched named Bigbasket. Subsequently, this company changed the process of grocery shopping. Now anyone can buy groceries online from the comfort of their home.

Bigbasket

Bigbasket is an online Grocery ordering and delivery app. This online delivery store has a wide range of products. So, it has around 60,000 products with 1000 brands.

Customers can easily order groceries online and can get delivery near their doorstep. In Bigbasket you can order from fresh fruits and vegetables to staples, Personal health care products to meat.

Hari Menon, Abhinay Choudhari , Vipul Parekh, VS Ramesh,and VS Sudhakar are the founders of Bigbasket.

It is an Indian company found in December 2011. The company headquarters is in Bangalore.

Bigbasket presently operates in 25 Indian cities. There are 10 tier 1 cities and the other are tier 2 and 3.

To deliver fresh groceries online, they tied up with 12,000 farmers. So that it can satisfy its consumers with unprocessed products.

Major investors of the online grocery company were Alibaba Group, Mirae Asset Ventures, and Trifecta Capital.

Recently, Bigbasket is acquired by TATA digital in 2021. As TATA company holds 68% of stakes of Bigbasket. The deal is around 9,500 crores (1.3 billion).

Sharukh Khan, a famous Bollywood actor, is the brand ambassador of Bigbasket.

How Bigbasket company found

Everyone has to wait for the opportunity to start a business. Even if you had started a good business but it fails due to the wrong timing.

Technology and time are the essential factors to build a great company. This statement is applicable for Bigbasket founders as well.

Initially, these five founders have started an online e-commerce business in 1999. The company Fabmart sold books and toys in the early stages. But when Hari Menon, Ramesh, and others realize the potential of groceries in India.

So, they added groceries as a new segment in Fabmart. These five founders had made up a good company. But the business model was not successful.

Because of to lack of technology adaption rate in India. As in 1999, anyone hardly affords the normal handy mobiles. Even Internet penetration was not better. So, the company was not performing well.

Then, the company pivoted to offline retail stores. After pivoting, the company went on to perform really well. Eventually, in 2006 Fabmart was acquired by Adity and Birla Group.

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Foundation of online grocery platform

Till 2001 the founders were busy in their own ventures. Then they observed that internet penetration ramping up steadily. Even smartphones were also available at affordable prices.

Even payment gateway companies are also performing well. Transaction via online also started to take place. This triggered founders to start an online grocery shopping business.

Finally, in December 2011 they found Bigbasket Company. With the help and support of K Ganesh, they set up an online groceries platform.

Initially, Bigbasket was selling only fresh vegetables and fruits. The company’s mission was to deliver this delicate item and then to venture into another segment.

After the entry of JIO in 2016, internet users skyrocketed. Even SAAS and internet companies are also started to boom.

Internet reliant companies also got a lot of benefits. Bigbasket also saw a sudden surge in customers.

In the coming years, Bigbasket also started to sell staples, groceries, health care products, beverages, and beauty, and wellness products.

Now Bigbaket has grown very huge. It has 25 distribution and 35 collection centers across India. To, deliver quickly it has over 50,000 stock-keeping units.

Online grocery ordering and delivering platforms can increase the market value up to $24 billion by 2025.

Prime competitors at Bigbasket are Jio Mart, Grofres, and FreshtoHome platforms. There is a lot of competition in the online grocery shopping business.

Bigbasket delivers groceries to millions of customers every day. There are around 10 million users of Bigbasket. It is the major platform for the online grocery segment.

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Bigbasket and impact guru campaign

Every startup always doesn’t work for profits. Basically, startups are here to solve consumers’ problems.

So, when the COVID-19 pandemic breakout in India in 2020 many startups catered to the needy. Even Bigbasekt is one such startup.

Bigbasket India’s largest online grocery delivery startup started the ImpactGuru campaign.

The main mission of this campaign was to cater the needy people with healthy food. A lot of families came to the road because of financial stress and losses. To, serve this sector Bigbasket took the initiative.

This company raise the campaign and gave its funds to the KVN foundation. The KVN foundation is a non-profit social welfare platform. This foundation caters to 30 million needy people every day.

So, Bigbasket channelizes its funds to KVN in order to empower this organization.

Juggy Marwaha(MD of JLL India), K Ganesh(founder of Growth Story), and Venkat K Naryan(CEO of Prestige) were the founders of the KVN foundation.

Daily Basket Controversy

Online grocery shopping app, Bigbasket raised a case against Dailybasekt. Even demanding to hand it over to the company.

Daily basket is a Coimbatore basket startup. Ramesh Vel and Ajit Kumar were the founders of the company.

Now, Bigbasket raised a complaint that this company had used “Basket” illegally.

Even Dailybasket had copied the website layout and structures. The complaint was raised against infringement of copyright.

Bigbasket users Data breach

In October 2020, there was a data breach for the Bigbasket users. The company observed, illegally there were selling around 20 million users’ data on the dark web.

The data is been sold for $40,000 dollars on the dark web. The data included names, email Id, DOB, IP addresses, and the location of the users.

Finally, the company raised the complaint in the cybercrime center.

Fundings

The online grocery delivery startup, Bigbasket gets fundings from the investors. As it serves millions of Indians and also growing at a steady pace.

Till now the company raised $1.1 billion of fundings in 17 rounds. The major investors were Alibaba, CDC Group, Trifecta Capital, and Mirae Asset Venture.

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Business model

Online grocery platform practices two kinds of operation. The first one is Marketplace.

In this business operation, the company tie-up with various shopkeepers. Eventually, the company helps in selling products of tied-up shops. Then make a commission out of it.

This type of business model has major problems like

• There is no control in the supply chain
• The company cannot give the best quality of services and products
• Then, the company can’t make much of the profits through commissions

Secondly, online grocery platforms follow the inventory model. Where the company holds tons of stocks in their warehouse. So, whenever the order comes, the company directly packs and sends it to customers directly from the warehouse.

Advantages of inventory model

• Have control in supply chain
• Sell the products at affordable prices
• Have accurate reading in money flow

Now, Bigbasket follows the inventory model. So that it can order in bulk and get the products at low prices. Even they can serve customers with the best quality of products.

In FY20, Bigbasket made up revenue of 3,818 crores. Now, the majority of stakes with TATA Group. With 68% of stakes now TATA owns Bigbasket.

Hence, Bigbasket became the largest online grocery delivery platform. It delivers the best quality of grocery online. This company serves millions of people and also saves a lot of money to the consumers.

Now, the Bigbasket has high potential. Because TATA group acquired the company and empowers it.