The $1 billion success story of the Bangalore based online grocery store Bigbasket

Key Highlights

Bigbasket was founded in 2011 by a team that comprised of five members- Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, V S Ramesh, V S Sudhakar and Abhinay Choudhari in Bangalore.

The company secured its first investment of $10 million from Ascent capital and decided it is time to expand its horizons.

In Feb 2019, Bigbasket raised a funding of $300 million in the series E funding round.

Related : Bigbasket puts in $100 Million to strengthen its supply chain

Online grocery shopping websites are making it big in the Indian market right now. The market is growing at an accelerated pace and is all set to touch $10 billion in the next four years. Taking advantage of the golden opportunities presented in the online grocery shopping sector, many e-grocery shopping stores have cropped up in recent times. These include but aren’t limited to Grofers, Nature’s basket, localbanya, Aaramshop etc. however one start-up has emerged as a leader in this highly competitive market I.e. Bigbasket.

Bigbasket is currently known as India’s biggest online grocery and food store. It was founded in 2011 by a team that comprised of five members- Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, V S Ramesh, V S Sudhakar and Abhinay Choudhari in Bangalore. This team was well versed in the world of online grocery shopping as they had set up Fabmart.com in 1999. This was India’s first e-commerce website. This website, however failed to take off as India wasn’t ready for the world of online shopping just yet. After this venture, they established Fabmall Trinethra which was a chain of 200 supermarket stores in southern India. However, with the emergence of smartphones and the advancements in technology, the team decided to take a risk and launch Bigbasket.com. A risk that fully paid off

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The company secured its first investment of $10 million from Ascent capital and decided it was time to expand its horizons. After investing a lot of time in research the founders decided that the best way to move ahead in the market of a diverse country like India was to provide personalized service to their consumers. The major reason for the success of Bigbasket is the attention to detail that the team puts into their products. They also put heavy emphasis on consistency as many of their products are being ordered over 30 times a year by the same customer. Bigbasket operates with the aim of showing that they care for their customers immensely. Their customer service is also top notch with the team ensuring that the calls are received in just 10 seconds.

In Feb 2019, Bigbasket raised a funding of $300 million in the series E funding round. The round was led by Alibaba which made it the company’s largest shareholder. Existing investors International finance capital, Sands capital and Abraaj group participated in this round as well. Despite having tough competition from start-ups like pepperTap and Grofers, Bigbasket went from being merely an idea to operating in over 25 cities.

Bigbasket currently has over 20,000 products from 10,000 brands listed on its website. They offer a large range of products from Dals to vegetables to spices on their website. The company also expanded into smaller cities by roping in the popular actor Shahrukh Khan to be its brand ambassador. Bigbasket has invested heavily in procuring warehouses and optimizing its delivery output. The e-grocery website operates in a very well thought manner and doesn’t plan on giving up the title of being India’s largest online grocery store anytime soon.