Friday, March 29

BigBasket Goes Offline, Will Open its Retail Stores

While almost every companies try to move their offline business online, BigBasket is trying the opposite approach. One month after $300 million funding round by Chinese multinational Alibaba, BigBasket is looking to cash in on the offline market by implementing kiosks that will stock fruits, vegetables and other daily grocery items. The offline kiosks will be mostly set up around residential areas and office centers.

BigBasket is looking to further implement themselves in the lives of their customers by putting forward a subscription programme for daily requirements such as milk and bread. This system will also increase the purchasing frequency of the users. They have already started a trial for this new service on a separate app called BB instant.

Hari Menon, founder and CEO of BigBasket said about the development, “The pilot is underway at select apartments and office premises. We have kept it as a separate app and are looking to scale this up as it will solve a genuine user problem for items they need quickly.” He then added, “Based on the initial feedback, we are looking to sell certain stock keeping units (SKUs) in these kiosks which can be instantly bought by a shopper after firing the app.”

This unprecedented move is not destined to attract offline customers Menon clarified. On the other hand, it aims at reinforcing BigBasket’s instant delivery abilities.

BigBasket believes that this move will contribute to the company’s target of reaching $46 Mn (INR 300 Cr) of sales every month within the next six months. Currently, they average over $30.7 Mn (INR 200 Cr) each month.

Menon further stated that the company seeks to implement several thousand of these offline kiosks all over India over the year 2018.

BigBasket has its own express delivery logistics service, which delivers every order with in one to two hours.

BigBasket is an online grocery delivery startup founded in 2011 by VS Sudhakar, Hari Menon, VS Ramesh, Vipul Parekh, and Abhinay Choudhari. 7 years after its founding, the company now has above 6 Mn registered customers.

An individual usually purchases goods from BigBasket three times a month from the mobile app and the price of purchases usually ranges between INR 1400 and INR 1500.

It provides around 20,000 products from over 1000 brands distributes them to 26 cities in India, most notably Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Delhi, etc… Apart from distributing to individuals, BigBasket also signed deals with hotels, restaurants and caterers to reinforce its B2B business.

It closed the previous fiscal year with $220.38 Mn (INR 1,410 Cr) in revenue. Since its creation, a big amount of investors, including Brand Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Ascent Capital, GrowthStory, Paytm Mall, Alibaba Group and more, invested in the development of the company.

BigBasket isn’t currently the only player in the online grocery sector in India, with ZopNow, Satvacart, Godrej Nature’s Basket, Quikr, Grofers and DailyNinja also competing to establish themselves in this market. According to a report by Goldman Sachs, the online grocery market is calculated to be worth $40 Mn (INR 270 Cr) by 2022. These figures are also attracting major interest from India’s biggest ecommerce businesses such as Paytm, Flipkart and Amazon.

Thus, with new players looking to fight for their share in this profitable market, BigBasket’s choice to venture in the offline market is more tactical than desperate as they seek to sustain their sales, and become ever more present in the customers’ lives.