The investment comes two month after the grocery unicorn raised INR 1,000 Cr from its holding company owned by Tata. Tata Digital, which acquired BigBasket in May 2021, has invested $375Mn in grocery delivery so far. Big Basket recently launched its fast trading vertical called BBNow.
Grocery Delivery Unicorn BigBasket Gets INR 350 Cr Cash
BigBasket has received another huge cash injection from its holding company, Supermarket Grocery Supplie, raising INR 350 Cr according to its financial document.
According to financial data accessed by the business intelligence platform, Tofler, Big Basket parent company, Innovative Retail Concepts, received the investment from Supermarket Grocery Supplies, a Tata owned company that acts as a holding company for Big Basket operator.
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Big Basket has allocated 3.5 Cr shares to Supermarket Grocery Supplies, at a value of INR 100 per share. The transaction is dated May 24.
Tata Digital owns a majority stake in Supermarket Grocery Supplies. After Tata Digital acquired a majority stake in BigBasket in May 2021, Supermarket Grocery Supplies became its holding company.
The new cash injection comes less than two month after BigBasket raised INR 1,000 Cr from its holding company. Counting the $200Mn investment at the time of acquisition, this is the third time Tata Digital has invested in BigBasket. In total, the Tata Sons subsidiary has invested around $375 Mn in Big Basket in just over a year.
Grocery delivery across time Frames
The grocery unicorn has been working to diversify its business across multiple channel related to grocery delivery.
Also, at the end of April this year, BigBasket launched BB Now, its own fast trading service to compete with Zepto, Blinkit & Swiggy Instamart. had reported exclusively in October 2021 on BigBasket plans to launch its fast trading vertical.
BBNow offers delivery within 1.5 2.5km of its dark stores, with access to a limited inventory of 3,000 products across multiple categories. The product range includes beverage, fresh fruit & vegetable and other product for daily use.
BBNow claims to deliver within 10 to 20 minutes of ordering, which puts it squarely in the crosshairs of Zepto & Blinkit.
Apart from this, BB Express is another BigBasket company, which claims to deliver within an hour. Range increases from 1.5 to 2.5 km to 6 km, while product inventory increases from 3,000 to 8,000.
In a press release, the company said that BBNow & BBExpress were attracting orders with a typical size of around 3 to 5 products and valued at around INR 400.
For impulse and emergency purchases, the BBNow service with its 10 to 20 minute delivery window is a great option, and for unplanned shoppers who aren’t in a rush, we have BBExpress delivery within the hour of ordering, Harish Menon said. co founder and CEO of BigBasket.
All this has made BigBasket total operations expand to 40 cities in India, registering around 15 million customer orders per month.
BigBasket is also part of Tata Digital super app, Tata Neu. The grocery delivery unicorn app is connected to the super app via API and can be accessed from your grocery section as is.
The company is also working on owning offline stores. It launched its chain of offline stores called Fresho in November 2021. BigBasket also acquired the enterprise trading unit of deep tech startup Agrima Infotech in February this year.
Agrima facilitates self checkout in offline stores with its food recognition platform, Psyight. Essentially, the platform helps identify all Indian fruits & vegetables uniquely from an image. This is promoted to help BigBasket improve the offline shopping experience for their customers.
BigBasket is preparing to compete on all fronts, and with the fast trading market expanding as fast as it is, the incoming funds will prove vital.
Furthermore, according to a report by RedSeer, India fast trading market is expected to reach $5 billion by 2025, while the grocery market will reach $22 billion at the same time. India online grocery market currently stand at $3 billion.