Tata’s BigBasket to battle Softbank-backed Grofers in India
12:49, 24 November 2021
Tata group-owned BigBasket, India’s largest online food and grocery store, announced Wednesday that it has opened its first brick-and-mortar store in the country, in Bengaluru city.
Customers can now shop on BigBasket’s website and pick up their order at its ‘Fresho’ stores, according to a Press Trust of India report published on CNBCTV18.com’s website. BigBasket aims to open 200 physical outlets across India by 2023 and 800 by 2026. These stores will offer high-quality products at extremely competitive prices.
The moves could pit BigBasket against domestic grocery delivery company Grofers. The Softbank Group and food delivery giant Zomato have invested in Grofers, which promises 10-minute deliveries to doorsteps in several cities.
Customer-first approach
“BigBasket has always striven to adopt a customer-first approach,” BigBasket’s co-founder and chief executive Hari Menon was quoted as saying in the report. The grocer has expanded to 40 cities in India and serves 12 million customer orders per month.
Menon said the Fresho stores will be “game changers” by allowing BigBasket to tap the hundreds of millions of customers who do not shop online. Customers will be attracted by the ease of purchasing fruits, vegetables and groceries as seamlessly as cash transactions at automated teller machines, creating a “new significant growth opportunity” for BigBasket.
Farm-to-fork programme
Menon also said that produce stocked at Fresho stores will be backed by the company's extensive 'Farmer Connect' programme, where BigBasket partners with over 30,000 growers nationwide.
Customers will be able to trace their products back to the farmer who grew the fruits and vegetables.
The 10-minute promise
Previously, Grofers said in a 17 August blog post that it can ship more than 7,000 items of everyday essentials in Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ghaziabad, Noida and Lucknow.
“As we sign up more partners and keep building out our network, we are confident we will be under 10 minutes for the majority of the customers within the next 45 days,” the post added.
The Tata group, in a 28 May statement, said it is building a digital consumer ecosystem that will cater to consumer needs across categories in a unified manner, and that online food and grocery is an important part of this ecosystem. BigBasket logged a revenue of $1bn in 2020.