Grocery shopping on the go with BigBasket!

With over 10,000 products and 1,000 brands in the inventory, online grocer BigBasket aims at being the largest player in the Indian grocery market. Get your household items on your doorsteps within a few hours.

Soon after bagging "Best eRetailer of the Year Award" at The Indian Retail and eRetail Congress and Awards 2015, Abhinay Choudhari, CEO & Co-Founder, BigBasket, passionately shared with Retailer Media his future expansion plans and his stand in the industry.   

 

Talk to us about BigBasket and the business model?

BigBazaar runs under the model that basically delivers groceries for the household inventories. We have a same day delivery concept, we carry a range of around 12,500 SKUs which customers can order and receive same day at their doorsteps.

What is the market size of this industry and where do you see yourself placed?

The online grocery has a very small market as of now and we cover almost 70-80% of the market. We are the only player who is present in 5 cities and are growing pretty fast i.e. 15-20% per month. Further, we will expand to more metro cities and some tier II cities as well. We see this market going really fast.

What will be the difference in strategy while targeting tier II cities?

In metros, we have our own distribution centres, but in tier II, which will be cities near to our main cities will get fulfilled by our distribution centres. So, the model will be slightly different. We will not have same size or similar kind of distribution centres as we have in metros. 

Can you put some light on the investment front of BigBasket?

That's an ongoing thing. We have so far raised two rounds and will start the third round of funding very soon.

How has been the growth of BigBasket since inception?

We have grown 25 times from 2012 to 2014 and by the end of 2016 we are looking at a growth of 20X more. It has been quite fast for us. 

Where do you see the future of mCommerce 5-7 years down the line?

mCommerce is growing exponentially, but the category where we are into is slightly different as the number of item you have in each order are much more. It's a monthly purchase that consumers do and so mCommerce will have some challenges as adding so many items into the cart and then checking-out becomes a tedious job. Desktops/ laptops are more suitable. In this category, mobile trend will grow, but there is no room for it to become the main way of shopping.

How was your experience at the Indian Retail Congress 2015?

It was actually good. We got the best e-Retailer of the year award and also got to interact with a lot of good people.