V.S. Sudhakar, Hari Menon, V.S. Ramesh, Vipul Parekh, and Abhinay Choudhari, who have survived the dot-com bubble, founded Big Basket in October 2011. Big Basket, India’s Largest Online Grocer has headquarters in Bengaluru. Tata Digital Limited, a unit of Tata Sons, recently bought a huge stake in Big Basket and this was approved by India’s antitrust body making it official that Tata Group is the owner of Big Basket.
Business Launched by Big Basket
Big Basket has launched three businesses that are new and unique ideas,
- BB Daily,
- BB Instant, and
- BB Beauty.
BB Daily
BB Daily is a platform on which people can order before 10 PM and they get the delivery between 05.00 AM to 07.00 AM the next day. Customers can order milk and fresh groceries on this platform.
BB Instant
BB Instant is a vending machine by Big Basket which is kept in corporate offices and other such places.
BB Beauty
Customers can order online from varied types of beauty and personal care products through their website.
Fresho Stores
Fresho Stores is an offline retail store by Big basket. The first store is opened at Basaveshwar Nagar in Bangalore.
About Founders of Big Basket
Hari Menon
Hari Menon, who is the co-founder and CEO of BigBasket, was born in the year 1963, in Bandra West, Mumbai. BigBasket is India’s largest online Super Market. He did his bachelor’s degree from BITS, Pilani, and studied Master of Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University. In the year 1988, He also did an M.S Degree in Industrial Engineering from Oklahoma State University.
Early Career
After completing his studies, He worked as a Software Engineer at Consilium in the year 1990. After working there for three years, he left the Job. For another three years, he worked as a manager at Accenture. He worked for one year at Aspect i2 Technologies.
Entrepreneurial Journey
In September 2004, He along with a few other members founded the company called Tumri. He was the CEO of this company. This company was acquired by Collective Media in the year 2012 and then became a part of Adobe.
Hari Menon launched Fabmart, which was one of the first e-commerce portals in India in the year 1999, did not get any business in the first year but this did not stop Hari Menon and other founders, Vipul Parekh, V S Sudhakar, Abhinay Choudhari, and V S Ramesh. It was a site to sell cassettes, books, jewelry toys, etc. A physical shop of Fabmart was started soon. Hari Menon was
Personal Life
Hari Menon is married to Shanti Menon, who is the daughter of ‘E Shreedharan’.
V.S. Sudhakar
V S Sudhakar was the CEO of Planetasia. He has worked for a long time in the IT Sector.
V.S. Ramesh
V. S. Ramesh has studied electronics engineering at Karnataka university and has more than 20 years of experience in the Indian Navy. He is Head of Logistics & Supply Chain at BigBasket.
Vipul Parekh
Vipul Parekh is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore. He has worked with Wipro Limited, Peepul Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd, and Trinethra Super Retail Ltd. He is the Head of Finance & Marketing at BigBasket.
Abhinay Choudhari
Abhinay Choudhari, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, has worked with iGATE and Infosys. He founded Stylecountry.com, one of India’s first online fashion retail stores, but this did not turn out to be profitable and hence closed. He was the founder and Head of New Initiatives of Big Basket. He Let Big Basket stating that he would focus on starting a new venture in August 2021.
Tagline
“Har Din Sasta.” is the recent tagline of Big Basket.
Controversies Faced by Big Basket
In November 2020, the company was accused of selling data on the dark web. Cyble, a cyber intelligence firm confirmed this news. On this news, the official statement by Big Basket was as,
“A few days ago, we learned about a potential data breach at Bigbasket and are evaluating the extent of the breach and authenticity of the claim in consultation with cybersecurity experts and finding immediate ways to contain it. We have also lodged a complaint with the Cyber Crime Cell in Bengaluru and intend to pursue this vigorously to bring the culprits to book.”
Big Basket now has given the surety that the data of the customers are safe and the financial data of the customers is never stored on their website.
Competitors of Big Basket
Few of the competitors of Big Basket are,
- PepperTap
- Grofers
- Reliance Fresh
- Swiggy
- Zomato
- Amazon
Funding raised by Big Basket
- The company raised Rs 350 crore from Supermarket Grocery Supplies on 02nd June 2022
- The company has received investment from Tata Digital twice to date.
Acquisitions made by Big Basket
- In June 2015, Delyver was acquired by Big Basket
- In October 2018, Big Basket acquired Raincan, KWIK24, and Morning Cart
- DailyNinja was acquired by Big Basket in March 2020.
- In February 2020, Big Basket acquired Agrima Infotech
About BBNow
BBNow is the new planned product launched by Big Basket. The product was launched in february 2022. It is called a quick commerce product. This product will aim to deliver grocery products within 18 to 20 minutes within the range of hyperlocal geography.
Read More: Kuku FM $21.8 million Raised Investment from Fundamentum
Awards received by Big Basket
- In the year 2017, the ‘Retail and eCommerce app of the year’ award was given to Big Basket at YourStory’s AWS Mobility Awards
- Hari Menon, the CEO of Big Basket was recognized with Top Rated CEO Award by Owler in the year 2017.
- In the Global E-commerce Award ceremony which was hosted by Ecommerce Europe in Barcelona, Big Basket was placed 02nd.
Conclusion
Big Basket is focused on maintaining its position as the largest Online Grocer and apart from that, The company has planned to have warehouses in almost all the cities they operate in so that they can minimize the delivery time as much as possible. Hari Menon, One of the founders of Big Basket has revealed that the company is planning to open more than 800 stores in the next five years.
