With New Warehouses, BigBasket Targets Deliveries Under Four Hours

As the hyperlocal delivery battle intensifies, BigBasket has rejigged its operational model to make all deliveries under four hours, according to a media report. In the earlier model, it used to offer two delivery options including 90-minute delivery and next day scheduled delivery. 

With the four-hour delivery plan, BigBasket will reportedly help the company ensure that users get ample product choices, which was not possible in the earlier 90 minute delivery option. 

“We have moved from smaller, ‘dark’ stores to opening warehouses that are three times larger and also re-hauled its supply chain across cities to fulfill the majority of customer orders faster,” BigBasket CEO, Hari Menon told ET.

BigBasket was launched in 2011 by VS Sudhakar, Menon, Vipul Parekh, V S Ramesh and Abhinay Choudhari. As of May 2019, it claimed to have over 10 Mn registered customers and was processing 1 Lakh orders per day across 25 Indian cities.  

BigBasket recorded close to $33 Mn (INR 230 Cr) in gross monthly sales, with an annual exit rate of around $435.8 Mn (INR 3K Cr) in March 2018. It is now aiming to touch $1 Bn gross sales run rate by the end of FY19. 

The Bengaluru-based company recently closed a $150 Mn Series F funding round from Chinese ecommerce major Alibaba, South Korea’s Mirae Asset Global Investments and the UK government-backed CDC Group.

With this round, the total funding raised by BigBasket had reached $1.02 Bn across 14 funding rounds from investors such as Alibaba, Helion Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Abraaj Group, LionRock Capital and others.

Hyperlocal Delivery Heats Up

According to RedSeer report, India’s hyperlocal grocery delivery market is rapidly growing at 106% y-o-y growth by the first quarter of 2019. The growth in the market is said to be driven by convenience-based levers such as assortment, express delivery, and subscriptions. 

Last month, global ecommerce giant Amazon entered the grocery delivery space in India with the launch of Amazon Fresh in Bengaluru. Other notable players in the market include Swiggy Go, Dunzo, Grofers and Flipkart Nearby. 

Also in August, Paytm’s ecommerce vertical Paytm Mall has pivoted to a hyperlocal model. In a media statement, the company earlier said this is expected to help the company reduced costs associated with logistics. This will also bring down the company’s costs drastically as it would not need to own and operate its own warehouses.