BigBasket Raises $50 Mn From Bessemer Venture Partner; Eyes $1 Bn Valuation in FY17: Report

Online food and grocery etailer, BigBasket, has reportedly raised $50 Mn (about INR 315 Cr) in its new round of funding led by its existing investor, Bessemer Venture Partners.

With the new fundraise the startup is valued at about $400 Mn.

The news surfaced the media in January this year, when BigBasket had planned to raise $15-16 Mn (about INR 100 Cr) from Bessemer.

According to the people familiar with the matter the startup has also mandated Citigroup to raise $150 Mn (about INR 950 Cr) from a set of new investors.

BigBasket, which recently expanded into the Delhi-NCR markets, plans to use the funds to expand into 50 more Tier-II cities. .

Started by ecommerce veterans Hari Menon, VS Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh and Abhinay Choudhari in 2011, BigBasket is an online food and grocery store which has operations in eight cities including the Tier-I cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Pune.

Crunching Numbers:

• BigBasket handles more than 6,000 orders a day
• Average ticket size:  INR 1500, indicating annualized gross merchandise value (GMV) of about INR 200 Cr.
• Within few weeks of launch in Delhi-NCR region the startup is now delivering 11,000 deliveries per day in NCR alone.
• BigBasket has raised about $57 Mn (INR 370 Cr) from investors including Ascent Capital, Helion Ventures and Zodius Capital.
• BigBasket’s private labels like HappyChef and others bring in about 33% revenue at the moment, which is expected to reach 40% by end of this year.
• BigBasket is setting up around 10 warehouses in each metro city in its network and one each in 50 towns to ship orders faster.

Hari Menon, CEO, BigBasket, said, “BigBasket would exit the current financial year with a revenue run rate of $400 Mn, a four-fold jump from the $100 Mn in August. Our revenue run rate projection for the next financial year, FY17, is $1 Bn.”

The online grocery etailing in India is witnessing investor’s interest for both inventory-based models such as BigBasket, EkSTop, LocalBanya and delivery models like Grofers, PepperTap and ZopNow. According to Goldman Sachs report, “The domestic online retail industry is evolving into a hyperlocal, on-demand market. India’s ecommerce market is estimated to grow 15 times to $300 Bn by 2030.”

Recently, food and grocery etailing has witnessed sharp rise in funding from investors. This includes online fresh food and grocery store, iOrderFresh, which secured undisclosed amount led by Best Foodworks Pvt. Ltd, online grocery store, Myonsto.com, secured angel funding of about $315K (INR 2 Cr) from Oswal Industries’ director Jayant Bokadia and in the grocery delivery domain, Grofers, which claims to clock 4 lakh orders, raised $45 Mn from Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital.

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