Online grocer Bigbasket has raised USD 300 million in a new funding round led by Chinese e-tailer giant Alibaba and others.
The company plans to use the money to build farmer networks, expand deeper into existing cities, and to hire new hands, the company said in a statement today, adding it employs 16,000 currently.
Bigbasket operates in 30 cities and claims a monthly run-rate of Rs 200 crore. This is expected to increase to Rs 500 crore by March 2019.
The domestic retail market is worth over USD 900 billion and groceries account for about USD 600 billion of it. “Bigbasket is delighted to receive this funding from Alibaba, which will essentially be directed towards growth and consolidation by bettering our technological, analytical, and infrastructural prowess,” Hari Menon, its chief executive and co-founder said.
“We are currently partnering with about 1,800 farmers and aims to become the most preferred partner for up to 3,000 of them. Our strategy is to eventually become the one-stop- shop for customers in future,” he said. Rather than focusing on expansion into more cities, Bigbasket is planning to dig deeper into the cities it is present already, he said.
Bigbasket claims to have crossed 8 million customers. It has also strengthened its B2B business by expanding to hotels, restaurants, and caterers the (HoReCa) segment and partnering with mom-n-pop stores.
In fiscal 2017 it had reported a revenue of Rs 1,410 crore and has achieved breakeven in two key markets—Bangalore and Hyderabad and is expected to break even in Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Chennai over the next three months.
