BigBasket is the single largest grocery delivery company in the country. Founded in 2011, It has seen challengers come and go. It fought them off with the might of funding and a canny business model. While others, like LocalBanya, Grofers and PepperTap, used different ways to reach the customer, BigBasket decided to focus on using an inventory-led model to control market share. And it could. Part of it could be its CEO Hari Menon’s experience with Trinethra Super Retail, which was eventually bought over by Aditya Birla Group and rebranded as More.

What has BigBasket been up to, in the last 12 months?

It was an interesting year for BigBasket. The company saw competition fade in FY16. PepperTap, funded by Snapdeal, shut down. A few months before that LocalBanya couldn’t make the cut and was shuttered. Grofers, which raised cash, also laid off its employees, cut operations in cities and turned down its marketing spend. While competitors fell away, BigBasket raised almost $150 million from the Arbaaj Group. It started a B2B business to monetise its increasing food-tech and kirana store clientele. It also acquired a logistics startup called Delyver. All of this added up to make it the largest grocery delivery startup in India.

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Results:

Rs 563.2 crore: Revenue from operations. Up from Rs 170.2 crore in FY15. The company saw a 3X growth.

Rs 91.2 crore: Spent on salaries in FY16. In FY15, BigBasket spent Rs 25.6 crore, up nearly four times in a year. BigBasket hired and how.

Rs 277.5 crore: Loss absorbed by BigBasket in its effort to scale up and beat the competition. In FY15, the company lost just Rs 60.6 crore.

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• Hari Menon
• Hyperlocal