The Ledger
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Menon: Delivering every grocery order in 10 minutes is structurally unprofitable
“Nobody can profitably deliver every order in 10 minutes. It's not possible. The network of dark stores you'll have to set up to do that is not profitable. So you will never be able to build a good unit economics based on only 10 minutes, which means all orders…”
Menon claims BigBasket will be the only profitable quick-commerce grocery player
“The only one that's going to build a profitable model today is of us because it's not for us. It's an extension of our business, right? I've got the same DC, same supplier, same everything. My supply chain is just getting more and more loaded, which helps me g…”
Noel Tata Rejected BigBasket, Claiming Nobody Buys Groceries Online
“We went and met Noel Tata at that time. Trent. So for this, he said, listen, people will buy books and all the stuff, grocery, nobody's going to buy online. That is, those are his words. So he rejected investing in our business because we are looking for this.…”
Parekh: Tata Group doesn't pressure BigBasket for rapid quick commerce leadership
“They're not you know, let me put it this way very fussed about what is the rate of growth and how soon will you become number one? And why shouldn't you be the largest in quick commerce and all of that? I think that their focus is build a good brand. Let's mak…”
Startups outgrow traditional venture capital upon reaching one billion dollars in sales
“The other more important reason that we did it is that we have reached a stage in our company at a billion dollars of sales. You need to now get strategics or you need to get piece because you at one point go out of this whole BC world because of the quantum o…”
Quick commerce took market share from neighborhood kiranas, not BigBasket
“When these 10 minute, 20 minute things came, lot of our customers went there to buy stuff, which they used to go to Kirana and buy. So none of the big basket business went there.”
Viable quick commerce delivery windows will settle between 30 and 90 minutes
“So you will build a model which is within 30 minutes, right? Less than 30 minutes. There'll be some which will go up to 90 minutes. So 30 to 90 is the range you'll find. Less than 30, less than 90.”
BigBasket may be India's first e-commerce company to break even
“As a result of which we are likely to break even also very soon. So we might possibly be the first e-commerce company that would break even as a result of this approach.”
Ascent Capital's BigBasket Investment Returned More Than Its Entire Fund
“Rather, I mean, they returned more than the fund, and as it so happened, the infrastructure and other sectors went down. This is a, one of the best dream returns for a fund.”
Ganesh: Hyperlocal Sourcing Defends Online Grocery Against Horizontal Giants
“Grocery because there is a lot of local sourcing and it's more hyper local than a typical Amazon Flipkart, which is large warehouse national distribution.”
Quick Commerce Caught BigBasket's Leadership by Complete Surprise
“Both, ah, personally, as a professional or as a management, ah, thinker, ah, and as part of, ah, Big Basket, ah, shareholder, this has caught us by complete surprise.”
Parekh: A failed acquisition delayed BigBasket's quick commerce launch by seven months
“In this particular case, we were actually pursuing an acquisition brilliantly for us and for that company. And we thought it was a done deal. And that cost us about six months, seven months. And if that had happened, it would have been a very different story t…”
Parekh: BigBasket will fully pivot into a single quick commerce company
“We will actually essentially just transform into a completely a quick commerce company. We're not going to have two businesses like we have today, because I think the writing is on the wall.”
Parekh: Eight to ten key operational metrics determine grocery business health
“For example, in our business, the key metrics are, what is your average order value? What is your gross margin? What is your NPS? What is your rate of return? What is your write-off? What is your you know orders per dark store? Right. All of this what is your …”
Sudhakar: All older BigBasket business lines are order-profitable before HQ costs
“See, the good thing is all our businesses, especially the older businesses make money on a, If you take that business, you know, per order, I mean, it makes money at a, other than corporate costs, right? Everybody makes money. All the older businesses. That's …”
Sudhakar: Founders claiming success came purely from merit are fooling themselves
“Anybody who says, I've become successful purely on the basis of my merit alone, I think fooling themselves, because I think God has to be with you, and you have to have a lot of luck. Whether you call it luck, God, fate, whatever you want to call it, I think t…”
Founders make a critical mistake optimizing for equity over financial runway
“The mistake people make is that they don't raise enough capital for a longer runway because they want to optimize for stake holding and not for growth and not for getting that thing off your head.”
Geopolitical tensions between India and China blocked Alibaba from funding BigBasket further
“So we had the first strategic that came in two years before in the form of Alibaba. Unfortunately, because of the, all the issues that were there with China and stuff like that, they couldn't make further investments.”
Menon predicts BigBasket will become a $10B company under Tata's ownership
“We will still build a ten billion dollar company. So there is nothing different in BigBasket.”
LocalBanya burned a ₹200 crore ad budget but lost to BigBasket
“I mean, you know, even for us at Local Banya, we had 200 crores of ad expense from Times of India. Big Basket didn't have that. But we couldn't beat them, because they were just a better product.”
Ganesh: Consumers Never Revert to Offline Buying After Experiencing Convenience
“Because when the consumer gets used to a certain convenience. He's not going to go back to buying offline. Okay. It's like asking you and me to go and stand in a train ticket counter to buy ticket. Ain't going to happen.”
Parekh: BigBasket holds 10% to 12% quick commerce market share
“We would have about 10 to 12% market share.”
Sudhakar: Tata's acquisition of BigBasket closed without a single in-person meeting
“The crazy thing is, this is such a complex and a very large deal. And all of it happened without one meeting, because this is the time when COVID was just, right? Outstanding how a deal of this size we could do without actually meeting.”
Ahluwalia: Tata acquired 60%+ of BigBasket for $1B+ and revalued at $3B
“For example, with big basket, right? They bought 60% plus stake for one billion plus, and now they valued the company again in a refinancing at three billion.”
Startup co-founder trust is more critical than skill because skill is hireable
“The founders are very critical. I just try and figure out whether these founders live on trust or they just live on skill, right? Yeah. Skill you can hire.”
Menon: BigBasket raised the largest Series A round in India at the time
“Because I think we raised our, it was the largest series A at that point in time.”
Delivering bad food destroys consumer trust far more than delivering bad electronics
“It's not as much as delivering a mobile phone or a pair of shoes wear, but if you deliver bad food, then you're not trusted.”
BigBasket achieved CM3 and CM4 positive contribution margins around 2016 or 2017
“And the first thing we demonstrated five years back or six years back is to become CM positive. So we are not, we are profitable trade at CM three, CM four level, which is basically everything you sell. You're making money. You're not selling it at a loss.”
BigBasket defines integrity as having the courage to admit ignorance to superiors
“For us integrity means the power to say no, which means that if I don't know something, if I'm able to sit in a meeting and say, sorry, I don't know it in front of people in front of his boss, I think we have achieved integrity, which means that I'm honest to …”
BigBasket founders refused to launch without raising substantial capital upfront
“And we told ourselves very clear that if this money doesn't come, we're not doing a kitchen garage startup. We're not doing that anymore. It doesn't work for us. It's too stressful. It's too painful. So we will raise that quality. If you don't, we will not do …”
BigBasket rejected Indian 'jugaad' culture to strictly implement standard processes from inception
“Day one is process. We don't do Jugaad. First day of the company. We build processes.”
Gulati: BigBasket Is Built to Last and Outperforms Competitors
“So today would I say that Big Baskets a product which can, you know, be here to stay? Absolutely. In that space, you know, I don't want to name all the other guys, but You know, this has carved a niche so many miles above itself, above the others.”
The three investment pillars behind Helion's early bet on BigBasket
“So big basket, I think there were three things. One was that the founding team had done two startups before. I think the kind of, ah, challenges in a hard business like grocery, we felt was best handled by a team which had been there, done that, right? So, I m…”
Aggarwal: BigBasket holds half of India's grocery market
“Big basket has half of the grocery market in the country, in spite of many other people being in the same business.”
Krishnan: E-Grocery Adoption in India Is Single-Digit Percentage
“Even today, e-commerce or big basket, whatever you call it, it's a single digit percentage adoption of e-grocery in India.”
Ganesh: Ascent Capital broke its mandate to invest in BigBasket
“Ascent Capital is a private equity fund. They have never done a, written the first check. They have never written in a startup check. They have not done an e-commerce company, focused primarily on real estate and infrastructure, large later stage ticket sizes,…”
Ganesh: Tata owns 66% of BigBasket with 33% held by founders and investors
“Tata's now own 66% balance. 33% is held by us, by founders and by as I send capital a bit and much later stage investors.”
Ganesh: BigBasket co-founders previously operated 300 physical Trinetra grocery stores
“Hari Menon can take a bunch of rice in his hand and tell you what the quality is, because they ran actually 300 Trenetra stores, physical brick and mortar grocery stores.”
Parekh: BigBasket held board reviews every 15 days for two years
“One of the first things we did when we started the big basket was we said, we'll have a 15 day board review. So you used to do, and for the first two years, I think we did a board review every 15 days. For the six, seven years of, I mean, till I think Tata's c…”
Siddhartha: India has over two million gig delivery workers across major platforms
“There are currently more than two million delivery boys in India across platforms like Swiggy, Zomato, Blinkit. Zepto. Big basket. 20 lakh delivery boys or girls.”
Sudhakar: Farmers selling to BigBasket earn 6–7% more within two days
“So one we get almost six to seven percent more than what we would have got otherwise. And we get our money in two days and without follow up.”
Sudhakar: BigBasket's team size is around 30,000 to 35,000 employees
“More now, now it's closer to about 30, 35,000.”
Sudhakar: BigBasket works directly with 15,000 to 20,000 Indian farmers
“Today we're about, I think, 15, 20,000 farmers.”
Sudhakar: Supplier leverage flips once a retailer reaches massive scale
“When the early days, you know, like I keep saying, like if you look at the top FMCG companies, you would go there, right? When you become reasonable size, somewhere you'll meet in between. Once you're very large, they come to you. So that's really what scale d…”
BigBasket's Web-To-App Revenue Mix Flipped 80/20 In One Year
“Till about 1617 80% of our business used to come from our website. 20% used to come from apps. And within a year, it went to exactly the reverse.”