The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 30 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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…”
Quick commerce will cap out at 25 percent of total grocery purchasing
“So these are the two strong use cases, and in my view, this will contribute to about 20 to 25% of the grocery buy, and that's it. Rest of it will continue to be planned and continue to be the way it's working”
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…”
Grocery delivery businesses cannot succeed without owning their inventory
“Grocery, you can't do without owning inventory, right? That's the model that, that runs. People have tried different models. None of them have worked.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Startup founding teams should strictly consist of two or three people
“And I believe in one thing that you must have a founding team, which is minimum two or three, not more, but can't be one because you go crazy up just trying to build a business and nobody else to bounce ideas with.”
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.”
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.”
Founders who undercapitalize their startups fail to develop a scale-oriented mindset
“If you don't raise the capital for scale, you'll never think scale. So then you're always thinking how am I going to optimize that little money I have and keep growing and it becomes very difficult out there.”
Process inherently conflicts with innovation because true innovation requires breaking established procedures
“Process and innovation don't necessarily go together. Those people who innovate don't necessarily follow process because you have to break stuff.”
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.”
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 …”
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.”
Online grocery penetration in India will eventually reach eight to nine percent
“Online groceries, one percent of the grocery, of grocery in India, right? This will move to three percent. Eventually it will move to eight, nine percent.”
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.”
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 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.”
Fabmart built India's first debit card payment gateway for Citibank in 1999
“And that payment gateway was the first payment gateway using a debit card. And I don't know whether you're aware that this would be the first debit card in India, which is called Subida, which Citibank had launched.”
Menon: Modern grocery retail was almost nonexistent in early 2000s India
“And that looked like a very promising business to get into at that point in time, because there was just one chain in India, in South of India, which is called Food World. There was a little bit of Nilgiris. And nowhere else was there modern trade, what we cal…”
Menon: Ascent Capital was BigBasket's first investor with a $10M check
“Ascent Capital was the first investor who came in with a serious ten million cheque.”
Hari Menon: Early Indian Startup Exits Were Not Enough to Retire On
“And the exits those days were reasonably good, but I don't think you would be comfortable saying that this is all I need for the rest of my life.”
BigBasket plans to shift strategy and begin acquiring brands and companies
“And eventually going forward, I'm looking at us maybe acquiring brands, acquiring companies. We've not done that. We've built everything ourselves, but we will do that going forward.”
BigBasket operationalizes new distribution centers in just seven to ten days
“So today it's a cookie cutter system, right? So you just, now we just go and plonk a DC and it takes us a week, 10 days to get operational. What you should take us a month.”