BigBasket’s quick commerce service BBNow is aiming to close this financial year with a revenue of Rs 1,000 crore, a top executive told Moneycontrol.
The Bengaluru-headquartered online grocery, acquired by the Tata group in May 2019, currently has 160 dark stores across 10 cities that cover around 45 percent of its customer base and plans to double the number to around 300 in tier 1 cities and around 40-50 in tier II cities by end of next month. The company has already opened dark stores in places like Kochi, Lucknow and Vizag.
BigBasket’s service has two formats 10-30 minutes called BBNow which was earlier branded as 10-20 minutes. The average delivery time has been 23-26 minutes since launch.
BigBasket started its quick commerce service late last year, when other players like Zepto, Swiggy and BlinkIt had already doubled down on their express delivery services.
Speaking to Moneycontrol, TK Balakumar, chief operating officer of BigBasket, said, “We look to exit March-23 month sale with a revenue Rs 200 crore and aim to close FY 2022-23 at Rs 1,000 crore, looking from the overall growth of business coming through BB Now. It is now the biggest growing business unit.”
Saying that they are looking to close this month at Rs 40 crore in terms of sales, he added that while the newer stores are growing 60 percent monthly, the matured ones are still growing at 40 percent.
Moneycontrol earlier reported that BigBasket saw an infusion of Rs 350 crore and Rs 1,000 crore in two tranches from the Tata-owned Innovative Retail Concepts, the company that runs the online grocery platform. Commenting on these investments, Balakumar said that 80 percent of the capital will be used to expand its BBNow services while the rest will be used for incremental business purposes and upgrading existing warehouses.
He added that BBNow is looking to tap youngsters including millennials and GenZ, a segment different from its earlier target cohort. “We did an internal study and saw that while our sales had not dropped, the competitors had done well in that segment and we missed out. Since we now have four to five months of experience, we are seeing how the quick commerce consumers behave and are fine-tuning our processes,” said Balakumar.
The Bengaluru-based company has also moved into offline retail with its first store opening in 2021 in Bengaluru, but the focus remains on the online business. Now part of the Tata group’s super-app offering Neu, BigBasket is a key business line for the conglomerate to acquire market share in this hot space.
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