The online grocery business, which has an increasing number of competitors, is getting cramped for space.
Alibaba-backed BigBasket has sent a notice to bootstrapped DailyBasket, alleging trademark infringement for the use of the word 'Basket' in its brand name.
Listing the allegations on its website, DailyBasket said that the giant corporation was demanding that they stop using the domain name dailybasket.com, discontinue the mobile apps, stop its operations, transfer the domain name dailybasket.com and pay Rs. 2 lakh as legal fees.
BigBasket is also withholding the right to use domain name `basket’ as a prominent feature ever again, it said.
The tiny Coimbatore-based startup, however, is far from intimidated. It is all set to begin a David vs. Goliath battle. Responding to the grocery giant’s ‘cease and desist letter,' DailyBasket said that the notice was a form of `corporate bullying’ trying to eliminate an `up comer as a competition’.
Reacting swiftly to the notice, the startup came up with a website bbisabully.com (Big Basket is a bully), which displays "BigBasket is bullying dailybasket.com with cease and desist letter" as its header.
It did not stop there. Following the allegations, the website then went on to display a side-by-side comparison of the websites and mobile applications of the companies in order to highlight the dissimilarities between the two.
Not pulling its punches, Dailybasket said, ``We are a tiny bootstrapped company currently only serving in Coimbatore and about to open our first physical location," adding for good effect that they did not have `mighty power and money’ like BigBasket to engage in `endless lawsuits and unlawful intimidations’.
Urging the management of the big corporation to look into this matter and stop sending threatening emails to upcoming startups, the two-person company pledged to "show the truth in public to everyone". The start-up sure has got spunk and now some eyeballs as well.
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