Tata enters the online grocery market with majority stake buy in BigBasket

The stake was bought by Tata Digital Ltd., a unit of Tata Sons. Tata on Friday declined to give further details on the deal. BigBasket did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd. has acquired a majority stake in online grocery seller BigBasket, putting the Indian conglomerate in a direct race with e-commerce players Amazon.com Inc., Walmart Inc.'s Flipkart and Reliance Industries Ltd.

The stake was bought by Tata Digital Ltd., a unit of Tata Sons. Tata on Friday declined to give further details on the deal. BigBasket did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

India's antitrust regulator, Competition Commission of India, had in March approved the Tata-BigBasket deal, wherein India's largest conglomerate has picked up 64.3% stake in the online grocery. Media reports have said the deal is worth about Rs 9,500 crore ($1.31 billion), and will involve buying out Chinese giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s stake.

The deal comes as e-commerce sales, especially of food and groceries, have accelerated in India as the COVID-19 pandemic spurred a big shift to online shopping.

Tata, which has interests in products spanning from salt to luxury cars to software, has been planning to launch a "super app" that will tie in all its consumer businesses, according to media reports.