In today’s blog, we’ll unleash how BigBasket, India’s largest grocery delivery platform, works and earns revenue. Further, we’ll also look at some prominent features of BigBasket and its competitors.
In today’s technology-driven era, grocery shopping has taken a new form. Nowadays, you no longer need to drive to the grocery shop, walk from aisle to aisle to fetch products, stand in the long queues to make payment, and take the heavy shopping bags to your home.
With the online grocery shopping apps, you can easily shortlist products, set a delivery time, pay the dues within seconds and get your groceries delivered to your doorstep!
What’s more interesting is that you can even order perishable goods such as milk, eggs, butter, chicken, fish, and more through these platforms.
If you’re an entrepreneur willing to start an online grocery store in India or abroad, this blog can assist you on your way forward! Read on to know more!
BigBasket
BigBasket is India’s largest online grocery delivery platform. As per the data offered by PGA Labs, Bigbasket is leading the online grocery delivery segment with 37% of the total market share in FY21.
BigBasket offers a huge variety of products including daily essentials, grooming, beauty and hygiene, beverages, baby care, and more. Currently, it delivers to over 25 cities across India.
Even during the pandemic, the company sustained and doubled its sales by fulfilling 300,000 deliveries every day, crossing its previous mark of 150,000 deliveries a day. As a result, BigBasket reported a 36% revenue growth in FY2020.
In May 2021, the Tata Group acquired a majority of stake in Big Basket valuing over $1.2 billion. With the new stakeholders on board, Big Basket aims to further enhance its reach and customer experience. The platform is expected to launch faster delivery options along with customizing the app to work in various native languages.
How BigBasket Generates Revenue?
There are two sides to BigBasket’s revenue model: Purchasing non-perishable goods from producers and storing them in warehouses and tying up with regular suppliers, grocers, and farmers for perishable goods such as milk, egg, veggies, and more.
Let’s look at both of these revenue models in detail!
Inventory Model
To operate on a national level, BigBasket purchases products in bulk quantities at discounted rates from several suppliers such as P&G, farmers, mills, HUL, Fresho, and more.
After purchasing the products in bulk, the company stores them in 12 major BigBasket warehouses spread across the country. Contradicting to the industry average of storing a month of inventory, Big Basket purchases only ten days’ worth of products. This helps BigBasket to save capital and prevent losses from perishable goods.
The most distinguishing peculiarity about Bigbasket is that it sells its own inventory rather than being a marketplace for a number of sellers.
Hyper-local Delivery Model
To deliver your grocery within four hours, BigBasket partners with numerous local grocers, farmers, and suppliers for perishable goods.
As per some sources, it collaborates with more than 1800 grocers across India to deliver perishable goods such as milk, egg, veggies, bread, butter, meat, and more instantly to the customers.
As a result of this effort, the platform has managed to minimize waste and lower inventory prices.
Earlier when the company initiated the same-day delivery option, it used to charge 30Rs per delivery to customers.
However later, after launching the 90-minutes delivery model, BigBasket has specified certain standard delivery charges. For instance, customers living outside Mumbai are liable to pay 50Rs as a standard delivery fee on BigBasket for orders within 600Rs. However, to further eliminate delivery charges, BigBasket offers a premium BigBasket membership known as BB Star.
With the BB Star membership (at 599 for 6 months), the customers can not only save on delivery fees but also get access to priority slots and cashback offers!
Together both these models help Bigbasket reduce inventory prices and gain profits at the same time!
6 Amazing Features of BigBasket
1. Delivery within 4-Hour
Many times, we are late to realize that our food stocks have been consummated. At times, when you’re unable to go grocery shopping, BigBasket can be your savior!
BigBasket offers a prompt delivery service that delivers your products within four hours of ordering. Moreover, you can even schedule your delivery at your convenience through the BigBasket app.
2. Prompt Customer Support
If you’re facing problems while using the BigBasket app, you can always reach out to customer care and get your issue resolved within minutes!
You can either reach customer support through a call, email or submit your query on their platform itself. The customer support team gets back to you with clear solutions in almost no time.
3. Unlimited Product Category
As per some sources, BigBasket offers 20,000+ products from 1000+ brands in its catalog. You can find a huge variety of home essentials, grooming products, kitchen appliances, health supplements and much more! With BigBasket, you can compare the prices of different products, and get the best deals!
Moreover, it also offers a wide variety of non-veg items such as fish, chicken, mutton, and more for your weekends and cheats meal days!
4. Delivers 100% Fresh Products
BigBasket makes maximum efforts to deliver 100% fresh and genuine products to its customers. For this purpose, it collaborates with numerous local suppliers and adopts hygienic delivery processes to ensure the freshness of products.
Moreover, if by some error, you receive a misplaced product, you can easily return and get a refund through the BigBasket app.
5. Hassle-Free Payment System
One of the best features of using BigBasket is its hassle-free payment procedure. The platform offers a variety of payment options ranging from Cash on Delivery (COD), PayTM, MobiKwik, American Express to VISA, MasterCard, and RuPay.
6. Comprehensive Beauty Store
BigBasket recently expanded its inventory by adding beauty and hygiene products. Nowadays, it offers a wide range of beauty products for makeup, skincare, haircare, oral care, and more! You can find the best deals on these products on the BigBasket app.
Top 3 Competitors of Big Basket
1. Blinkit (formerly Grofers)
Blinkit is one of the biggest competitors of BigBasket. It acquires more than 13% of the total market share of online grocery retailers. The platform offers numerous essential products ranging from groceries, household items, personal care products, pet foods, meat, fishes and more at reasonable prices.
In FY20, Grofers generated a healthy revenue of INR 2,289.2 crores.
2. Flipkart Supermart
E-commerce giant, Flipkart, launched its grocery delivery services in 2017. Soon, it gained a lot of popularity among users due to quick delivery and quality products. The platform offers a vast variety of home essentials ranging from daily groceries, personal care, snacks and beverages, baby care, and more.
Moreover, the regular offers, 1Rs deals, and prompt delivery of Flipkart Supermart compel the customers to stay connected to the platform.
3. Amazon Pantry
Amazon Pantry is another popular online grocery delivery platform in India. As of 2019, it acquires almost 31% of the total market share. You can get home essentials, groceries, pet food, skincare products, packaged foods, and more on Amazon Pantry. Currently, it delivers to more than 62 PIN Codes across India.
The platform offers a smooth user experience and offers timely deals on your favorite products.
As of FY20, Amazon Pantry generated a whopping revenue of INR 714.4 crores.
How to Build a Grocery Delivery app like Big Basket?
If you’re willing to start an online grocery store, NOW is the right time! With the large-scale digitization and change in lifestyle, a huge number of Indians are willing to purchase groceries online. As per some reports, the online grocery market size is forecasted to cross the 1 lakh crores mark by 2023.
Let’s check the 5-steps to build a grocery delivery app like BigBasket.
- Shortlist Product Categories For Your Online Grocery Store
- Decide Delivery & Payment System
- Select the Best App Development Company
- Integrate Top-Notch Features on Your Grocery Delivery App
- Beta Testing & App Launch
At Eiosys, we have a ready solution for grocery app development that can be directly used in an off-the-shelf manner or customized as per the requirements of the clients.
Over the years, Bigbasket has proven its efficacy as the best marketplace in the grocery segment. Its focus on the freshness of its product (grocery), quick delivery, customer acquisition, brand building, influencer marketing, and customer retention has also put it on the list of the best (unicorn) startups in the country. Recently, it has also launched 3 new offerings:
- BB Beauty – A one-stop destination to avail beauty and personal care products for men and women.
- BB Daily – A subscription service to avail daily essential products like vegetables, dairy, eggs, and more.
- BB Instant – A one-stop destination to avail grocery products.
In the pandemic period, Bigbasket stood tall as the lockdown spurred a massive rise in demand. Approximately, Bigbasket delivered close to 2 lakh orders every single day.
Conclusion
I hope this blog gives you a better understanding of how BigBasket works, its revenue model, competitors, and much more. Our company Eiosys specializes in the implementation of eCommerce apps such as grocery delivery, food delivery, and much more. You can drop us a business inquiry at sales@eiosys.com
Also, if you’re interested, we’ve got another cool blog waiting for you to read it – How Instacart Works? It will tell you how the top grocery delivery service in the US i.e. Instacart actually works.
