INDIA – BigBasket, a prominent online grocery store in India owned by Tata Group, aims to achieve profitability in six to nine months, according to co-founder Vipul Parekh.
In an interview with Times of India, Parekh further revealed that Big Basket’s slotted grocery delivery business is already profitable.
The co-founder also revealed that progress has been made on the daily business unit with the company expecting the unit to reach profitability soon.
“Our quick commerce business (BB Now) is some distance away from profitability, but we expect it to get profitable in six to nine months,” Parekh said.
“The moment the quick commerce business gets profitable which is six to nine months from now, we should be completely profitable (at the company level).”
The quick commerce or instant grocery delivery business being a low order value business is difficult to scale. BigBasket has however looked for ways to ensure its profitability at scale.
“We are not a standalone quick commerce business. We also have the daily milk business and online slotted deliveries,” Parekh explained.
“Since we use the same distribution centers and dark stores for all our businesses, the order volume per dark store is high which is a big advantage for us. The fixed cost per order comes down. Besides we have private labels which lead to better gross margins.”
Despite the low order value of quick commerce, Big Basket has a bold and ambitious target of increasing the segment’s monthly revenues to Rs 250 crore (US$30 million).
In an interview with ETRetail, BigBasket COO, TK Balakumar said: “We are close to doubling quick commerce arm monthly revenue. If we exit March 2024 at Rs 250-275 crore, we will be almost even-stevens in terms of contribution margin.”
Losses for BigBasket’s business-to-consumer (B2C) arm Innovative Retail Concepts ballooned to Rs 1,535 crore (US$184.45 million) in FY23 from Rs 813 crore (US$97.69 million) in FY22, the company’s filings with the RoC sourced from business intelligence platform Tofler showed.
BigBasket is considering building its offline presence significantly. “We are trying to figure out which is the best format for us to address the offline space,” said Parekh.
The company may start preparing for an IPO in 2025 with Parekh indicating that the IPO will be a function of the company’s profitability.
