Indian online grocery startup BigBasket raises $60M

Parekh said the startup is aggressively trying to hire more delivery personnel to service the ever growing demand from customers. New Delhi ordered a nation-wide lockdown last month, which has disrupted several businesses.

The volume of orders on BigBasket has surged by up to five times in recent weeks, said Parekh. But the startup is struggling to find enough people to deliver items to customers as many workers have moved to their hometowns or are cautious about working in the current environment, he said.

In the last one week, BigBasket has partnered with Uber and two-wheeler mobility firm Rapido to deliver groceries in parts of India. The startup, like several others, faced severe challenges last month after the 21-day lockdown was enforced as it worked with local state authorities to continue its delivery operations. At one time, it had over 400,000 inventories that it needed to ship but was sitting in its warehouses.

BigBasket operates in more than two dozen cities in India and offers tens of thousands of grocery products to customers. As far as securing inventories is concerned, Parekh said the startup is currently not seeing any issues.

BigBasket’s rival, SoftBank -backed Grofers has also seen a surge in volume of orders. The startup said this week that it delivered in 1 million homes in three weeks.

But despite the growth, Grofers co-founder and chief executive Albinder Dhindsa said online grocery still accounts for only 0.2% of the overall retail market. “I think at the end of this crisis we will probably reach 0.5%, but that is still an insignificant share,” he said.

Several startups in India have expanded to grocery category in recent weeks to serve more customers and compensate for the hit their core businesses have taken in recent weeks.