BigBasket Raises $150 Million Led By UAE’s Abraaj Group
Company Name : BigBasket
Funding Amount : $150 million
Investor(s) Abraaj Group
Funding Round : Not Disclosed
BigBasket has raised $150 million led by UAE’s Abraaj Group. Existing investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Helion Advisors, International Finance Corp and Sands Capital also participated in the round.
The raised funds will be used for expansion into Tier II cities across India, scaling-up of its recently launched express delivery and specialty store business that caters to top-up and emergency purchases, and increasing the product range offered to customers.
Abraaj has been present in India since 2006 and the partnership with BigBasket marks its third investment in India over the past five months.
BigBasket was co-founded by Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, V S Ramesh, V S Sudhakar and Abhinay Choudhari in December 2011. BigBasket is headquartered in Bangalore and serves customers across India, currently operating in eight metro cities and 10 Tier II cities.
BigBasket averages five million monthly unique visitors and executes over one million orders per month. The company’s mobile application has been downloaded by more than a million users, claims the company.
The company in a statement said that it is continuing to deliver strong growth, with a five-fold increase in monthly revenues over the last 18 months and their own brand products currently account for 33% of revenue and are projected to reach 40% by the end of this year.
VS Sudhakar, Co-Founder of Big Basket, said: “We have a unique opportunity to build one of the largest grocery businesses in the country, whether offline or online, and we expect the capital raised in this round to enable us to do just that. We intend to increase the reach of our just-launched one-hour express delivery service and also launch our marketplace for specialty stores in the coming months. This coupled with an expansion in our range of private label products will create a solid foundation for growth in both revenue and profitability. We are excited that Abraaj has chosen to lead this round and join the high quality investor set that we already have.”
