Abraaj Group leads $150m funding round for India’s BigBasket
Indian online grocery delivery platform BigBasket has raised $150m in a fresh round of funding this week. The round was led by UAE-based Abraaj Group and also included new investors such as the International Finance Corporation and Sands Capital and participation from existing investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Helion Advisors, Zodius Capital and Ascent Capital.
In a statement issued on Monday (21 March), Abraaj said: “Founded in 2011, BigBasket is headquartered in Bangalore and serves customers across India, currently operating in eight metro cities and 10 Tier II cities. The company sells over 19,000 products across 1,000 brands, including fruits, vegetables, meat, beverages and personal care products.
“BigBasket.com 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.”
Abraaj added: “The proceeds of this round of fundraising will be used to finance BigBasket’s growth through further penetration into existing markets, 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.”
VS Sudhakar, Co-Founder of Big Basket, added: “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.”
