Bigbasket turns unicorn with $150-mn funding; valuation jumps over twofold

In a major boost to the start-up ecosystem, two of India’s promising start-ups joined the elite unicorn club in a matter of one week.

Bigbasket, a leading online grocery delivery firm, has just sealed a Series F round at an estimated valuation of around $2.3 billion — over twofold jump, when compared with its last reported valuation of $950 million.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company has raised a total of $150 million (approximately Rs 1,000 crore) in this round, from new and existing investors, company filings sourced from business intelligence platform Paper.vc, showed.

The round was led by existing investor Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant, while Seoul-based financial services group Mirae Asset, and CDC Group, a development finance group linked to the UK government, also participated.

While Mirae put in around $60 million, Alibaba pumped in around $50 million. CDC, which had earlier seen successful exits from online fashion platform Jabong, has put in $40 million into the round.

Alibaba had led a $300-million round in Bigbasket in early 2018.

“Following this Series F investment led by Alibaba, our estimate of the post-money valuation of Bigbasket is $2.28 billion.

We also believe that the company is likely raise more money as part of this financing round,” Vivek Duari, founder at Paper.vc, told Business Standard.

Hari Menon, the chief executive officer of the online grocer, could not be reached for comment.

Earlier this week, Delhivery, a Guruguam-based e-commerce-focused logistics start-up, saw its valuation topping $2 billion after Japanese telecom and internet conglomerate led a $413-million investment round through SoftBank Vision Fund.

The fresh capital is expected to provide Bigbasket the firepower to go deeper into the online grocery segment where competition seems to be intensifying. Earlier this month, Grofers announced closing $60 million from SoftBank, while marketplaces such as Amazon and Flipkart are also learnt to be doubling down on the grocery segment.

Started in 2011 by Hari Menon, V S Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh, Abhinay Choudhari, and V S Ramesh, who co-founded Fabmart.com in 1999, Bigbasket has already positioned itself as the largest grocery delivery firm. The company, which is also backed by investors such as Helion Ventures Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and International Finance Corp, now operates across 32 cities, with annual revenue of ~350-400 crore.

Grofers trails with Rs 150-200 crore annualised revenue, followed by Flipkart Supermart and Amazon Pantry, both of which have committed large investments to scale the grocery business.