How a Personal Touch Reinvented a Company

All this while, Dhindsa and Kumar remained in touch and brainstormed occasionally over new ideas. The former’s analytical skills came into play when he, along with the latter noticed that the delivery system in India was in absolute chaos. Even though there were many big players in the logistics or hyperlocal delivery at that time, there was a lack of communication due to which customer service was not being optimised. In other words, they had discovered that if the hyper-local market space was tackled in the right way, the results could increase tenfold.

Albinder Dhindsa had very smartly identified this opportunity before any other firm, which goes to show that the entrepreneurial trait was prevalent in him which got activated when he saw the business opportunity in the gap. Working at Zomato was like a pool of information and first-hand experience regarding the food supply chain for Dhindsa and acted as a catalyst to push the entrepreneur to take the plunge. It was during his stint at Zomato itself that he, along with  Kumar, began working on his ambitious project – Grofers.

The two were so sure of their observation that they started their first company, OneNumber in 2013. Initially, they were just a delivery company that focused on dropping and picking up items around the neighbourhood. These items could be anything from groceries to cosmetics to accessories among others. They had a small team of delivery boys who worked much like Uber drivers. As soon as an order was placed by a customer, the nearest delivery boy would pick up the item and have it delivered.

Having personally spoken to small merchants and shop owners, Albinder Dhindsa knew too well the problems faced by them. In fact, the two carried out around 50-60 deliveries within a 4km radius themselves to understand the hindrances in such an unorganised system of delivery.

Although OneNumber did see success, Dhindsa felt that the flaws in the hyper-local market in India were not exploited enough. He had his eye on the bigger picture.

Despite having a wide range of businesses sign up with them, they found that the majority of the orders came from groceries and pharmacies. With that, the concept of an e-commerce platform solely for the purpose of grocery shopping came into being and OneNumber was rechristened Grofers.

Grofers started as a B2B model but shifted to a B2C soon. They facilitate delivery of almost 20,000 different products spread over categories like grocery, bakery items, cosmetics, fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy, flowers, toys, accessories, personal and baby care, among others in a maximum of 90 minutes!

Dhindsa, being a man from humble beginnings, understood that customers value reliability above everything. To get customers to trust an e-commerce platform to handle their grocery shopping proved to be quite a task. Moreover, to get smaller merchants to sign up for their services was even more challenging. However, Dhindsa was determined to create a system that worked for everyone. Thus, he gave top priority to the merchants. The sign-up process was made extremely easy.

Another important aspect that worked in the founder’s favour was his belief in treating the customers and merchants the same. He understood the importance it would have in spreading awareness of the brand. Dhindsa knew exactly how to build a strong, organic user base, and within no time the brand established itself as a force to be reckoned with.

That being said, they were only breaking even despite having moved products worth almost 8 lakhs within 3 months.

Grofers had a seed funding of just $500k which came from Sequoia Capital followed by a Series A funding of $10 million by the same investor along with Tiger Global Management in 2015. By November 2015, the company had managed to raise $120 million in funding although that was not reflecting in their performance. By the end of 2016, they had reported an annual loss of Rs 225 crore and continued to do so for the following months.

After they were forced to lay off 10 per cent of their staff and temporarily suspend services, Dhindsa had to come up with new ways to actually get the ball rolling.

BigBasket: Features and Initiatives 

BigBasket Daily

BigBasket won a lot of hearts and minds with this initiative. It is essentially a subscription-based service that delivers perishable and day-to-day goods on a regular basis. With a primary focus on the delivery of fresh milk, the plan also allows for other items like produce, food grains, oils, masalas, beverages, snacks, pet care products, baby care items and even pooja essentials. This shows clear attention to detail of the brand’s customer demographic and their needs. Since there is no minimum order policy and the function is available on the web as well as app form, makes it that much more convenient. The genius play here is that the presence of a daily-essentials platform means customers will find a use for it on a regular basis, thereby driving up usage patterns and engagement across the platform.

BigBasket Instant

This is BigBasket’s line of unmanned vending machines or as they like to call it, ‘unmanned cashless smart stores’. These vending machines are available mostly only in Tier 1 cities as of now, in large corporate offices, select apartment complexes and tech parks. It is a great way to access the market on a 24×7 period and keep the customer engaged by having them unconsciously integrate the brand into their daily lives as they grab a snack or something from that oh-so-convenient vending machine on the way to work. 

BigBasket Business

We sometimes forget that households are not the only ones who need groceries, businesses need them too. Consider this sub-platform as BigBasket covering all its bases. BB Business provides quality groceries to Kirana stores, Pharmacies, Hotels, Restaurants, Caterers and Institutions.

The advantage of this particular venture lies in the fact that these institutions and businesses spend tremendous amounts of time, energy and money in setting up a logistics chain from different vendors to source the necessary products. BB Business takes away all that clutter and replaces it with one convenient platform that does all the outsourcing for them. Everything from packaged goods to fresh produce sourced from over 5000 farmers at mandi rates, all consolidated into a single bill that makes returns and filings easier. If streamlining was the name of the game, BigBasket is coming out on top. 

BigBasket Mandi

As mentioned above, BB Mandi is a sub-category under the BigBasket brand banner, that also exists in app form, and caters to customers looking purely for fresh veggies, fruits and other farm-fresh items sourced from local farmers at Mandi rates and delivered to the customers’ house.

The BigBasket Mobile App and Website

Now onto the big guns. The primary bread-winner, or so to speak, of the BigBasket franchise, is the main website that started it all, under which all other initiatives and branch-offs stand. The platform has over 40,000 products that are sourced from over 1000 national and international brands to choose from.

The stand-out factor here is that everything you can find on the website is conveniently located on the mobile app as well. The app itself has become a major industry disruptor with its speedy check-out process, timely delivery and accessibility in seven different regional languages. Though the website was launched with the founding of the company, the app only came into being in 2013, a good two years after the inception of the brand. Since then, the app has been downloaded over 10 million times.

Additionally, the app and website take the convenience factor a step further by way of the BigBasket Wallet. The wallet is a digital prepaid wallet that allows customers to conduct transactions across the board for anything BigBasket. On top of that, if any delivery is delayed or cancelled and the company gives you a discount or freebie, that monetary value gets added to the wallet as credit.

Essentially what BigBasket has done here is take a massive and diverse inventory and integrated it with a rapidly digitising marketplace, making the lives of all who use the brand, more convenient and streamlined. A wide selection ensures there is something for everyone, hence a very diverse and wide-spread audience for the brand and the digital approach makes everything easier, thereby driving up usability and engagement across the board.

Green Basket

More than being an initiative, Green Basket is an inbuilt philosophy and part of the very function of BigBasket. An offline grocery store needs to stock a physical inventory, for that they need electricity, fuel to and from the distribution centres, refrigeration and air-conditioning. All these factors add up to a hefty toll on the environment in the form of used resourced and carbon emissions. The very concept of an online grocer like BigBasket means that there is no need for brick-and-mortar shops, which cuts away the emissions and impact on the environment significantly.

Green Basket takes this clean approach a step further by minimising paper and plastic bags used in packing and transporting the goods to the customer as all goods are transported via crates, which are taken back and re-used for future deliveries.