A Basket for one and all

Noted consumer activist Jehangir Gai has been shopping at bigbasket.com since the firm started its services in Mumbai. "The site provides the comfort of purchasing household items from home, helping avoid travel, running around for purchases, waiting at billing counters and carrying the load home," he says.

"I had stopped eating mangoes because the ones available in the local market were treated chemically; but the ones from BigBasket were chemical-free. Similarly, the selective pieces of boneless shoulder mutton are better than what is generally available in the market and is well cleaned," he says. Besides bigbasket offers customers the option of choosing a suitable delivery slot, he adds. The firm adheres to timings and deliveries are seldom delayed.

Says Hyderabad resident Deepti Manohar: "When my last order was to be delivered, there were unexpected and incessant rains in Hyderabad and the order was delayed by half an hour. bigbasket credited ten per cent of the order value back to my account due to the delay." She has shopped at the BigBasket in Bangalore, too.

In December 2011, V S Sudhakar, Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh and V S Ramesh launched bigbasket in Bangalore. The idea was seeded by serial entrepreneurs and angel investors Krishnan and Meena Ganesh. This wasn't the founder team's first e-commerce venture. In 1999-2000, it had started a company called Fabmart. The Bangalore- based firm sold various products online - music, books, groceries, etc. However, given the low internet penetration in India at that time, the venture failed. In 2003, Fabmart was rebranded as Fabmall and launched as an offline grocery store. Subsequently, it was acquired by the Aditya Birla group and is now called More. The online entity was acquired and merged with US-based Indiaplaza.

Since 2012, bigbasket has been present in Hyderabad and Mumbai. Within a year, the company will start services in Delhi and Chennai as well. Subsequently, it will also cater to Pune, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. "We expect to be present in 10 cities in next three years," says Parekh, co-founder and head (marketing and finance), bigbasket.

He recalls the initial six-nine months were challenging, in terms of building capacity to meet customer demand. Since its inception, the company has seen demand grow 25-30 per cent on a month-on-month basis. Parekh says bigbasket records 2,000-2,500 orders a day, or 75,000-80,000 orders a month, across the three cities. The average monthly order size stands at Rs 1,500.

"We see 60-70 per cent repeat customers," says Parekh. bigbasket doesn't advertise much; to acquire customers, it primarily depends on word of mouth. "Around 45 per cent of our customers come through reference and 20-30 per cent through online searches and traditional media," he adds.

Financials

Currently, bigbasket has a 600-strong team across three cities.

The company has two working models. When it started operations, it adopted the just-in-time model - not just perishables, every item was brought against an order. bigbasket now buys products directly from suppliers - HUL, P&G, farmers and mills - and stocks these in warehouses. It sets initial inventory levels and later, re-ordering levels. The entire process is automated.

"We buy directly from the manufacturers or suppliers and add a margin to the product price before selling. At a mature stage, the blender margin stands at 20-25 per cent," says Parekh.

bigbasket has started delivering perishable items, too. Compared to other e-commerce segments, here, it is critical to hit a minimal basket size; else, you end up with negative contribution margins, says Navin Honagudi, investment director at Kae Capital.

bigbasket has a warehouse each in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai, as well as hubs (where delivery vehicles wait). Goods are sent to hubs and from there, to customers. The routing is done automatically and the vehicles are GPS-tracked. Each city is split into zones and each zone has a hub.

"Using analytics to predict weekly demand, the company can optimise logistics and supply volumes to drive better margins," says Honagudi.

Funding

Challenges

The grocery business has to be expanded city-wise, as rice or perishables cannot be shipped across cities. Here, the marketing needs to be local - what may appeal a grocery buyer in Bangalore may not appeal to one in Mumbai. Therefore, one has to establish links with large suppliers. Establishing a supply chain to deliver a wide range of products on time at competitive prices involves considerable operational complexity. Besides, grocery items are a low margin category, without much scope for large discounts, says Kumar.

Now, consumers can buy at attractive prices in hypermarkets; so, the company will need to clearly define its value proposition. Moving to an inventory holding model will require substantially higher working capital. Consumer preferences vary from city to city; so, the firm has to establish a significant network of regional suppliers. As the company scales up, logistics will be a challenge, as scheduling slot- based delivery is complex and delays in delivery can lead to wastage if the produce isn't handled correctly, says Rahul Khanna, managing director, Canaan Partners.

Entrepreneur duo buys medical co

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On the way to expansion

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On the way to expansion

July 28, 2013

On the way to expansion

July 27, 2013

An effort to move ahead

July 26, 2013

Spurred by Amazon model, online supermarkets push ahead

July 22, 2013

Spurred by Amazon model, online supermarkets push ahead

Aim to be multi-city operators

Raghavendra Kamath | Mumbai July 20, 2013

The US online giant recently expanded its grocery supplies to California from Seattle in a bid to break open grocery market there. It is expected to spread the business further across the US.

Mumbai-based LocalBanya is looking to expand to Pune and Delhi as part of its growth strategy. It is likely to raise money from venture capital funds soon.

Similarly, Bangalore-based bigbasket.com, which is also present in Mumbai and Hyderabad, may add two cities this year — Delhi and Chennai — being its main targets. bigbasket wants to be present in 10 cities by the end of 2014.

Aaramshop, which allows kirana shops and retail chains to not only list their contact details on its website but also sell products through the site, is going a step ahead and planning to have presence in Karachi, Pakistan. It aims to grow from the current 30 cities to 40 cities by March 2014 and have 30,000 retailers on its site from 3,000 retailers now.

All the three ventures follow different business models. For instance, LocalBanya follows ‘just in time’ delivery where it aggregates orders on its site and buys goods in the evening and delivers them next day. It has suppliers such as German wholesale company Metro Cash & Carry, among others, and manages its logistics and supply chain itself.

Currently, it handles 200 orders a day and average ticket size ranges from Rs 1,300 to Rs 1,500 per order. Its speciality: vegetables such as French Purple Cabbage and kafir mint leaves.

“Even for big retailers, it is difficult to cater to niche vegetables and fruits. Our shoppers can also buy groceries apart from specific vegetables,” says Nitin Mukadam, director at MN&C Supply Links, the operating company of LocalBanya.com.

“The grocery market in India is in many lakhs of crores (of rupees). Even if we achieve 0.5 per cent of that, we are happy,” says Mukadam. The year-old company is looking at a business of Rs 23 crore this year and looking for cash break-even in one or two months.

Mukadam claims the business has less than two per cent returns despite “no questions asked policy”.

Bangalore-based bigbasket.com takes pride in the “same day delivery” of products such as frozen and chilled items from its own cold storages and warehouses.

The portal does 1,500-2,000 orders in Bangalore, which translates to Rs 25 lakh a day or Rs 7-8 crore a month. It is seeing a growth of 20 to 30 per cent growth in Bangalore and looking at a break-even in next couple of months and making profits in Mumbai and Hyderabad in the next nine-10 months.

“We do not have overheads such as rents, power, etc. In places such as Mumbai, rents will kill you. We need just two-three warehouses to cover the entire city,” says Vipul Parekh, founder and chief marketing officer at bigbasket. AaramShop.com helps kiranas and other retail chains to have web fronts on its website, which are replete with their addresses and contact details. Customers then can contact the retailers for their needs. AaramShop also helps shoppers to create their own shopping lists on the site, which are sent to the chosen retailers via SMS or email.

Although basic service is free for retailers, Aaram charges a fee if they want to advertise their offers or run customer programmes on its site. It offers data analytics to brands on what shoppers are shopping and help them target specific marketing or run offers for them. AaramShop is doubling its business every quarter and looking at a break-even by the end of this financial year, says Vijay Singh, managing director.

The portal may add medical supplies to the business, wherein the customer needs to attach a scanned copy of prescription, which will be sent to retailers.

According to experts, online grocery retailers have huge potential if the firms maintain proper supplies and manage their inventories properly.

“It can be a good business model if you manage the supplies properly. In groceries, customers do not bargain and mostly they are standard products. You have to just coordinate between one warehouse and another,” says Prashant Agarwal, joint managing director of Wazir Advisors.

However, the area is not without its challenges. Money, manpower and management are the biggest challenges, say the people involved in it.

“Today, half the people in the industry are poached from us. It hurts. But we have to live with it,” says Mukadam of LocalBanya.com. “We are continuously recruiting people and training them to meet this challenge. Though we are an online company, we need significant investment to run the business,” he adds.

In online supermarkets such as Localbanya.com, customers can browse items and select size and quantity to add to their cart. Once done, they can place orders online. Customers need to select a day and time slot, and a delivery mode. They can order stuff like grocery, beverages, personal care products, baby products, frozen items and so on. Big Basket also follows a similar model.

• Mumbai-based LocalBanya is eyeing Pune and Delhi; it plans to raise funds from venture capitalists
• Bangalore-based bigbasket.com plans to add two cities this year; Delhi and Chennai are its main targets. Plans to add 10 cities by 2014-end.
• Aaramshop looks to expand in Karachi in Pakistan and is looking to grow from 30 cities to 40. It plans to have 30,000 retailers by March 2014.

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Online Store – bigbasket.com

July 15, 2013

Hari Menon on taking bigbasket to Rs 100 crore revenues

By Snigdha Sengupta July 4, 2013

The idea for bigbasket came from Ganesh (Krishnan Ganesh). This was around June-July 2011. Ganesh had met up with my colleague Sudhakar (VS Sudhakar) and suggested that we look at the grocery space. We had spent considerable time in that space earlier and in addition we’d also worked in the Internet space. More importantly, grocery was an area that nobody had attempted at the time from an ecommerce perspective. Ganesh was excited about the opportunity and asked Sudhakar if the erstwhile Fabmall team would be keen to take up the opportunity. Sudhakar reached out to me, Vipul and a couple of others and frankly, it took us very little time to say a quick yes and we were on.

Grocery is a pretty complex business from the back-end and supply chain perspective. The complexity is one of the biggest challenges. We deal with close to 8,000-10,000 SKUs. Order sizes are large. Typically at the beginning of the month you have 30-60 items in one order. That makes it very different from typical ecommerce businesses where you normally shift one or two products, it could be a camera or a mobile phone and so on. The back-end is complex because the supply chain is not yet efficient. You deal with a large number of vendors and suppliers and not all of them are organized.

Yes, that’s what makes it most difficult, the fact that we deal with a lot of perishables. We have to ensure that we manage our inventory very effectively in perishables and that we deliver those fresh to our customer. Essentially, you know, we’ve done this in the past and so we know what it takes to manage inventory of complex items like that. Things like where do you source from, how early do you source and a lot of these things are just-in-time from a model perspective. Here the benefit that the platform offers is that you can actually do what is called farm-to-home because there is no other place where this product goes and gets sold. So it goes directly from the farmer, there is very little processing that happens at the warehouse, straight to the consumer’s home. There’s no stocking point for these products in a store. But the fact that we have to buy the right quantities, make sure that we don’t have excess stock, make sure that we don’t have dumped stock is really where the challenge and complexity lies.

We have two operating models. When we start the business we use what we call the just-in-time model. This means that not just perishables but everything we bring against an order. Because you don’t yet have the volumes for suppliers to supply in bulk and for you to stock in a warehouse. So you consolidate orders for the day, go and buy the products and deliver. When you reach a particular volume, you move from the just-in-time model to what is called the warehouse stocking model. That is where we are as far as Bangalore is concerned. We buy products directly from the supplies, like Unilever and Procter & Gamble, we buy from farmers and mills and stock the products in the warehouse. We stock a certain number of days of sales, depending on the product and sales. We are able to set initial inventory levels and then decide what the re-ordering levels are. So it is all completely automated.

It is not necessarily very infrastructure-heavy. One of the things that we invest heavily in is technology. The only area where we have infrastructure is essentially is in warehouses. Currently we are in a 10,000 square feet warehouse and we are moving into a 26,000 square feet warehouse in the next couple of months. In the warehouse we have equipment that helps us pick products against an order. It is all completely automated. We use handheld devices that allows the picker to choose the right product. On the delivery side we have vehicles but again these are not infrastructure-heavy because we lease them or you can outsource the entire fleet.

We are operating out of three cities now. This is a very city-specific business. One big difference, coming back to your root question, is that grocery as a business needs to done city by city. I cannot ship rice bags and perishables across cities. In other ecommerce models you can stock centrally and ship out to the rest of the country. So we have Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Each city will have a warehouse and each city will have what we call hubs. The goods in the warehouse go to the hubs and from there to customers. Hubs are where our delivery vehicles are kept. We split cities into zones. For instance, Bangalore has four zones and each zone will have a hub. All orders go to the hub from where it is distributed. We’ve used technology to get the routing done automatically and GPS devices track the vehicles. We do close to 2,000 orders a day on peak weekends and 1,500-1,600 orders a day on week days. Our average order size is Rs 1,300 per order. We are currently running at close to Rs 5 crore on a monthly basis. This year, in financial year 2013-2014, our turnover would be Rs 100 crore.

We started our fundraising exercise somewhere around January 2012. This was post the initial funding that we (the founders) and Ganesh and Meena had put in. We met a couple of venture capital firms. Ascent happened faster. Raj Kondur was with Ascent. We’ve known Raj from his ChrysCapital days (Kondur co-founded ChrysCapital, earlier known as Chrysalis Capital with Ashish Dhawan in 199-2000) and he was an early investor in our earlier venture Fabmart. He knew us as a team, there was interest in the company and the terms were good, so things moved a little faster.

The next thing that will happen is that Bangalore breaks even in the next few months. That’s a big milestone for us. After that Hyderabad and Mumbai will move into the warehouse model. They are in the just-in-time model right now. Then in the quarter of January-March 2014 we will move into Delhi and Chennai. Starting March 2014 we will start work on our Series B round of fundraising which will help us go to 10 more cities. That’s the plan.

We have not firmed up those numbers yet.

There are but they are mostly regional players. I expect the space to hot up very soon. I am hoping that more players will enter the market because I am a strong believer of the fact that markets open up when there are more players. Otherwise the onus is on one or two players to build the market.

The important takeaway is that all the founders are gray! The big difference is that there is a very large population on the Internet today. What took us 3-4 years last time from a sheer revenue perspective, we managed to do this time in seven months. In 1999 when we started Fabmart we used to use dial-up lines which used to hang up. Bandwidth was a serious issue and people were not comfortable at all buying online because they worried about whether payment gateways were secure. Today smart phones and smart devices allow you to use the Internet on the go. We’ve just launched our Android app. All this has made a huge difference.

Conversation over tea with Hari Menon, CEO, Big Basket; one of the oldest e-commerce players in India

Raghu Mohan | July 3, 2013 7:48 pm - YS TV

Did you know, that there was an attempt to start up an ecommerce portal for grocery in India, back in 2000? Did you also know that there was ecommerce in India, as early as 1998? Well, yesterday, I was speaking to the man behind both these startling facts.

Hari Menon was one of earliest players in the ecommerce business, with product e-commerce company, FabMart. The portal still runs today as Indiaplaza. Along with this, his experience in physical retail has been one of great success – he was part of the founding team of FabMall, that was sold to the Aditya Birla group in 2007. After a four year break, Hari is back in the Indian entrepreneurship scene, with bigbasket.com. The company holds the distinction of raising the largest Series A round for an ecommerce startup in India and is soon approaching operational profitability; a rare thing in Indian ecommerce.

Our conversation included a lot of how he’s seen ecommerce and entrepreneurship as a whole evolve over his 15 year tenure as an entrepreneur. This is a fascinating conversation with man, who’s not just journaled the space. He is the change. Here are a series of videos for times to come, where India’s ecommerce veteran, shares his knowledge and experience -

YS: What is the story behind bigbasket? Why Grocery of all things?

YS: How has ecommerce changed over the years?

YS: Tell us a little about customer acquisition. How has that changed over the times? Also, how do you handle marketing for bigbasket?

YS: Is bigbasket profitable? What’s in store for the near future?

YS: Over the past 15 years, how has entrepreneurship itself changed?

YS: You said you’ve tried out a corporate job. What brought you back to entrepreneurship? Why do you persist with it?

bigbasket.com eyes tier-II cities

By Trushna Udgirkar May 27 2013 , Hyderabad

Online grocer bigbasket.com, which says it has around 70 per cent of the market share in this space, wants to reach out to seven other cities in the next two years. The company will look to raise $10-15 million through existing investor Ascent Capital next year, even as it hopes to see revenues treble this year.

“We would like to reach out to two more cities, Chennai and Delhi, before the end of this year and tap five more in the next year. Our growth in the existing three cities — Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai, has been at 20-30 per cent month on month,” Vipul Parekh, head, finance & marketing, bigbasket.com, told the Financial Chronicle.

With this, bigbasket also wants to widen its offering from 6-8000 products to 15-16,000 in a year or so. “Right now, we receive 2,000 orders a day. In a year it could go up to 10,000 orders, that too only in the three existing cities. As we reach five cities, our revenues should reach Rs 500 crore,” he said. This year, the company hopes to churn revenues of Rs 100 crore and Rs 300 crore next year.

Typically, the company receives orders between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500 each and delivers through a hub & spoke model. “We are a team of 600 now and will be 1,000 people by the end of the year. We were not able to take orders beyond a certain limit each day. So we have strengthened our logistics too. The idea is to to deliver on the same day as much as possible,” Parekh said.

The company directly sources products from large farms and aggregators. According to Parekh, places like Pune, Indore and Coimbatore are now ripe to be addressed, while tier-III locations may take another two to three years.

E-commerce site bigbasket bets on technology to cut costs

To raise $20 m from Ascent Capital

K. V. KURMANATH | The Hindu Business Line 27th May 2013

HYDERABAD, MAY 27:
A small team of 20 techies at bigbasket.com, the online grocery store, have developed an IT solutions to crack the biggest problem a retailer faces. They have come out with a real-time analytical tool that can automatically raise orders to source things from its suppliers.

“There is no human interface in raising the orders. The system generates based on the uptake of our customers. It can decide what product should arrive at what date and from where. It will also tell our staff at warehouses where a particular product is placed, helping us to reduce time to close an order,” Vipul Parekh, Head of Finance and Marketing of bigbasket, told Business Line.

Also, the system will quickly scan the addresses and scientifically generate a route for the vans to deliver the goods. “Even the best of the driver could err on preparing a map. But the IT systems would generate a map using GPS tools in order to save time and effort,” he said.

The e-commerce site currently operates in Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad. This will be followed by Delhi and Chennai in six months. After that, it would expand to Ahmedabad, Indore, Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam and Nagpur. “We don’t require any funds for expanding into Delhi and Chennai markets. But we will raise $15-20 million for the next phase of expansion (into the five cities). We might raise the funds from the existing investors (Ascent Capital), he said.

Ascent Capital invested $10 million in the first round last year. The company, which has 600 employees, will add 400 more by the year end.

The company, whose promoters sold the chain of Fabmall stores to Aditya Birla group about seven years ago, started the exclusive e-commerce grocery site in December 2011 with operations in Bangalore. A few months later, it expanded to Hyderabad and Mumbai.

“We are going to be profitable in Bangalore by October. We will make profits in other centres by the end of financial year,” he said.

Reliving a bigger, Better dream

By Aparna Chandra | ENS - BANGALORE 25th May 2013 11:15 AM

(from left to right) Abhinay Choudhari, V S Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh, Hari Menon and V S Ramesh soak in the success | EPS

Some opportunities knock twice. Friends, colleagues and entrepreneurs — V S Sudhakar, Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh and V S Ramesh will testify to this.

More than a decade ago, they once partnered, along with others, an online grocery store. The idea was ahead of its time and they had to pivot toward a more profitable format of a physical store.

Today, in a different world where India is no longer inhibited about shopping online, Sudhakar, Menon, Pakekh and Ramesh are not only reliving a dream, but also making it bigger and better. In December 2011, the four got together with Abhinay Choudhari to set up bigbasket.com, a Bangalore-based online food and grocery store. It’s not the only one in the category but it has quite a story to tell.

Crash and boom

Back in 1999, the quartet along with K Vaitheeswaran and Sundeep Thakran set up Fabmart.com to sell books and music CDs online. This made way for Fabmall.com that included groceries on its offer list.

Although a brilliant and pioneering idea, it was coming undone by lack of consumer faith and familiarity with transacting business online. This was also the era of the dotcom crash.

“We decided to shift focus to Fabmall, the physical retail store. Merging with the Hyderabad-based supermarket chain Trinethra along the way, we built a retail chain of nearly 250-300 stores across South India,” says Parekh. With business booming and posting “a `200 crore turnover”, Fabmall attracted the attention of Aditya Birla Group which bought them over, in 2007, for about USD 100 million and renamed it More.

Rewind and play

For the four entrepreneurs to come a full circle with running an online grocery store is a matter of happenstance. Says Parekh, “We are all involved in other ventures and were advising Abhinay who was interested in starting a grocery portal for Whitefield. We realised that we might as well jump into the fray with Abhinav. After all, we knew the business well.

“Also, start-ups are very addictive — they are exciting and energising. Of course, you need courage in good doses too, the uncertainties of business can be unnerving.” So, as it turned out, an online store was an itch that they had to scratch.

The group’s combined market credibility and experience quickly drew in investors and suppliers. Operations started off with a 10 million dollar funding from Ascent Captial. And thankfully, this time, customer response didn’t lag behind.

Says Parekh, who heads finance and marketing, “A sizable portion of the market has gone online now. And it is so fertile that where fresh produce was once 8 per cent of the customer’s basket, today it is 20. It was presumed that people would still be hesitant to buy fruits and vegetables online. Our experience has shown us otherwise. This is a testimony to today’s lifestyle and its demands. Online grocery retail is a one-billion-dollar opportunity in Bangalore alone.”

Steady climb

Within a year of operations, the online store gained enough confidence to expand business to Mumbai and Hyderabad.

Says Parekh, “Hyderabad is a natural choice since we are well-versed with the ground realities there. Mumbai is a testing ground — it is a tough market because costs are high and space is at a premium. Also, it has a time-tested, highly organised neighbourhood market system in place.

"Getting through this challenge is important for us before we step into unknown territories."

bigbasket's headquarters in Domlur houses a call centre catering to orders from three cities. These average about 2,000 a day - in Bangalore most come from Whitefield. “Currently, we are able to honour 99 per cent of the deliveries,” says Parekh.

What’s working

The start-up sees its only competition in a physical store and has spelled out its strategies accordingly. Says Menon, CEO, "Three things are vital to us — same-day deliveries (a tough code to crack), offering a choice wider than a store to buy from and ensuring freshness of produce."

The team has kept a tight grip on performance by owning its fleet of delivery vehicles and setting up its own warehouse in Whitefield.

Says Menon, “We have not outsourced any element of the warehouse since it is an integral component of our business and requires specialised skills and technology to operate it efficiently.” In four months, the business will be moving to a warehouse four times its current size. Says Parekh, “A regular customer uses our services at least 35 to 40 times a year. This is despite the fact that we don't offer the cheapest prices and there are other options to shop from. So, it comes down to offering a consistent, quality service. I can tell you this, a start-up like this is not for beginners, you really need to have spent years understanding the field,” says Parekh.

Online blitz

Brand loyalty is a raw nerve as far as online retail in India is concerned. Says Parekh, “An ads blitzkrieg alone can’t build a loyal customer base. But that’s what’s happening, currently. The marketing and promotion spends are very high, goods are heavily discounted and the service doesn’t match expectations. How long can one operate on losses? Eventually, I see nearly 80 per cent of these sites (online retail) folding up,” says Parekh.

The road ahead Gourmet foods, organic and frozen products, these are on bigbasket's delivery wish list.

Says Menon, "We intend to expand to another two cities within six months and then move into top 10 cities over the next one year." The founders are confident of it all. Says Parekh, “We think we can build a significantly large business with substantial value over the next 4-5 years. We are three years away from being direct competitors to our own old avatar.” A takeover, all over again, is ruled out for the moment.

B’loreans enjoy fruits of online shopping

Priyanka Golikeri @priya3014 | Published Date: May 16, 2013

Shopping online in Bangalore is no more restricted to ordering pizzas, buying movie tickets, books and gadgets. In the IT capital, tech-savvy and time-starved Bangaloreans are increasingly going online to buy everything from vegetables to fruits to cheese and jams to rice and wheat.

Long commuting hours and working overtime is giving rise to a new breed of online shoppers, who are using a mouse click to buy their groceries.

The convenience of home-delivery, freedom from queues at billing counters, payment post delivery is attracting individuals to use the online option. And it is working professionals, mostly women, in the 23-50 age group who indulge in e-shopping.
“It is usually twice or thrice a month that a person would shop for groceries online. The average bill sizes could be about Rs1,500 per order,” says Vipul Parekh, co-founder of bigbasket.com, a grocery supplier based in Domlur.

IT professional Shalini Singh has been shopping online for groceries for the past 7 months as she works from “8am-8pm”, with practically no time to navigate the market and haggle with vendors.

“I was hesitant initially over the quality, but since payment options are flexible I tried it out and was satisfied,” says Shalini.
Placing orders once in 15 days, she ends up spending Rs750-1, 400 per transaction, “same as what I might spend in stores.”

Consumer experts, however, advise shoppers to be vigilant while placing orders and making payments. Bejon Misra, founder of Consumer Online Foundation says people should check the authenticity of online suppliers while placing orders. “Secondly, when products are delivered check for expiry date, freshness of produce and only then make payments.”

Indian online grocery startup plans $15M expansion across nation

By Mahesh Sharma | April 26, 2013 -- 09:17 GMT (14:47 IST)

Grocery delivery company bigbasket is embarking on an ambitious US$15 million expansion strategy across India and already expects to generate profits by the end of the year.

In an interview with ZDNet, the startup's co-founder Hari Menon predicted the Bangalore online grocery store would generate profits by the end of the year--just 24 months after launch. It also has operations in Mumbai and Hyderabad, which are expected to reach profitability by March 2014.

The site was established with a US$10 million Series A investment by Ascent Capital, a large chunk of which bought the infrastructure and "learnings" to create the Bangalore operation. Menon founded bigbasket with colleagues from his previous grocery store venture Fabmall. It offers 8,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) manufactured by 200 vendors, including fruits and vegetables, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), fresh meat and household products. This ranges from locally-sourced dahls and vegetables, to cleaning products manufactured by global firms such as Procter & Gamble.

Perishables are only warehoused for a matter of hours as online orders can be delivered on the same day, in some cases. "It's 24 hours from farm to fridge," said Menon.

The "hub and spoke" model sees wholesalers distribute goods to four major warehouses in Bangalore, where 50 branded delivery vans courier the goods to the consumer.

Bangaloreans generate close to 1,000 orders a day, spending an average of 1,250 rupees (US$23). This equates to about US$694,000 monthly revenue. The magic break even formula is 1,500 orders of a 1,250-rupee basket, he said.

bigbasket expects to break even by the end of the year.

Rising costs

In mid-2012, seven months after the launch in Bangalore, the company commenced operations in Mumbai and Hyderabad. Comparatively, it was a breeze.

"You can do things at far cheaper cost in the new city as there's no cost of learning," Menon said.

Mumbaikers and Hyderabadis generate just 275 to 300 orders per day, but he expects this will increase five-fold by March 2014. This means the expansion cities turn a profit three months faster than Bangalore.

"The first city took up a huge amount of the US$10 million, and a good chunk went into learning and trying a few things, but none of that is required in each new city," Menon said.

Furthermore, by the end of the year, he expects to launch bigbasket Web sites in Chennai and Delhi, the first cabs off the rank in a seven city US$15 million pan-India blitz.

Online grocers like bigbasket, Satvikshop and Ekstop all set to make the big leap home

By Dibeyendu Ganguly & Deepali Gupta, ET Bureau | 17 Apr, 2013, 04.00AM IST

Leading online retailer Indiatimes Shopping has made a toe-hold entry into the grocery space through its organic products portal satvikshop.com.

MUMBAI: When Hari Menon first launched an online grocery operation under the Fabmart.com umbrella in 2000, it was an idea before its time. The idea of buying fruits, vegetables, rice and sugar on an e-commerce platform was still alien to Indian consumers and the operation was shut in less than a year. Now Menon is back with a full-fledged online grocery site called bigbasket.com and this time, the market seems ready for the concept. With operations in Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad, bigbasket has garnered 40,000 active users over the last two years and sales are growing at a clip of 20% month-onmonth. "People are now ready to try it and once they do, they come back. Stickiness is high in the grocery business, more than in other categories like books or clothing," says Menon. 

Better known as a seller of books and electronics, Indiatimes Shopping has made a toe-hold entry into the grocery space through its organic products portal satvikshop.com, which offers organic grocery products like basmati rice, tea bags, multi-grain snack packs and honey. "Customer acquisition is not a big challenge in this business since the ticket size is small. The main challenge is matching demand to supply through a real-time inventory model. We would like to start with couple of cities first, but major expansion is at least a financial year away," says Subhanker Sarker, COO, Indiatimes Shopping. 

Online grocery customers start off by placing a small cash-on-delivery order and the key to retaining them is to get the logistics down pat and then throw in some Wow. While their products are priced on par with physical retailers like Big Bazaar and Reliance, online grocers add on sleek packaging and the promise of home delivery in a range of time slots starting from early morning to late night. But then, assembling grocery orders that consist of dozens of small value items is not easy. 

Online grocers have spent the last year fine-tuning their operations and growing their customer base. Based on an insight that experimental online shoppers need an incentive to place a second, larger order, bigbasket offers them a discount voucher. Ekstop.com, an online grocer focused on Mumbai, has incorporated a feature whereby customers can click once to order the same basket of products they did last time, thereby saving time. 

Ekstop and bigbasket have so far relied on word of mouth and localised promotions in high rise building complexes to grow sales. But now they're entering a phase where the focus is on brand building. "We need to work on marketing. So far, we've spent Rs 150 per customer acquisition. We need to double that." says Sumat Chopra, CEO of Ekstop.com. 

In the initial phase of growth, most online grocers tie up with established whole-sellers for logistics support. bigbasket sources FMCG products from Metro, while the nine-month-old harisabzi.com, a Mumbaifocused operation, has tied up with Mafco. "Their milk booths supply vegetables that are sorted and delivered to homes in that area according to online orders," says harisabzi's promoter Vishal Sharma.

Ekstop averages 170 orders a day in Mumbai, valued at Rs 1,300 per order. bigbasket averages 300 orders a day, since it covers a larger area from its hub in Vashi. bigbasket's real success has been in its hometown of Bangalore where orders are in excess of 1,000 a day. "We've reached critical mass in Bangalore where we can promise delivery in three hours. The breakeven point in any city is 1600 orders/day, so we expect to start making a profit in Bangalore soon. Mumbai and Hyderabad will follow," says Menon.

Technology driving growth in grocery e-retailing in India

Jayadevan PK, ET Bureau Mar 07, 2013, 02.35AM IST

BANGALORE: "Everyday, I learn something new," says R Rammurthy as he picks up a netbook, an Android tablet and a paper-clip file before climbing onto the driver's seat of a white Maruti van loaded with four neatly packed baskets of grocery and vegetables. As he slips into first gear, he pointed to the netbook screen which displayed a map where the vehicle's number flashed. The on-screen status of the vehicle changed from idle to moving and the address to which the baskets needs to be delivered popped up.

Rammurthy's trip ended nearly twenty minutes later at the doorsteps of a customer-- mother of a three-year-old who hates to spend the little spare time she gets during weekends at the supermarket. During the drive, the 28-year-old management graduate, who now handles a small team for online retailer bigbasket.com, started explaining how his company manages to keep near-zero inventory and fulfils hundreds of orders everyday.

Online food and grocery retailing, fairly mature in the West and showing lot of potential in growth markets like China, has not been able to capture the fancy of Indian shoppers yet. Things, however, may be changing as a new generation of well-funded online firms -- bigbasket.com is a key example -- are using simple end-to-end technology solutions to offer deep discounts on grocery items, predict customer behaviour and keep a tight leash on expenses. With technology playing a key role, they are trying to make a dent in the estimated $343-billon food and grocery market in India.

For example, these firms use a supplychain technology that allow customers to place orders through multiple channels and later predict what a customer is likely to order. Combined with applications that track everything from the time an order is placed to delivery and devices that help during procurement, technology is helping these firms to make a compelling and convenient offer to the tech-savvy shopper.

For these online retailers, the most important tech application is the ability to predict customer behaviour which lets them reduce inventory and thereby, cut costs. For instance, while a traditional retailer might have to stock his monthly offtake of atta at least three weeks in advance, an online retailer ends up stocking it for less than two days. "That is mostly analytics," says Ambuj Jhunjhunwala, the founder of Mygrahak.com which sells food and grocery online in Delhi. Predicting customer needs helps them to plan in advance and procure based on needs. Need-based procurement works ideally well with perishable goods like food not to talk about saving expenses on storage space, which is a large part of expenditure for a traditional retailer.

Analytics also involves knowing the customer better which helps retailers to make tailor-made offers for customers and increase sales. Online retailers can also eliminate a large part of their frontline staff because customers usually help themselves. Typically, large format brick-and-mortar stores spend much of their attention to figure out customer behaviour on the shopping floor and arrange goods so that they catch customer attention. This can now be automated as the platform generates enough data about individual preferences. "You have complete control over knowing what your customer is buying and great level of predictability. The stickiness of forecasting can go up as you use technology to predict," says Anand Ramanathan, Associate Director at KPMG.

Shoppers, whose experience of buying grocery online has been good, tend to very loyal. For example, Asha Liju, a clinical research professional from Bangalore buys her grocery online. "This is the second time I'm buying online because its simple and saves me nearly 10 kilometres of travel," she says.

Here again, technology plays a key role. Grocery buying is mostly a repetitive task something technology is known to do well. For instance, when a shopper logs into the account, a history of previously bought items makes it easier to pick instead of going through the motion all over again. "At each step, simple technology is helping us save time and money," says Abhinay Choudhary, co-founder of bigbasket.com.

bigbasket.com, which now has 100 people on its rolls, will supply anything from milk products to fresh fruits among 7,000 other items at your doorstep at competitive prices within a few hours of placing an e-order. "Our delivery vans even have cold storage facilities. This is very new but if we do it right, it will be big," says Choudhary. His earlier venture was shopasyoulike, a similar food and grocery store catering to residents in Whitefield, Bangalore.

25-year-old Jhunjhunwala's Mygrahak.com now claims that they process nearly 15,000 orders a month. "The average order size is Rs 1,250- Rs 1,300. We can at least grow 30 times in Delhi alone," he said. He recently introduced "card on delivery," where a customer can swipe their cards at the time of delivery to pay for the order. Jhunjhunwala comes from a family of entrepreneurs and returned to India after graduation learning how to do business from his family, the promoters of BSE listed REI Agro. Chennaionlinegrocery.com, Town Essentials and Atmydoorsteps.com also operate in this space. Scale might not be an issue as demand from a large working population, which finds frequenting supermarkets an irritant, grows.

Investors also seem to be buying into the grocery e-tailing story. Last month, private equity firm Ascent Capital invested $10 million when bigbasket.com co-founded by a team of eight which includes FabMall co-founders Hari Menon, VS Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh, VS Ramesh and Abhinay Choudhary, raised its first round of institutional funding.

The food and grocery market accounts for over two thirds of the $505 billion Indian retail market. According to retail consultancy Technopak, the retail market is projected to touch $725 billion by 2017. The organised food and grocery retail market in India is estimated at $ 12 billion in 2012 and grow at a compounded rate of 30% over next the five years. "Though e-tailing is still a very small part of retail in India it is projected to grow at a fast pace and over the next decade its presence will be significant," said Pragya Singh, Principal Consultant, Retail & Consumer Products, Technopak. Headroom for growth comes from the fact that that e-tailing accounts for a measly. 2% or $1 billion of the overall retail market and it is expected to reach $13 billion by 2017.

But retailing food and grocery online is not an easy task. Though there are success stories, the monumental failure of Webvan in the United States back in 2000 is enough to act as a damperner.

The challenges include being able to give consumers a large number of products to choose from, achieving consistency in quality especially when it comes to perishable goods and the cost of logistics. For instance, Mygrahak's Jhunjhunwala has already invested $1 milllon in the firm and anticipates an expense of $4 million to $5 million every time it moves to a new city.

While critics often cite the example of Webvan, the story may not repeat in India. Webvan may not be the best benchmark, argues Singh. "It is an example of a company that grew too fast in middle of the dotcom boom, rapid expansion to multiple cities, gigantic infrastructure including warehouses but not enough sales to back the same," she said.

Even as its spends Rs 150- Rs 400 to acquire each customer, Mygrahak.com will break even this Diwali, claims Jhunjunwala. Despite the rosy numbers, e-tailers looking to sell food and grocery might have to expand cautiously, suggests Technopak's Singh.

Click on that shopping cart

The Hindu. Jan 20, 2013

Avoid traffic, save petrol, sit at home and order groceries and veggies and spend that precious time with family on the weekend. Many Bangaloreans are opting for the convenience of shopping for their staples online, finds Bhumika K

What would you rather do? Laze around at home on the weekend, or play with your kids on their much-looked-forward-to Sunday? Or push the shopping trolley all over the crowded supermarket looking for bread and eggs, washing powder, and vegetables for the week?

Welcome to the world of online grocery and vegetable shopping, where you are promised an escape from the chore of supply buying. You can click on your tarkari of the day, the soppu you want, bung it into a virtual shopping cart with atta and rice, diapers, upma mix, and chutney. Pay with your card, or maybe even pay cash on delivery, when it is all bundled at your doorstep the next day. Easy, huh?

Not as simple though (you still have to load a cart, even if it’s virtual!) but not a bad option either, as many people in Bangalore are discovering. Bangalore is home to more than seven such online grocery and vegetable shopping sites, many centred around smaller parts of the city, and some operating all over the city — including bigbasket.com, towness.co.in, zopnow.com, atmydoorsteps.com, toptomato.com. And they have all you may need on offer from your basic hing and ajwain, to exotic Betty Crocker cake mixes, lamp oil, air freshener to dog food, baby food, dal, salt, sugar and whatever else may be on your standard monthly shopping list.

Roopa Shree Ramprasad, a 40-year-old homemaker who lives on Kanakapura Road, is still fresh from her first online grocery shopping experience. She was, like most of us would be, sceptical about buying vegetables she can’t touch and see online. “When I lived in Singapore, I used to do my grocery shopping online. But when I moved here and my friend recommended it, my biggest worry was quality. But I was finally persuaded by my sister-in-law’s positive experience. I went on a shopping spree and ordered my month’s supply of rice, atta, everything else, and vegetables. I was really impressed with the quality and the packaging. My standard was the tomato — they were perfectly and uniformly ripe, and of the same quality and size! The vegetables and greens came cleaned, sorted and packed. No mud at all! Even frozen foods weren’t soggy.”

Earlier, says Roopa, her driver would take her in the car to the supermarket, and she went to a neighbourhood wholesale rice shop to pick up rice. “I now save on petrol, I don’t have to hunt for what I want in various sections of the supermarket, I don’t have to put up with the jostling crowds, and I don’t have to wait for supermarket-staff to search for things I ask, only to tell me it’s not in stock!” she lists out the benefits of online shopping.

Such pleasant surprises have prompted people to tell friends and relatives, who have also jumped onto this bandwagon. Ketaki Phadke, a busy chartered accountant, says: “I’ve been shopping online now for almost eight months, almost weekly sometimes, for regular groceries, including vegetables. Being a working woman, I don’t have the patience to stand in line for my rice and dal at 8 p.m after work.” Her husband too has shopped online on another site, when she’s too busy to do it, based on recommendations of his office colleagues. The only downside to it, she says is that you must order a minimum of Rs. 500 worth of products.

The sites offer many advantages — you can easily “search” for products you want. Some have a pre-loaded basic cart with dal/rice/oil/salt packages which saves you time and energy, almost all of them let you pick delivery time according to your convenience, many deliver on the same day as the order. Most of the sites procure veggies after you order, so products are fresh. “What makes me keep going back is the quality, as well as the price which is on-par with market rates,” says Mamatha Ramesh, a German-language teacher, who’s been shopping online since May 2012. “I’m also sent an SMS and email telling me if a product I have ordered isn’t available.” She points out that she would spend double the delivery charge she pays online, if she were to take an autorickshaw to the market and lug back vegetables.

Discounts are aplenty, there are also reward programmes for regular and repeat shoppers. Some pitch themselves as “green” stores – they deliver in plastic or wooden cartons that are taken back for reuse, don’t use plastic bags and covers, and even offer to take back the Styrofoam packs that the veggies come in and recycle them. Many of the stores are high on social networking too, and some offer mobile apps for their store. Some take orders over telephone and SMS even. One even has delivery boys bring wireless card-swiping devices for all those weary of paying online.

We’ve moved from dropping off the month’s list at the kiranawallah, to shopping at the huge supermarket. As we take the next step in making our life easy many may argue that we are breaking away from personal relations and killing the small local economy. But when convenience is the question, most customers give in.

Abhinay Choudhuri, co-founder of bigbasket.com, an online grocery store that started in December 2011, says that on an average they have about 1,000 people ordering in each day now. “Our total customer base is about 40,000,” he says. The customer profile? Almost 30 per cent of them are double-income post graduates, have at some time lived abroad, value spending time with their family over the weekend — a time they would otherwise have spent going to a supermarket to shop for the week. “A majority of our customers are from out of town… those who have come to the city two or three years ago and do not feel attached to a specific store.” Most of his customers spend Rs. 1,500 per buy.

One can dispel the myth that it’s only office-goers who use such a service. Any stay-at-home mum will tell you that making a supermarket trip with kids in tow is avoidable. Singletons, especially those new to the city, and who only need a few basics also prefer the hassle-free shopping

Attention! Online grocery-shopping is back

Today. Jan 20, 2013

After a spectacular implosion, Internet groceries are rolling again. Jean Chatzky tests out one of the on-your-doorstep services

These days, the supermarket many folks use is in their homes. Yes, more and more people are buying groceries online. “Today” financial editor Jean Chatzky was invited on the show to discuss the pros and cons of this form of cyber-shopping.

Online groceries flamed out big in the dot-com bust of the 1990s, with one company — Webvan — blowing through a billion (yes, that's a BILLION) dollars in financing. But over the past few years they've come back, and this time companies are taking it slow and doing it right.

Today, these groceries are legitimate businesses fulfilling about 1 percent of the nation’s $570 billion grocery bill. That may sound like a drop in the bucket, but business is expected to triple by 2008, according to Jupiter Research. Meanwhile, a report from the Food Marketing Institute reports that 5 percent of consumers — 3.7 million people — shopped online for groceries in the last year, up from 3 percent the year before.

You'll now see companies like Peapod in 15 markets in the Midwest and East Coast, Albertsons and Safeway in the West, Simon Delivers and Schnucks in the Midwest, and Fresh Direct in New York City. I've been shopping online myself for the past couple of months — since Peapod came to my neighborhood — and I have to say it's a definite improvement in my life. (And I'm not someone who's ever really minded going to the grocery store.)

Q:Are the prices higher or lower? 
A: We actually tested this out in Money magazine by dispatching shoppers with identical grocery lists to shop online — and in the stores — of eight cities across the country.  We found the online bills to be, overall, about the same as they were in the store. We also found that it's easier to put your fingers on the items that are on sale, because they all pop up on the same page.  And you're not as likely to give in to impulse purchases.

Hot Tip: 
Before you use an online grocer for the first time, do a search on a major engine (Google MSN, Yahoo, etc.) for the name of the grocer you're using plus the word "coupon."  I found a $10-off coupon for my first time, and then the driver gave me four additional $5-off coupons for my next four visits. Paying by direct check — .i.e. a pre-approved check — knocked another dollar off each visit.

Q: Can you still use coupons?  
A: Yes. With most companies, you give them to your driver and are credited for the difference.  And if you have a frequent-buyer card, you're eligible for those specials as well.

Q: How much time does it actually take?  
A: It takes about an hour the first time you shop.  That's because you're going to have to browse the (electronic) aisles and make out a whole list.  (There’s a possible exception to this: If you have a frequent-buyer card with the store affiliated with the online grocer, you can just type in your number and it will bring up a list of what you bought your last shopping trip. You’ll find it to be a big help!) After that first visit, though, you can call up lists of what you've purchased previously.  Then you can just click on each thing you want to buy again, which is why subsequent trips take only 20 minutes or so.

I also like to maintain a running list.  That way, you can add items as you know you need them until you hit the minimum required for delivery.  One thing that can slow you down is a slow Internet connection. (Using a dial-up modem is not ideal; five out of six Peapod customers, for instance, have a broadband connection.)

PLUSES
Quality: Online grocers tend to offer a higher quality selection of produce because they know that one delivery of mushy strawberries is all it takes to lose you as a customer. In this regard, damaged goods don't seem to be too much of a problem — products are generally packed in sturdy containers (some of which double as coolers, so that they can keep ice cream, for instance, frozen all along their routes).

Smart shopping: Some sites are designed to help you compare nutritional information. You can compare, on Peapod, which of the whole-wheat breads has the highest fiber content. Or which of the frozen pizzas at Fresh Direct has the least sodium.

Phone refunds: What happens when you've shopped in a store and you realize the milk is spoiled or the meat is bad? Either you trek back to the store and return it or — if you're busy — you throw it away and eat the expense. If you've shopped online, you just pick up the phone. I ordered a 2-pound container of strawberries and only a 1-pound container arrived. A five-minute phone call (I did have to hold for several minutes) got me an instant credit for half the purchase price.

MINUSES
Delivery charges: Most of the grocers have a minimum for delivery — $40 or $50 — and delivery fees range from $5 to $15.50. And then there's the matter of a tip. Some companies discourage tipping or don't allow their drivers to accept. Peapod, which I use, isn't one of them. And I'd feel bad NOT tipping after someone lugged all those groceries into my kitchen. So I generally give the driver $5.

Waiting at home. Unless you’re lucky enough to have household help, you have to be there to accept the delivery. However, the wait for the online grocer is nowhere close to the wait for the cable guy (you can usually count on having to leave a one- or two-hour window). And some sites will actually pay you ($1 off) to choose their less busy delivery times.

Substitutions/cancellations: If you order one kind of ice cream or cereal or whole-wheat bread and the store is out, they may substitute another brand (or nothing at all). I ordered Dole lettuce, but the store was out and I got the store brand instead. It definitely was lower quality. (I needed to make a salad, though, so I didn't gripe. And it was slightly cheaper.)

Veg vendors click on the Net

by Prachi Sibal. Jan 5, 2013

Business has picked up for stores selling veggies online, but is it just a few shoppers opting for convenience or a major retail trend?

In her 60s, Usha Muralidhar, like most others her age, likes her veggies fresh and handpicked, and wouldn’t have the joy of shopping for gardenfresh produce taken away from her. Yet, trips to the vegetable market were turning exhausting, and she was looking for an easier way to shop.

She had heard of online groceries, but actually placing an order required a not-so-small shift in attitude. She would no longer be able to touch and feel the food she bought and couldn’t even rely on the smell to test freshness. Nevertheless, the return policy sounded encouraging, and she decided to take the plunge. Pleasantly surprised by her experience, she has since permanently traded in her grocery bag for the mouse.

Stories like Usha’s mark a change in the Bangalore shopper’s attitudes that few could have foretold, especially when you consider that as much as 80 per cent of their orders include perishables, such as fruits and vegetables. The entrepreneurs behind these ventures are confident this is a sign of bigger things to come. Tracing the evolution of the sector, Debdulal Ballabh, founder of MissNOT, which has been in business for a year and a half, says, “The online market in the country saw its first breakthrough in the form of Flipkart, and then IRCTC (the Indian Railways website) removed other inhibitions. People are looking for convenience, and are now open to buying fruits and vegetables online, though it will take time before they start ordering products like meat.”

While MissNOT has not yet started delivering perishables online, there are several others who have. Sushant Junnarkar, founder of Atmydoorsteps.com says when it comes to ordering vegetable or fruits, it is usually only with the first order that customers have apprehensions, and the quantities automatically go up later. The ‘no questions asked’ return policy that most such websites offer also helps, he added.

Abhinay Choudhari, co-founder, bigbasket.com, traces the shift in a first-time customer's attitude thus,“When they start shopping with us, people opt for safer vegetables like onions and potatoes, and then move to other, harder-to-preserve items.”

Choudhari says it is the hassle of shopping in supermarkets that is driving customers to the web, but MissNOT’s Ballabh points to some other reasons as well. “Some 80-90 per cent of items in monthly grocery purchases remain the same, which is why people opt to order them online. Besides, we source from wholesalers as and when we get orders, which ensures the products are fresh. Even with packaged food, the manufactured dates on our stock tend to be closer to the date of purchase when compared to what they get in physical stores,” he says.

The trend of shopping for groceries online is definitely catching on, but what do the numbers say? Most businessmen Talk spoke to were reluctant to reveal daily and monthly delivery figures, but assured us that there has been a big increase in the past one year. Big Basket, which launched in Bangalore a year ago, claims to be delivering around 1,000 orders a day on an average, as against the 100 they were doing the same time last year.

Choudhari attributes their success to the large number of people who have newly moved to the city and who don’t have a regular neighbourhood store they are accustomed to. He says a good 80 per cent of his client base resides in eastern and southern Bangalore and they hardly get any orders from the northern and north-western neighbourhoods. Online grocery shopping is also popular in gated communities in the outskirts of the city, where amenities are not available close by.

While online grocers are hopeful about their prospects, with some even seeing it as the future, others like Amar Krishna Murthy, Managing Director of Towness.com, are more sceptical. “I don’t think Bangalore is ready yet for the big shift to online shopping of perishables. There is a trend towards online shopping, but a small group of trendsetters buying their veggies online hardly accounts for anything when compared to the millions who enter the local grocery store or supermarket every day,” he says. He considers the trend a natural progression, but a slow one at that.

One of the biggest worries for those in the business is the challenges dealing with supplies and stocks. “Though we have been in the business of supplying to hotels and had a supply chain in place, keeping vegetables fresh can be quite a challenge and demands a lot of expertise,” says Krishna Murthy. bigbasket’s Choudhari’s biggest problem is the differing perception of quality that customers have. He says, “Everybody has an opinion on good quality and that is the reason why people prefer to handpick perishable items. One person is looking for large tomatoes, but another complains about them. There is no standardised definition of quality in this business.”

Botched orders are another concern, but interestingly, that does not stop some customers from going online for their veggies. Manoj Jindal, a software engineer, who took a reluctant first step and ordered groceries online, found that his order was a complete mess. “They didn't give me the proper time of delivery and got the address wrong. They later figured out there was a mistake when they noted the address down. The veggies weren't great either,” he says. But despite his initial reservations and that first disappointment, he resumed shopping online from other websites, finding the convenience too much to let go.

Complaints like Jindal’s are common enough on social networking websites and online forums, and when we asked Krishna Murthy of Towness.com about how they handle complaints, he admitted customer expectations were high. “We do try to address complaints and offer to exchange products, but often no steps are enough to bring a customer back. When things go bad, you are ruining it not just for yourself but for the larger online business,” he says.

But others are skeptical about the very model. Arjun Zacharia, a web entrepreneur himself, confesses he does not shop online much. When he does, it’s mostly restricted to items like books or shoes, which he says can be returned easily if there’s a problem. “Online shopping of perishables may be catching on but I would still like to go to the market to buy mine. Online stores can hardly give me the sort of inventory I am looking for,” he says.

HERE’S WHERE YOU LOG ON TO BUY YOUR TARKAARI

Vegwala.com

Delivers in areas surrounding Whitefield and Marathahalli. Lets you pick set quantities or buy a weekly vegetable or fruit box that contains enough for a family of four consuming a standard balanced diet.

Atmydoorsteps.com

Delivers to most locations and sells vegetable and meat. They offer same day delivery if the order is booked before 1 pm, but do not allow you to specify time of delivery.

bigbasket.com

Delivers to most locations. You get to choose time of delivery from four slots. The last slot extends till 10 pm, something many find convenient. However, they have fewer quantity options when ordering. Orders can be made for set quantities like 500 and 250 gram.

Towness.com

Delivers to most locations and lets you pick veggies and fruits by the piece. Delivery convenience however has to be discussed by phone.

Payment:
All the online grocery stores accept cash-on-delivery and online payment.

Atmydoorsteps.com has the unique option of letting you pay through a credit or debit card at the time of delivery

Online grocery shopping is popular in gated communities

Order groceries online here

Hindustan Times. Jan 15, 2013

bigbasket.com is a convenient option for online shoppers who are looking for high quality, fresh products at competitive prices.

With a catalog of over 10,000 products including fresh fruits and vegetables, grocery and staples, meats, personal care and branded products, they deliver everything a household may need.