The online grocery space has been seeing immense interest from various players. And with Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm also foraying into this space, incumbent BigBasket has some tough competition.
BigBasket has had to therefore rework its strategy and seems to be on course with adding strength to the last mile delivery capabilities through 3 new acquisitions. The three entities are RainCan, MorningStart and Kwik24. The first two are milk delivery startups while the third is into setting up smart vending machines. BigBasket has taken a controlling stake in Kwik24 while the other two have been outright takeovers, reports Economic Times.
All three strategic acquisitions will go towards taking BigBasket closer to its existing customers and also widen the net to serve more people across the country. Mainly, the milk deliveries work on subscription basis and it opens up an entirely new avenue to push the range of fresh foods, vegetables and fruits and eggs and meat and so on.
A new subscription service BB Daily is being launched by BigBasket that will enable the customers to place orders for milk and other daily consumable stuff and orders placed by night will be executed the next morning. It will be a gradual launch with Bengaluru and Pune accounting for the 20,000 odd subscriptions BB Daily has already notched up. It will expand to 6 more cities soon.
The acquisition of Kwik24, gives BigBasket an entry into vending kiosks, which will pave the way for an omni-channel strategy by having a physical presence in large malls and other public places with huge footfalls and obviously eyeballs.
BigBasket has also installed 100 vending machines in Bengaluru and may soon open them in other cities as well. It is expected to service those customers who don’t wish to make online payments and can place an order on the app and pay and collect from the kiosk.