Grocery Unicorn BigBasket scores Rs 100 Cr debt from Trifecta

Online grocery major BigBasket has picked up Rs 100 crore debt from Trifecta Capital. The Alibaba-backed company became the first Unicorn from e-grocery segment in March this year.

This is the largest cheques for BigBasket from the Gurugram-based debt provider. In 2017, Trifecta poured in Rs 45 crore in March and a modest Rs 4 crore in October.

Apart from the current debt fund, BigBasket aims to leverage Trifecta's Bank/Non-Bank relationships for its future fund requirements.

The development comes at a time when BigBasket is pushing hard on scaling its milk and daily essential delivery business (aka subscription commerce) via BBDaily.

The fresh proceeds will be used for setting up new warehouses, strengthening the cold chain, setting up facilities for reprocessing of fruits & vegetables and for scaling-up of its supply chain for BB Daily including newly revealed vending machine business - BBInstant.

Currently present in 26 cities, BigBasket offers online assortment with more than 19,000 products and over 3,000 brands across fruits, vegetables, staples, meat, beverages, and personal care categories.

While the firm is betting big on BBDaily, it is slowly pulling out from on-demand delivery service - Express Delivery. The move might force it to shut down many dark stores which were used to facilitate quick deliveries.

According to industry experts, the express delivery model is unviable due to the high cost per delivery that may go up to Rs 80. Softbank-backed Grofers, one of the closest competitor to BigBasket, already had shut down express delivery feature long back.

Meanwhile, BigBasket has appointed Raghav Bahl, Alibaba’s Head of investment for India, as its Non-executive Director. Bahl joins the board that counts Hari Menon, Sanjeev Aggarwal, Vishal Vijay Gupta, Akur Trehan as other directors.

Trifecta has supported over fifty companies including three Unicorns and eight Soonicorns in the past four years. Some of the renowned companies under its portfolio are Rivigo, UrbanClap, Cure.Fit, CarDekho, Pharmeasy, NinjaKart, Sigtuple, Cars24, NoBroker among several others.