Exclusive: BigBasket opens its first physical store ‘Fresho’ in Bengaluru

BigBasket has just taken its first step to sell offline. The online grocer opened its first physical store in Bengaluru earlier this week under the brand name: Fresho, according to an internal company email. ‘Fresho’ is the brand the grocery unicorn has been using for its private label products in the online store.

Interestingly, the ‘Fresho’ brand has not always taken the discount route, frequently selling at a premium to established brands, by taking alternative routes like organic produce, or premium ingredients.

According to the email, a copy of which Entrackr has seen, BigBasket co-founder VS Sudhakar informed all company employees that the store in Bengaluru’s Basaveshwar Nagar, has been open to customers since October 25. 

In the email, Sudhakar said that opening the store is an “extremely key, strategic initiative.” The store is operational from 8 in the morning to 9 in the night. The email also shared several images of the store. 

However, the company hasn’t yet added any BigBasket or Fresho signage at the store. 

“Since this is running on a pretty new tech stack with some very interesting features like self-weighing and check out, farmer traceability etc and our first customer walkin interaction, we wanted to be cautious about opening it out to too many customers too soon,” Sudhakar wrote in the email. “Hence we have not even put up the signage on the Store”. 

Sudhakar’s email also informed that even without the signage, the store has seen around 100 walkins and around 80 orders each day since opening.

Entrackr has reached out to BigBasket for more details and will update the story when they respond. 

Tata Digital had acquired a majority stake in BigBasket earlier this year. According to an ET report, Tata has tasked BigBasket with building a unified supply chain and logistics network. 

While this is the first physical store for BigBasket, Grofers has been following the franchise model for its dark stores for a while. Other notable e-grocers including Swiggy Instamart and Dunzo also have their own dark stores. 

Apart from direct selling, one assumes that the network of Fresho stores in the future would serve the dual purpose of fulfilling orders originating from BigBasket and BB Daily.