BigBasket's wholesale unit put up a strong fight; loss narrows to Rs 310 Cr

Increase in revenue is a boost for online grocer BigBasket, which has seen an increase in competition, especially after the entering of Amazon and Flipkart to the party.

Bengaluru-based online grocery platform BigBasket, saw the revenue of its wholesale arm, Supermarket Grocery Supplies Private Ltd, increased by 35 percent to Rs 1,606 crore in the financial year 2018 from Rs 1,176 crore in FY17.

The wholesale arm also narrowed its loss by a whopping 53 percent to Rs 310 crore. The firm had incurred a loss of Rs 653 crore in FY17, show documents filed with Registrar of Companies (RoC).

Similarly, the retail arm of the, Innovative Retail, also saw a 29 percent increase in its revenue to Rs 1,410 crore. Riding on that, the retail arm managed to control the loss at Rs 179 crore in FY18, a 6.2 percent decrease from its Rs 191 crore of loss in FY17.

In FY18, the online grocer saw Alibaba come on board as an investor and raised $300 million from the Chinese group in February last financial year. The investment also saw changes in the boardroom at Supermarket, with Meena Ganesh and K Ganesh of GrowthStory and Neeraj Bhargava of Zodius Capital resigning, and Big-Basket CEO Hari Menon joining as a director.

The development comes days after media reports said that the Alibaba backed Big Basket is in talks to raise close to $200 million. With two large players, Amazon and Flipkart entering the online grocery market, competition has been on an upward trajectory. Even rival Grofers, which is reportedly in the process of raising funds led by SoftBank and is turning to its private label consumer goods to garner more market share.

While Amazon has Amazon Now and Amazon Pantry, Flipkart launched Flipkart Supermart last year. The online food and grocery delivery market is pegged to touch Rs 10,000 crore by 2020, as per a Crisil report. This market has been largely dominated by three key players Amazon, BigBasket, Flipkart and Grofers with many others like PepperTap closing down their operations.