Big Bazaar may beat Grofers, Flipkart, become lead grocery seller on Amazon

At present, Big Bazaar fulfills 300 to 1,000 orders per day per store for Amazon

Big Bazaar is likely to beat rivals Grofers and Flipkart, taking a lead in the online grocery war. Sources said the Kishore Biyani-led hypermarket chain could soon be the biggest grocery seller on Amazon India. 

At present, it fulfills 300 to 1,000 orders per day per store for Amazon. The might go up four time by early next year.

Big Bazaar has more than 300 stores in India. Amazon might soon use it for fulfilling its two-hour grocery and fresh produce delivery service. It has been fulfilling orders for Amazon’s Prime Now service from 18 stores in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. In the next phase, the service will be increased to 12 cities, eventually covering 130 cities.

“Prime Now services are being integrated with the Amazon app. The full integration of Prime Now within the app and the inventories of Big Bazaar is expected by early next year. Customized space and infrastructure for selecting, packing dispatching Prime Now orders are being created in Big Bazaar stores. This would help in fulfilling orders within two hours,” said a source close to the firm.

Amazon India in August announced the launch of Amazon Fresh store on Amazon.in for select pin-codes. The firm is trying its hand at delivering of fresh produce and perishables via this two-hour delivery service. 

Big Bazaar would be getting access to close to over 320 million monthly visitors on Amazon India app which would help in increasing its customer base exponentially. 

This would also benefit Future Consumer Ltd (FCL) which has around 30 percent share within Big Bazaar’s food business. FCL brands, sources said make up for a large share of Amazon Now deliveries already. Its brands spans across food, home care, personal care and beauty. 

These include Tasty Treat, Dreamery, Voom, Karmiq, Sangi’s Kitchen, Golden Harvest and Kara among others. “FCL is focused on expanding margins and achieving higher profitability with higher contribution from value-added products. It will leverage Amazon’s partnership with Future Group to develop it as a significant alternate channel for selling FCL brands,” according to a source in direct knowledge of the matter.

Currently, all FCL brands are listed on Amazon Now. “It is building a relationship with Amazon, strategizing, reviewing it jointly very frequently. FCL is constantly learning how to win batches, how to do distribution, fulfilment, fulfilled by Amazon models,” added the source.

Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail, in a filing to THE BSE in August this year, said that Amazon.com is acquiring 49 per cent stake in a group entity — Future Coupons. Future Coupons, which is into digital payments, has an economic interest of 7.3 per cent in Future Retail by way of convertible warrants. 

Through this deal, Amazon would have an effective stake of 3.6 per cent in Future Retail. According to sources in the know, the deal size is between Rs 1,500 crore and Rs 2,000 crore, which values Future Retail at Rs 43,000 crore. The retail giant has over 1,500 stores across various formats.