Bigbasket eyes $200 mn investment in fresh funding in next few months

After successfully raising $300 million from Alibaba Group earlier this year, online grocery store Bigbasket now aims to raise up to $200 million over the next few months, a top company official said.

The Bengaluru-based company aims to raise funds from both the existing as well as new investors and the funds will be used for marketing, to build infrastructure and to develop technology.

"We will probably look at a further investment of close to $150-200 million in the next few months. We already had some early talks with investors," Bigbasket co- founder and chief executive Hari Menon told PTI here.

Menon said the fund will be used largely for marketing, and to develop infrastructure and technology. The company normally spends Rs 1.5 billion annually on marketing.

In February, it had raised $300 million from the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and others.

Menon said the company has set a target of becoming a $1-billion company in terms of revenue next fiscal year.

The company aims to clock Rs 35 billion in sales this fiscal year from, up from Rs 20 billion last year.

"The aim is to double revenue each year,"he said.

The company has presence in 25 cities and plans to launch its operations in Kochi soon.

"Having gone deeper into the existing consumer base already, which has been our growth driver, we are now planning to get into the upper middle class and middle class segments" he said.

Menon noted that Bigbasket, founded in December 2011, has 10 million subscribers and close to 100,000 orders per day, and aims to breakeven in the 10 large cities by next June.

Bigbasket last month acquired Pune-based RainCan and the Bengaluru-based Morning Cart to deliver milk to 20,000 customers. It has already launched this services in seven cities and expects to rollout to other three cities among the top 10 metros.

Menon expects the milk delivery business to be a Rs 10-billion business by next year.