Bigbasket forays into offline retail; unveils Fresho store in Bengaluru

Online grocery platform Bigbasket on Wednesday announced its foray into offline retail with the opening a new technology-driven, self-service 'Fresho' store in Bengaluru.

The launch is part of the company's vision to open 200 physical outlets pan India by 2023 and 800 by 2026, a statement said.

The stores will offer high quality products at extremely competitive prices, it added.

The store in Basaveshwar Nagar in Bengaluru was inaugurated by three farmers, who are a part of Bigbasket's Farmer Connect programme.

Bigbasket - a Tata Enterprise, has adopted a channel-agnostic approach to connect with customers, the statement said.

With Fresho stores, customers can handpick fresh fruits and vegetables as well as daily essentials like Bread and Eggs, it added.

For accessing the company's entire range of over 50,000 products, they will place the orders online and collect them at the Fresho Stores at their convenience.

"Bigbasket has always striven to adopt a customer-first approach. This is where the 'Fresho' stores will be gamechangers in terms of making the buying of fruits, vegetables and groceries as seamless as cash transactions at ATMs. The stores will give access to the next 500 million customers who have not yet started buying grocery online and create a new significant growth opportunity for Bigbasket," Bigbasket co-founder and CEO Hari Menon said.

He added that the produce stocked at the stores is backed by the company's extensive 'Farmer Connect' programme where Bigbasket partners with over 30,000 farmers across the country to source fruits and vegetables directly.

"There is complete traceability for all fresh produce built in our supply chain which allows us to communicate details of the farmer for each product to our customers, he said.

The Fresho stores merge the best of technology such as 'Self-billing Counters' integrated with video AI tools that enable customers to pick items of their choice and weigh them at the counter through automatic computer vision that can identify the items and generate bills accordingly. This brings in a seamless, convenient shopping experience for the buyers at the store.

Bigbasket, a Tata Enterprise, has expanded to 40 cities in India, and serves 12 million customer orders per month. In 2020, Bigbasket reached the milestone of USD 1 billion in annual revenues.