Much before Zepto, Instamart and Blinkit took over the screen real estate on smartphones, BigBasket had already silently built an empire in the online grocery delivery space.

Even the rapid growth of quick commerce in the past three years has not fazed the Tata-owned company. That’s because BigBasket is home to the largest private label business in the Indian ecommerce space.

From everyday staples to fresh produce to household items across categories, BigBasket gradually entered into the private label business even before dark store mania swept through India.

Seshu Kumar Tirumala, chief buying and merchandising officer at BigBasket told Inc42 that out of the INR 10,062 Cr in sales generated by the company in FY24, close to 40% came from the in-house and private label brands.

The INR 4,000 Cr revenue from private labels for BigBasket far surpasses anything that Zepto has generated through Relish and Daily Good, for instance. The other platforms competing with BigBasket like Instamart and Blinkit do not have a sizable presence in the private label brands business.

Zepto has started making some inroads in the private label brands vertical with its meats and egg brand, Relish projected to hit INR 500 Cr revenue in 2026. The quick commerce startup also launched its daily staples brand Daily Good last year.

It must be noted that there are key differences in how these private labels are created. Zepto’s model is not the same as BigBasket, and perhaps therein lies the reason for BigBasket’s huge private label business, which dwarfs what Instamart or Blinkit brought in in the whole year.

Was BigBasket Ahead Of Its Time?

Founded in 2011 by Vipul Parekh, V. S. Sudhakar, Hari Menon, V. S. Ramesh and Abhinay Choudhari, BigBasket’s private label push was a wholly unique idea when it was introduced in 2014.

In some ways, the company was ahead of its time because at the time only large marketplaces had explored this model. Amazon had its Prime Basics and Solimo line in India, while Flipkart also experimented with some product categories. BigBasket began the private label push in 2014-2015 by partnering with kiranas and retailers to sell its private label products including the BB Royal line of staples.

BigBasket’s private labels such as Fresho and BB Royal brought in 33% of the company’s net sales for FY15, as per a TOI report.

The company built on this early lead in a big way with successive funding rounds — between August 2015 and September 2017, BigBasket raised close to $500 Mn which enabled the company to truly capitalise on the gap in the market.

And then in 2021, the Tata Group went on to acquire BigBasket in a deal valued at nearly $1 Bn.

To a large extent, BigBasket was the only player in the grocery delivery space between 2014 and 2019. The hyperlocal brigade came and went with Dunzo hanging on till 2024, but by the time the quick commerce boom came around, BigBasket was well entrenched.

The Tata deal truly put BigBasket in the big league with giants such as Amazon India and Flipkart even though it........

© Inc42