Tata Digital, a subsidiary company of Tata Sons has bought majority stake in Online Grocery Giant BigBasket.
E-grocery has been one of the rapidly-growing segments in the consumer e-commerce space and its growth is driven by India’s increasing consumption and digital penetration.
The present era of pandemic has further hastened its adoption as consumers seek the convenience of ordering quality groceries which get delivered safely right at their doorsteps. So in this regard, Tata Digital, a 100% subsidiary of Tata Sons has acquired a major stake in BigBasket – India’s major e-commerce player in the Food & Grocery segment.
BigBasket is the biggest e-grocery market and offers one of the largest assortments (50,000+ SKUs). It provides customers the convenience of home deliveries on preferred dates and timeslots. It also runs a farm-to-fork supply chain with more than 12,000 farmers and numerous collections centers pan-India to deliver premium quality & fresh fruits and vegetables to its customers.
Tata Group is setting up a digital consumer ecosystem addressing consumer necessities across categories in a unified way and online food & grocery is a crucial part of this ecosystem. In accordance, this acquisition bestows an impressive opportunity for Tata Group in its holistic vision of building a digital ecosystem.
The announcement came after India’s antitrust body Competition Commission of India (CCI) gave its consent to the acquisition of up to a 64.3% stake in BigBasket by Tata Digital in March 2021. This acquisition deal has put the Indian conglomerate in a direct race with e-commerce players such as Amazon.com Inc, Walmart’s Flipkart and Reliance Industries.
Tata declined to give any further details including the financial details regarding this deal, and at the same time BigBasket was also unavailable for any immediate response about the deal. However, some media reports have revealed the deal is worth about Rs 9,500 crore rounding up to about $1.31 billion, and will also be involving the acquisition of Chinese giant Alibaba’s stake.
Tata, which has interests in products ranging from salt to luxury cars to software, has been planning to launch a “super app” which will be launched anytime soon in the coming future. This app will add the firm to merge together all its consumer businesses, as per the media reports.
Pratik Pal, CEO of Tata Digital apprised- “Grocery is one of the largest components of an individual’s consumption basket in India, and BigBasket is India’s largest e-grocery player, fits in perfectly with our vision of creating a large consumer digital ecosystem. We are delighted to welcome BigBasket as a part of the Tata Digital.”
Hari Menon, CEO of BIgBasket stated- “As a part of the Tata ecosystem, we would be able to build stronger consumer connect and accelerate our journey.”