Bigbasket raises $150 mn from Mirae Asset, others

India’s largest online grocer, Bigbasket has raised $150 million in a fresh Series F round of funding, taking the company into the Unicorn league.

In this round of funding, South Korean investment firm Mirae Asset contributed $59.9 million. China’s Alibaba.com which is BigBasket’s largest shareholder has contributed $50 million and UK’s CDC Group PLC has contributed $40 million, according to RoC filings accessed by business intelligence platform paper.vc.

“Following this Series F investment led by Alibaba, our estimate of the post-money valuation of BigBasket is $2.28 billion. We believe the company will likely raise more money as part of this Series F financing” said Vivek Durai, founder of paper.vc.

Early last year Bigbasket had raised $300 million in a fresh funding round led by Chinese e-tailer Alibaba and other investors.

India’s online grocery space has gone through a significant evolution in the last few years- from explosive growth and funding in calendar year 2015 to growth challenges and funding winter in calendar year 2016. It then saw accelerated growth from 2018 onwards. During this journey, many new business models have evolved, and many themes have been proven and dis-proven.

Inspite of all these disruptions and changes, one thing that did not change was the massive potential for online grocery- as indicated by India’s $ 500 billion plus grocery market, out of which a mere 0.2 per cent is online. According to RedSeer Consulting the online market will continue chugging along at 50 per cent growth rate for the next few years, which will be served by various models, including category specialists and narrow and wide supermarkets.