BigBasket - Numero Uno in Online Groceries Shopping!

BigBasket - Numero Uno in Online Groceries Shopping!

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In the world of online shopping, niche players and portals are growing progressively and making a mark for themselves by enabling customer convenience, affordability and choice. Apart from general online portals like Amazon and FlipKart, today we have niche players that cover furniture, baby care products, fashion, cosmetics, eyewear, jewellery, auto accessories, hardware and home services. These vertical portals are just a sample of the endless list of niche players in online shopping. One of the key segments is online grocery shopping. Typically, the general population spends a good amount of time in shopping for groceries on a monthly basis, if not weekly. As part of the process, they expend lot of time and effort in procuring their regular groceries for their homes by shopping at brick and mortar stores. Clearly, groceries from physical stores cost more for a variety of reasons including fixed overheads like establishment rent and staff costs.

Fortunately, for customers, the whole world of online shopping has transformed the shopping landscape. This is particularly true where niche or specific needs of customers are concerned like groceries. One of the key specialised players in the online segment for online groceries is www.BigBasket.com. Big Basket (Innovative Retail Concepts PVT. LTD.) is the largest player in the food and online groceries channel in the country. It was established in the October 2011 by its co-founders Abhinay Choudhari, Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh and VS Sudhakar. The portal has expanded exponentially since its inception in the online grocery space. And it has barely scratched the potential opportunity in the segment with a huge quantum of growth available to be tapped.

The portal has been wonderful to customers and it has proven itself consistently. Here are key facets of BigBasket.

1. BigBasket is backed by well experienced and trusted founders namely Abhinay Choudhari, Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh and VS Sudhakar who carry a wealth of experience in the grocery segment. They earlier managed the successful physical retail chain FabMall (a chain of grocery supermarkets) which was sold to the Aditya Birla Group and now captioned as More.
2. The website is quite well organised and categorised with a user friendly interface for customers making it absolutely a delight to shop online for groceries. The process of selection of products on the site is quite intuitive and customer friendly.
3. Customers can shop either on desktops / laptops or go in for mobile apps. The website offers apps for both Android and Apple Operating Systems.
4. The portal incorporates a wide range of food and grocery products for homes and is factually a one stop shop for customers. It has a spread of over 18,000 products in its catalogue and covers everything that customers look out for from fresh Fruits and Vegetables, Rice and Dals, Spices and Seasonings to Packaged products, Beverages, Personal care products and Meats (to name a few).
5. The portal has a rich variety of branded products mixed with in-house products to cater to the choices of customers.
6. While it is not available all over the country, yet it covers the top cities in the country with a network of over 30 locations.
7. The biggest advantage for customers of shopping on BigBasket is that they are saved the drudgery of grocery shopping from physical stores. Shopping online is wonderful. It saves time and effort that is often lost in traffic commuting, parking troubles, hopping from shop to another, long payment queues and carrying heavy bags after purchasing groceries needed for homes. BigBasket offers an easy and relaxed way of browsing and shopping for groceries from the comfort of our homes or offices.
8. Another key factor that weighs in on customers is that BigBasket offers huge discounts on the selected products going all the way up to 20% of order value through instant discounts and cashback. There are a variety of special offers and discount coupons usually available on the website through the year. Also consider the savings on fuel when we commute and buy groceries from physical stores. And of course, as the saying goes, "time is money".
9. The portal also has a Refer and Earn feature. Through this feature, you can refer family and friends and earn gift amounts to use for your own groceries.
10. Customers can also purchase Gift Cards on BigBasket for the purpose of gifting a BigBasket Gift Card to their near and dear ones.
11. If you are unsure where to find the products you are looking for on the website, then you can use the Search feature with generic name of the product. That will pull out all the branded and unbranded names for the product.
12. The Shopping Cart of the portal is designed with the customer in mind. Customers can prepare their grocery lists or add to shopping cart in advance and check out whenever they are comfortable.
13. The website is a highly secured website and ensures that there is no leakage of confidential customer information.
14. Customers have the option of completing payments for their orders through multiple channels such as Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Net Banking, Wallets, Sodexho and Cash on Delivery (COD).
15. The company offers fast and flexible delivery schedules to customers with doorstep delivery. We can choose the date and time that we need delivery of our selected products. This includes same day delivery as well and ensures that there are no issues with perishable products. 
16. The delivery cost is very low at Rs.20/- per order and is almost not noticeable.
17. The portal offers on-time guarantee of delivery of products. On rare occasions when delivery is delayed beyond the selected timelines, customers are reimbursed  certain amount of their order.
18. BigBasket is particular about quality of products. In the event that there are issues of quality, customers can return the products either for replacement or refund with no questions asked.
19. Customers can raise their queries or complaints, as the case may be, through a variety of channels like calling their toll number, sending an email or messaging on social media (Facebook, Twitter, InstaGram & Google+). Alternatively, the portal has a comprehensive FAQs section for the benefit of customers who are not well versed with online shopping of groceries.

Overall, BigBasket is an excellent portal that is a blessing for customers. From our own experience, it has saved us lot of time, effort and cost. We have mostly done away going to physical stores for our groceries. Of course, there are still times when we need to visit brick and mortar stores but that considerably come down without any compromise to our convenience and comfort. If anything, BigBasket has made our lives that much more easier.

However, there are times when there are clear quality issues with some of the products like Dals wherein sometimes infestation has been observed. Further, with some packaged items, we have noticed that they are delivered close to Best Use Date or Expired. The quality of vegetables and fruits has come down too. That is the reason we still do visit physical stores as and when required. To give credit to BigBasket, they do have a No Questions Asked Return Policy. Their delivery timelines are typically maintained. On rare occasions when there is delay, they reimburse certain set amounts to the customer.

One area where BigBasket clearly can use improvement is their escalation matrix which seems to go nowhere despite customers asking repeatedly for escalation. Their agents while fine with the typical issues are like robots when it comes to discretion or escalation and go by a set script which tires out customers. Perhaps, you can not have it all!