Bigbasket acquires DailyNinja

Online grocery delivery startup Bigbasket has acquired 100% stake in Bengaluru-based milk delivery app DailyNinja. The online grocery platform has paid around $15-20 Million for the acquisition.

The acquisition will allow Bigbasket to consolidate its leadership position, especially in the subscription delivery space in Bengaluru. It will also help Bigbasket’s milk delivery service -- BB Daily -- grow its daily business by 150%-200% over the next 12 months. DailyNinja currently has around 110,000 customers transacting daily which will now help BB Daily augment its user base.

Currently, BB Daily makes about 160,000 deliveries per day including a wide range of fresh fruits and vegetables, bread, dairy & eggs and a vast collection of daily essentials like breakfast cereals, tender coconut, personal care and baby care products etc.

BB Daily will also have access to DailyNinja’s network of 2000 milkman partners spread across India. The merger with Bigbasket will be an opportunity for DailyNinja to double its business within a month by leveraging BB’s supply chain capabilities. DailyNinja’s customers will be able to access BB Daily’s extensive non-milk range.

Bigbasket has been focusing on growing its subscription business to serve the recurring consumption needs of its customers at low delivery costs ever since the launch of BB Daily in December 2018. Currently, Bigbasket users pay ₹40 and above for delivery charges, which is forgone when a user opts for a subscription package.

PeopleStrong acquired SaaS firm Qilo

PeopleStrong HR Services Pvt. Ltd, a human resources technology company, has acquired software-as-a-services company Qilo Technologies Pvt. Ltd in its third takeover deal over the past two years. The acquisition will help PeopleStrong strengthen its talent and workforce management offerings.

The acquisition will help the firm’s clients simplify and measure strategy execution and align individual performance to business outcomes across all levels. Noida-based Qilo was incorporated in 2015. The firm says it helps organizations by providing them solutions relating to strategy execution and objectives and key results (OKR) performance management.

Its platform delivers services such as team alignment, real-time visibility, business digitization, and performance measurement. The company has worked with organizations such as BigBasket, Meesho, Chumbak, and CarDekho.

PeopleStrong, meanwhile, was set up in 2005. The HR services firm says it has around 1,000 employees and more than 170 customers across industries. Its services cover the whole spectrum of human resources, including talent acquisition, human capital management, workplace data and insights, and payroll functions.

Milkbasket acquires Veggie India

Micro delivery startup Milkbasket has acquired Noida based online grocery venture Veggie India for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition would strengthen its distribution capabilities and grow its customer base to more than lakh households.

Ocado Garden Fresh Pvt Ltd, which operates Veggie India, was founded in January 2017. Veggie India, which operates a mobile app, helps users choose from more than 3,000 products including fruits and vegetables, organic products, packed and frozen food, beauty and hygiene products, and kitchen and household essentials. The app claims to have more than 5,000 users primarily from Noida and Ghaziabad.

The buyout comes months after Milkbasket raised $7 million (Rs 49 crore) in an extended Series A round led by US-based early-to-growth-stage venture capital firm Mayfield Advisors. Founded in 2015, Milkbasket currently has a presence in Delhi, Gurugram, Noida and Bengaluru.

Unlike bigger players in the online grocery delivery market such as BigBasket, Grofers, Amazon and Flipkart, Milkbasket positions itself as the online version of local mom-and-pop grocery stores but with more stock keeping units. It generally supplies perishable and non-perishable products that are bought in smaller quantities but with higher frequency.

Tata Group to acquire GrocerMax

The Tata Group is buying out the management team and technology infrastructure of Gurgaon based GrocerMax to enter the online grocery business as consumers increasingly place orders for their supplies over the internet.

The new team will help set up the online platform for Trent Hypermarket, an equal joint venture between Tata and British retailer Tesco that will rival Amazon and Bigbasket in the nascent yet rapidly growing segment. GrocerMax will shut down its business in Gurgaon because the Tata group's grocery business is not present in North India. The Tata Group runs three formats under the Star Banner – Dailies, Market and Hyper and has around 42 stores.

For Tesco, the world’s third largest retailer has nearly 6,800 stores globally, its online business earns roughly 3 Billion in sales and is one of the rare such ventures that’s profitable. But the opportunity offered by the $500 Billion retail market is attractive for any player, foreign or local. Food and grocery account for almost 50% of the overall retail basket in India, although general merchandise, personal and home products fill up a bulk of the retailer’s profit pool.

Experts feel omnichannel retail offers consumers more ways to shop and interact with a retailer. GrocerMax is a hybrid platform for grocery that keeps only 10% inventory, sourcing the rest from supermarkets and provisional stores in real time. The online grocery space in India, which has seen a minor shakeout over the past year, has attracted more players as well. While LocalBanya and PepperTap suspended operations, Grofers shut in multiple cities.

Amazon to buy Whole Foods

Amazon.com Inc. will acquire Whole Foods Market Inc. for $13.7 Billion, a bombshell of a deal that catapults the e-commerce giant into the supermarket business with hundreds of store across the US.

Amazon agreed to pay $42 a share in cash for the organic-food chain, including debt, a roughly 27% premium to the stock price at Thursday’s close. The deal sends a shockwave across both the online and brick-and-mortar industries, uniting two brands that weren’t seen as obvious partners. For Amazon, the deal is more about getting a distribution network for groceries. It has spent years trying to break into delivering groceries, but hasn’t been as successful as in other categories.

The transaction also may help Amazon sideline Instacart Inc., a startup that has delivered grocery orders from Whole Foods stores in more than 20 states and Washington, D.C. Amazon’s biggest acquisition announced to date came in 2014, when it agreed to buy video-game service Twitch Interactive Inc. for $970 million in cash.

Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy. The takeover is slated to be completed in the second half of the year, with Whole Foods’ headquarters remaining in Austin, Texas.

BigBasket acquires Delyver

Founded in December 2011, BigBasket is an online grocery store. BigBasket has acquired logistics startup Delyver in a cash and stock transaction to bolster its capacity to deliver fast and compete with agile players in the segment like Grofers, PepperTap and LocalBanya. BigBasket will employ Delyver orders in 90 minutes.

BigBasket is likely to leverage Delyver expertise in hyper local delivery to roll out one hour delivery services in the six cities in which it is present i.e. Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Pune, and Mumbai. It was a cash and stock deal with 50% of the amount being paid in cash. Delyver will continue to operate as a separate business while Big Basket will deploy its fleet of two-wheelers to facilitate timely delivery.

Delyver will scale to the 50 cities as and when Big Basket enters a new market. Delyver specializes in delivering orders within one hour from stores across categories such as food, vegetables and flowers. It will continue with its existing categories instead of restricting itself to just groceries. The hyper local avenue is witnessing a surge of innovations as more and more players are entering the field.

With technology snowballing or advancing to higher levels, the scope for these players is rendered wide open; the potential of this segment is estimated to be so high that even the big fish in the market have registered themselves to compete. While Amazon India has already made an entry into the Indian market with its Kirana Now, Ola has started its pilot project to deliver groceries.