At a time when online grocers are trying to fulfil the sudden surge in orders due to the pandemic coronavirus, Indian e-grocery company Bigbasket is adding two new items to its shopping cart. The Bengaluru-based company is reportedly in an advanced talks to acquire two milk delivery startups Milkbasket and DailyNinja.
“The talks are in an advanced stage with Milkbasket but its enterprise value would be significantly less than USD 15 million,” a person aware of the developments told local media Times of India (TOI).
Bigbasket already delivers bread, milk, and other dairy products including daily essentials through its brand BB Daily and clocked 140,000 orders daily in October last year according to the above mentioned report. In contrast, Gurugram-based Milkbasket, which is seeing a rise in order numbers due to COVID-19, is clocking 40,000 to 50,000 orders daily these days.
The DailyNinja acquisition, according to TOI is almost done as their selected teams have begun working out of Bigbasket office. Backed by Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners India, DailyNinja would work under BB Daily brand and their founders would join the Bigbasket team.
In the recent past, companies have realized the importance of getting into the business of delivering milk, vegetables, and other everyday essential products due to high repeat orders. Owing to this, apart from young companies, the milk delivery vertical in India has gained interest from bigger players as well. Companies such as food delivery major Swiggy, Amazon India, and Walmart-owned Flipkart have ventured into delivering such products.
In 2018, Swiggy acquired Mumbai-based milk delivery startup Supr for USD 100 million. Similarly, Alibaba-backed Bigbasket, which until 2018 was only delivering grocery products, acquired Pune-based RainCan and Bengaluru-based MorningCart to enter this segment.
With bigger players spending heavily to gain traction in milk and daily essentials delivery, the industry is seeing consolidation as young companies are either shutting down or being gobbled up by much-established peers. Bengaluru-based Doodhwala shut operations last year and migrated its customers to FreshToHome.
