Earlier people used to carry grocery lists and visit local stores. Now you get groceries  delivered at your home within 10 minutes just by ordering it from Blinkit Instamart or any quick commerce apps.  BigBasket saw a major boom during the COVID-19 pandemic. However it was started 26 years ago. In 1999 when nobody imagined buying groceries from the internet Hari Menon and his friends laid the foundation of India’s first e-commerce grocery platform. Hari Menon’s Start Hari Menon along with his four friends started India’s first e-commerce venture called Fabmart. However this startup failed and couldnt gain traction. They shifted to offline retail with Fabmall which expanded across Andhra Pradesh Tamil Nadu Karnataka and Kerala growing to 200 stores. By 2006 Fabmall became India’s largest retail chain. Eventually Aditya Birla Group acquired it and rebranded it as More Store. Founding BigBasket Hari Menon realized that the future belonged to online commerce. After the Aditya Birla deal he and his team returned to online business and launched BigBasket in 2011. They thought that e-commerce couldn’t succeed in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector and revolutionized the industry. Hari Menon and his four co-founders V.S. Sudhakar Vipul Parekh V.S. Ramesh and Abhinay Choudhari took a difficult path. Each morning at 3:30 AM they started visiting vegetable markets and purchased fresh produce and dairy and delivered orders themselves. Initially BigBasket only sold fruits and vegetables and operated only in Bengaluru. However within a year in February 2012 they secured Rs 61 crore in funding which led their expansion. BigBasket Online Grocery As demand grew BigBasket expanded beyond Bengaluru. In 2014 they signed Shah Rukh Khan as their brand ambassador. By 2016 they introduced 60-minute express delivery which gave them market dominance. In July 2017 BigBasket did Rs 1000 crore in sales with over 5 million customers. By March 2019 the company raised $150 million in funding and became a unicorn. Investors were Alibaba and CDS Group. Tata Group Deal By 2019 major corporations saw the potential in online grocery and quick commerce. Recognizing its value the Tata Group acquired a 64% stake in BigBasket for $200 million making Tata Digital the largest shareholder. BigBasket is competing with other quick commerce business like Zomato Blinkit or Swiggys Instamart.