Indian online supermarket Big Basket becomes this year’s second startup to join the prestigious Unicorn group. The Hari Menon co-founded Indian startup raised about $150 in the latest funding round led by its new investors new investors, South Korea’s Mirae Asset and UK’s CDC Group along with its long time investor Alibaba.
Big Basket was valued at over 1.2 billion in the latest funding round, thus entering the prestigious unicorn group.
The Board approved the funding of $50 million from its largest shareholder-Alibaba, $59.9 million from Mirae Asset, and $40 million from UK government-owned CDC Group. The company said the fresh funding will be used by startup for its future expansion plan.
This new funding will empower the startup to expand its business to new cities and introduce new services like micro-deliveries. Also, it will enable it to maintain its market leader position into an vigorously booming online supermarket, amid fierce competition by rivals like Amazon, Flipkart and Grofers all of which are aggressively trying to expand their presence in the online grocery market.
Alibaba has before this has invested about $300 million in Big Basket and owns 24% stake in the online grocery market. While others like Ascent capital and Abraaj Group own 15.5% and 16.2% respectively. Now, with the fresh investments, Alibaba’s stake will swell up to 26.26% and Mirae Asset will own a 5.31% stake and CDC Group a 3.54% stake in the Big Basket. The promoters own about 11% stake in the startup.