BigBasket set to launch one-hour delivery; Zomato’s 10-min plan ruffles feathers

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Quick commerce is all the rage these days, with companies competing to deliver groceries and other goods in as little as 10 minutes. But with such tight deadlines, these firms typically offer more than 4,000 different products. Now, BigBasket is set to launch BB Express, which looks to strike a balance by offering one-hour delivery but twice as many products.

Also in this letter:
■ Zomato's 10-minute food delivery plan ruffles feathers
■ BSE seeks info from Paytm on share price freefall
■ Prices of electric vehicles are set to jump 6-8%

Amid 10-min rush, BigBasket set to launch one-hour delivery with more products

BigBasket cofounder and chief executive Hari Menon

Amid the buzz around 10-minute grocery delivery, Tata-owned egrocer BigBasket is set to unveil its one-hour delivery service, BB Express, with 7,500-8,000 products on offer.

Typically, 10- to 20-minute delivery services can offer only about 4,000 products as they prioritise speed over selection.

The service will be launched next month and will be powered by the company's 62 dark stores, cofounder and chief executive Hari Menon told us.

Multi-model approach: The new service will continue BigBasket's multi-model approach to meeting customers' needs. BigBasket also has a 20-minute delivery service, BB Now, with around 3,000 products, as the race for ultra-fast grocery delivery heats up among players like Zepto, Zomato-backed Blinkit, Swiggy's Instamart and Reliance-backed Dunzo.

Yes, but: Menon said while he was bullish on one-hour delivery, and the 20-minute delivery service was expanding, 80% of the company's gross sales would still come from planned grocery purchases through its core model, one which it offers same-day delivery for most products.

BB Now's average order size is Rs 450. BB Express, Menon expects this to be around Rs 700-800. BigBasket's average order size is around Rs 1,300-1,400.

Offline push: The company has also started setting up franchise-format stores as part of its 'assisted shopping' model, in which it takes up about 200 sq ft of space in select towns where consumers can pick up their products after placing an order on the app, Menon said. The stores will have the Tata-BigBasket branding. It has set up 80 such stores in Andhra Pradesh already and plans to take the total to 1,500 this year.

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Zomato's 10-minute food delivery plan ruffles feathers

Zomato's plan to offer 10-minute food delivery has come in for criticism from consumers and restaurant owners, who took to social media to vent, prompting restaurant aggregator's founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal to tweet a series of clarifications on Tuesday.

What they said: Many restaurant executives told us they won't be able to offer fresh food in 10 minutes even as Goyal clarified on Twitter that the initiative would be for "popular and standardised items only" in nearby locations.

"It seems challenging in spite of having a very limited menu in the finishing stations (where Zomato plans to keep 25-30 top-selling items in a given locality) and robotics," said Rohit Aggarwal, director at Lite Bite Foods, which that runs chains such as Punjab Grill, Street Foods of India, Tres, YouMee and Zambar. "We feel customers should be served fresh food; we don't think customers are in such a tearing rush," he said.

Some restaurateurs said the model may not be sustainable.

Goyal's defence: Amid huge scepticism on social media about freshness of food and safety of their delivery fleet, Goyal, in a series of tweets, said 10-minute deliveries would be done in "deep collaboration" with restaurants.

He said quality, hygiene and delivery partners' safety would not be compromised and that the company would not penalise delivery partners for late deliveries.

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BSE seeks info from Paytm on share price freefall

The BSE has sought a clarification from Paytm on the steady slide in its stock price over the past few days. Paytm's stock had taken a severe beating last week after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) banned Paytm Payments Bank from adding new users. The stock continued its slide on Tuesday, closing nearly 4% down at Rs 543.90 on BSE.

This is an all-time low for the company's stock price. Paytm's issue price was Rs 2,150 when it listed on the bourses last November.

"The Exchange has sought clarification from One97 Communications Ltd (Paytm's parent firm) on March 22, 2022 with reference to significant movement in price, in order to ensure that investors have latest relevant information about the company and to inform the market so that the interest of the investors is safeguarded," BSE said in a note on Tuesday evening.

BSE typically seeks a clarification when a stock loses significant value, and Paytm shares are now trading around 74% lower than its issue price. Last week, the RBI banned Paytm Payments bank from onboarding new users over failures in compliance and mandated an IT audit. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma owns 51% of Paytm Payments Bank while One97 Communications owns the rest.

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Prices of electric vehicles are set to jump 6-8%

India's electric vehicle makers are planning a major price hike across models on the back of rising input and component costs of EVs.

Details: Two-, three- and four-wheeler EV manufacturers are under severe pressure to increase prices, industry experts said, and there could be a 6-8% price hike across the board starting next month.

Some companies including Tata Motors and Ather Energy have already increased prices, while several others such as Hero Electric and Kinetic Green Energy are planning to hike prices soon.

From March to June, global cell prices will increase by 20-30%, said Anand Kabra, vice chairman and managing director of Battrixx, a supplier of battery packs for two-wheelers.

Why? "There is a sharp increase in upstream raw material prices. The affordability gains realised in the past few years, and rising prices of nickel, lithium and other materials have been impacted by the Russia-Ukraine situation. It is expected that average EV battery prices will be 5% higher than last year," said Ravi Bhatia, president of Jato Dynamics, a global supplier of automotive business intelligence.

Russia supplies about 20% of the world's nickel, a critical element in EV batteries, which account for nearly 50% of the total cost of EVs.

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OfBusiness lending arm Oxyzo turns unicorn with maiden external funding

Oxyzo chief executive Ruchi Kalra

Oxyzo Financial Services, the lending arm of SoftBank-backed OfBusiness, has raised $200 million in its first external funding. With a valuation of $1 billion after the funding, Oxyzo is the latest addition to India's growing list of unicorns.

Indian startup unicorns in 2022_22_MAR_Graphic_ETTECH (1)

The round was co-led by Alpha Wave Global and Tiger Global with participation from Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and Creation Investments, Oxyzo chief executive Ruchi Kalra told us.

New Delhi-based OfBusiness was valued at nearly $5 billion last December after raising $325 million. Oxyzo has since been carved out of the group and has now raised external capital.

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Other Done Deals

■ Enterprise software firm Locofy.ai has secured $3 million in a funding round from Accel, January Capital, Golden Gate Ventures and Boldcap. The company will use the funds to scale its engineering and data science teams.

■ Decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol firm Struct Finance on Tuesday announced it has raised $3.9 million from Antler, Arcanum Capital, Asymmetries Technologies and Avalaunch, among others. It plans to use the funds to build tools that would allow institutions to easily customise their interest rate products.

■ Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Zocket has raised $3 million in a funding round led by Kalaari Capital. The funding round also saw participation from an early-stage investor, Kettleborough Venture Capital, and angel investor Jasminder Singh Gulati, founder of NowFloats. Zocket plans to use the funds to launch a full-fledged adtech solution for small and medium businesses.

■ Chennai-based travel startup Pickyourtrail has raised an undisclosed amount from a group of investors including Cred founder Kunal Shah, Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham, and GoFrugal founder and CEO Kumar Vembu.

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