Tata in advanced stages of talks to buy online grocery retailer BigBasket : Report

The deal will value India's largest online grocery retailer at $1.6 billion, reports further said while a Mint report informed that Chinese giant Alibaba is likely to sell its entire stake to Tata group.

Tata will buy new shares of about 20-30% of BigBasket and 50% to 60% of the shares from existing investors, including Alibaba.

The deal is likely to be announced in the next few weeks, the Mint report stated.

“The main objective of the Tata group is to win a large market share in one shot. BigBasket can make that possible, and the deal will also help the Tata group in conceptualizing its proposed ‘Super App’ by adding a wide range of household items and grocery products from BigBasket," the Mint quoted a source as saying.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are advisers to BigBasket, the report stated.

In the year ended March 31 last, BigBasket had registered a loss of Rs 920 crore on sales of Rs 5,200 crore. It was valued at $1.23 billion in March.

However, BigBasket's valuation is likely to have increased in value in the subsequent months as the online retail market has grown with more and more people willing to buy their grocery online.

BigBasket's gross merchandise value (GMV) has also increased to $1 billion.

“We have acquired three times new customers by value, three times by the number of orders and 2.6 times by the number of members as compared to pre-covid," BigBasket founder Hari Menon said on 16 October.