Indian online grocery major Bigbasket announced its foray into offline retail with the opening of a new tech-driven self-service “Fresho” store in Bangalore on Wednesday.
The physical store is part of the company’s vision to open 200 physical outlets across India by 2023 and 800 by 2026, BigBasket said in a statement. Offline stores will offer high-quality products at extremely competitive prices, he added.
The recently opened Fresho store in Basaveshwar Nagar in Bengaluru was inaugurated by three farmers, who are part of Bigbasket’s Farmer Connect program.
Bigbasket – a Tata company, has taken a channel-neutral approach to connecting with customers, according to the statement. With Fresho stores, customers can hand-pick fresh fruits and vegetables as well as basic necessities like bread and eggs, he added.
To access the company’s full range of over 50,000 products, they will place orders online and pick them up at Fresho Stores at their convenience.
“Bigbasket has always strived to take a customer-centric approach. This is where Fresho stores will change the game by making buying fruits, vegetables and groceries as seamless as cash transactions at ATMs. The stores will provide access to the next 500 million customers who have not yet started shopping for groceries online and create a significant new growth opportunity for Bigbasket,” said Bigbasket Co-Founder and CEO Hari Menon.
He added that the company’s extensive “Farmer Connect” program will be used to supply products to stores. Under this program, Bigbasket has partnered with more than 30,000 farmers across the country to source fruits and vegetables directly.
“There is full traceability for all fresh produce integrated into our supply chain, allowing us to communicate farmer details to our customers for each product,” he said.
Fresho stores merge the best of technology, such as “self-checking counters” integrated with video AI tools that allow customers to choose the items they want and weigh them at the counter through automatic computer vision which can identify items and generate invoices accordingly. It brings a seamless and convenient shopping experience for shoppers in the store.
Bigbasket offers online grocery retail services in 40 Indian cities and serves 12 million customer orders per month. In 2020, Bigbasket passed the $1 billion mark in annual revenue.
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