From Goliath to Upstart: BigBasket & the Race it Refuses to Run

He knows what happens when businesses grow too fast. Thanks to his muscle memory.

Long before quick commerce became a race of minutes, discounts and capital, BigBasket had already fought its way through a slower, harder version of the same problem—how to build an online grocery business where margins are thin, customers are fickle, and scale can break you as easily as it can build you.

Back then, the game rewarded patience. Today, it rewards speed.

And that is where Vipul Parekh, cofounder of BigBasket, finds himself—an operator shaped by one era but competing in another.

If you were to map this to sport, the contrast is almost unfair. Think of Sachin Tendulkar at his peak. Balance, timing, control. Every shot measured. Every risk calculated.

Now think of the new wave. Players who walk in, swing hard, clear the ropes, and move on. High strike rates. No baggage. No hesitation. That is what quick commerce feels like today.

On one side, players like Zepto—young, aggressive, willing to spend, willing to lose, willing to push the game faster than it has ever been played.

On the other, someone like Parekh. He is not resisting the game but not playing it the same way either. Why? Because he sees something most others don’t. There are two risks, not one.

He explains his dilemma. In this market, the obvious fear is irrelevance. Don’t spend enough, don’t scale fast enough, don’t build salience—and you disappear. Quietly. Customers don’t complain. They just move on. “If you do not build enough salience,” he says, “you may become irrelevant.” It’s a real risk. One the new players are optimising hard against.

But there is another risk. It’s less visible and far more dangerous. Spend too much, and the business starts feeding on itself. Discounts become habit. Customer acquisition becomes dependency. Growth becomes something you have to buy, not build.

“You build a machine which feeds on cash burn,” he says. “And then it’s like riding a tiger. You can’t get off.”

That line isn’t metaphor. It’s diagnosis. Because once you are on that path, there is no clean exit. Slow down, and growth collapses. Pull back, and customers leave. Fix pricing, and demand drops. The business keeps running—but only as long as you keep feeding it. That’s one side of the trap.

The other is scale itself. In retail, size does not protect you. It exposes you.

Parekh has seen large organisations disappear with barely a ripple. Remember Future? Customers don’t remember. The market doesn’t pause. “It’s like a tree,” he says. “The branches disappear overnight.”

Or worse—the elephant problem. The bigger you are, the harder you fall. And in retail, a fall is rarely recoverable. Inventory builds quietly. Margins thin gradually. Nothing looks broken—until everything does. “Everything looks good until it looks good,” he says.

It sounds like a slip. But it isn’t. This is how retail fails. It doesn’t happen suddenly. But with just enough momentum to hide the cracks—until growth slows and the machine underneath is exposed. And by then, it’s too late.

This is the lens Parekh brings into a market that is currently optimised for the exact opposite. Speed over structure. Growth over control. And capital over discipline.

And to be clear—he is not blind to what’s happening. He sees the shift. Consumers are changing faster than businesses can keep up. What was once convenience is now expectation. What was once optional is now utility.

“Remove quick commerce,” he says, “and customers will scream. It’s like electricity, Wi-Fi, mobile phones.”

Even his own behaviour has moved. “I checked when I last bought something on Amazon,” he says. “It’s been eight quarters. I haven’t bought anything.”

The implication is clear. This is a structural shift. Over time, quick commerce will not remain a category. It will absorb categories. Electronics. Pharma. General merchandise. Everything. “It will become e-commerce,” he says.

Parekh knows where this is going. The question is how to get there. Because the current path—the one driven by capital, speed and aggressive expansion—is not the only path. It’s just the dominant one.

And that’s where Parekh diverges. Not by rejecting growth but by redefining what kind of growth is worth chasing. “I don’t think not spending is a virtue,” he says. “But overspending is always a problem.”

It’s a narrow line. Easy to miss but harder to hold. And in a market that rewards aggression in the short term, it can look like hesitation.

This brings us to the real tension. Parekh understands this game deeply. He understands how businesses scale. He understands how they fail. But the market he’s operating in today is not rewarding understanding. It’s rewarding speed. And that leaves one uncomfortable question hanging over everything he’s building. Is he playing the long game in a market that will eventually come around to him? Or is he playing the wrong game for the moment he’s in?

Before you hear him out, it helps to understand the backdrop. BigBasket is not operating from a position of comfort.

In FY25, its core B2C arm—Innovative Retail Concepts—reported operating revenue of ₹7,673 crore, down 2.7% from ₹7,885 crore a year earlier, according to Entrackr. Losses widened sharply to ₹1,850 crore from ₹1,267 crore, a 46% jump. The pressure is visible: higher spends on warehousing, logistics, discounting, and retention as the company pivots from scheduled grocery to quick commerce. Its B2B arm, Supermarket Grocery Supplies, also saw revenue dip 6.9% to ₹2,227 crore, though losses narrowed to ₹102 crore.

Now place that against the new guard.

Zepto clocked ₹11,110 crore in revenue in FY25—a 150% surge from ₹4,454 crore a year earlier. The company claims to have halved losses while scaling aggressively.

Two companies. Two playbooks. Two very different moments. That’s why a candid conversation with Parekh matters. He is not defending the past but he is not blindly chasing the present either. He is operating in the tension between the two—and that’s where the real answers lie. Edited excerpts:

Do you have enough war chest to take on aggressive players like Zepto and Blinkit who have raised thousands of crores?

That’s not the right question. The Tata Group doesn’t have a limit to how much capital it can raise. That’s not the constraint. The real question is—does this fit into Tata’s strategic vision? If it does, they will do whatever it takes to make it work.

What makes quick commerce strategically important for Tata?

If you look at the group, it has deep strength in consumer businesses—Tata Consumer Products, Trent, Tanishq, even airlines. They understand B2C very well. Tata Digital was created with the idea that this can become a very large business over the next decade. It’s not one company. It’s an ecosystem—BigBasket, Tata 1mg, Croma—all coming together to serve the same customer.

We’ve seen what happened with Dunzo despite backing. Does that change how you look at this space?

That was a different situation. They (Reliance) were not majority owners. When you don’t control the business, your decisions are different. When you own it, it’s a completely different equation.

So, what really decides whether a large group keeps backing a business?

It’s about whether they see it as a vehicle. Take Jio. Take Ajio. Huge investments. Long-term bets. They were clear these are strategic. If something fits that vision, they will keep backing it. If it doesn’t, they won’t.

This market--quick commerce--is often framed as OG versus Gen Z. Do you see it that way?

Fast forward ten years, Gen Z becomes OG. This is an industry where everyone learns by building. Everyone goes through cycles. Right now, everything looks the same because the market is expanding so fast. Customers can’t really tell the difference—and that’s fine. Nobody is spending time creating distinctiveness yet.

So, differentiation doesn’t matter today?

In a high-growth phase, you’re just trying to service demand. There’s so much market opening up that everybody is focused on keeping up with it. Distinctiveness comes later.

There’s a belief that quick commerce has no stickiness. Do you agree?

Customers are very promiscuous. Most use two or three apps. But there is love—for the service. It has become a utility. Like electricity or Wi-Fi. If you take it away, customers will scream.

What convinced you this shift is real?

Look at my behaviour. I checked when I last bought something on Amazon. It’s been eight quarters. I haven’t bought anything. That tells you something about where the customer is going.

How far does this go beyond grocery?

It will become e-commerce. Over time, categories will move—electronics, pharma, general merchandise. You’re not just solving grocery. You’re solving access.

Is this still a metro story?

No. That assumption is breaking. Customers do the math—travel, time, impulse buying. Quick commerce often works out better even if it looks slightly more expensive.

Food delivery struggled to scale deeply. Why is this different?

Food delivery is limited by behaviour. Eating habits don’t change that fast. Quick commerce moves the entire wallet. You keep adding categories. Revenue per customer grows.

Can quick commerce actually be profitable?

Yes. The model is simple—fixed costs like rent, variable costs like delivery. What matters is how much revenue you generate in a small radius. What distorts it is hyper-competition.

So, what’s breaking the model right now?

When everyone is chasing growth, pricing becomes irrational. There’s so much capital that people are deploying it to drive growth. The only metric becomes growth.

How would you describe what’s happening right now?

It’s like choosing between a Porsche and a Maruti. If I take a Porsche, I’ll reach three days earlier. That’s what companies are doing—investing upfront, building faster.

You’re clearly not playing that game. Why?

We are very clear—we are not in the discounting bucket. We are focused on profitable growth.

What does that mean in practice?

Control. We work directly with farmers. We control sourcing, quality, pricing. If you control the supply chain, you don’t need to burn money.

Everyone tracks orders. You don’t.

Orders don’t matter. A ₹100 order and a ₹500 order are very different businesses. Average order value matters.

How does being part of Tata change your approach?

We don’t need to own everything. We can access inventory—electronics through Croma, pharma through Tata 1mg. That reduces risk.

What has fundamentally changed in how you think?

The shift is from “why” to “why not.” Earlier it was ‘why would this work’? Now it is: why would it not? And how do we make it work?

Is your biggest challenge staying true to your playbook?

Very hard. There’s constant pressure—comparisons, expectations and everything. What helps is setting clear expectations—this is my pace, this is my goal, this is my unit economics. And then sticking to it.

You were once the Goliath of online grocery. Now you call yourself an upstart. What does that feel like?

It’s humbling. If you thought you were a Goliath, you probably never really thought that way. We haven’t lost revenue. We’re growing again. The downside is that we’re not number one. The upside, though, is that we adapted. In most businesses, when disruption hits, companies vanish. We didn’t.

Do you want to be number one again?

I have no aspiration to be number one. Except in profits. We are not going to chase market share. We will chase profitable growth.

What do most people misunderstand about this business?

Top line doesn’t matter. What matters is whether the business makes sense.