Online retail giant Amazon has signed a 60-day exclusivity agreement with online grocery startup BigBasket over a potential acquisition. Within this period BigBaskte can’t negotiate a sale offer with any other company. However, it doesn’t stop it startup from seeking investments.
Valued at $450 Mn in last round of funding, BigBasket wants a valuation of $700 Mn from this sale.
Reports suggest that BigBasket had mandated Morgan Stanley for a $150 million fund-raise, which was expected to close by April. But, it seems that the funding round is not going through, and thus, BigBasket went back to the table with Amazon and signed the exclusivity agreement.
Bangalore-headquartered BigBasket has raised nearly $250 million so far and registered an over-three-fold increase in revenue to Rs 563 crore for the financial year ended 31 March 2016. BigBasket has expanded its operations to over 30 cities from six last year and signed up Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan as brand ambassador. It is betting big on its private-label business and expects to become profitable by March 2018.
Amazon has proposed to invest $515 million over the next five years into India’s food-retailing sector. It currently already offers online delivery of groceries and daily essentials through its app Amazon Now and its online supermarket service Amazon Pantry.
