At a time when more and more businesses are exploring ways to enter the e-commerce space, where competition is already intense, online grocery platform Bigbasket today announced the launch of a software-as-a-service-based supply chain platform, BB Matrix to help new and existing e-commerce firms manage their supply chains and operations.
With the new vertical, Bigbasket plans to offer three SaaS products—a warehouse management system, a transportation management system and an order management system, a senior executive of the company told Mint.
The company plans to acquire customers both in India and abroad, right from the start.
“We’ve taken all the supply chain innovation, product and technology that we have built over the last 12-13 years and packaged it as a SaaS product that we are calling BBMatrix and taking it to the market for prospective customers to help them optimise their supply chains, their operations,” Rakshit Daga, chief product and technology officer of Bigbasket told Mint.
Daga will be leading the BB Matrix vertical for the company.
Getting legacy brands future ready
BB Matrix plans to help businesses—that are running legacy systems to manage their operations and supply chains—enter the e-commerce race.
“… (Such companies) are not necessarily capable of addressing the modern way of doing business and it’s hard to get an older system to actually accommodate the needs to build a quick commerce supply chain, which is the flavour of the season,” Daga said.
The company plans to target mid-to-large-stage companies within the omnichannel retail industry, automotive manufacturing and manufacturing in general.
“Some of our early, deep conversations or pilots have been in the area of automotive manufacturing, electronics manufacturing, electronics retail,” Daga explained.
While the BB Matrix platform is already live and has a full-scale production customer on board, with which BB Matrix is running a pilot, the company expects to on board new customers in the high single digits within this year.
More competition means more business
Bigbasket, an e-commerce company founded in 2011 that runs brands like quick-commerce service BB Now and subscription-based service BB Daily, among others, was acquired by Tata-group owned Tata Digital in May 2021.
Despite its acquisition, Bigbasket continues to operate as an independent entity within the diversified conglomerate.
In terms of financials, the company improved its total revenue to ₹9,499.3 crore in FY23, from ₹8,556 crore in the year before that, but its total losses widened to ₹1,785.4 crore in FY23, from a loss of ₹1,040.7 crore rupees in FY22.
Moreover, with competition in the e-commerce and quick-commerce space only getting more intense, Bigbasket’s new business vertical has the potential to birth new challengers in the space, and further increase competition.
When asked about it, Daga said, “We definitely believe that the market is big enough. There are multiple industries which could benefit from the supply chain revolution. We are focused on a specific part of that market”.
“There might be situations where potential customers are in direct competition and I think we’ll evaluate that on a case-by-case basis,” he added.
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