BigBasket to cut footprint from 76 to 40 cities
Tata-owned BigBasket will pull back from 76 cities to around 40 profitable ones as new CEO Amit Nanda takes on a hard profitability mandate.
- BigBasket plans to nearly halve its footprint to around 40 profitable cities under new CEO Amit Nanda, per Inc42 citing ET
- The FY25 loss widened 42 percent to Rs 2,006.8 Cr while revenue slipped 2 percent, and Noel Tata reportedly pulled the company up over cash burn
- Brands should get the retained city list and reallocate inventory and ad budgets before festive planning
Inc42, citing an Economic Times report, says Tata-owned BigBasket plans to nearly halve its footprint, pulling back from 76 cities to around 40 profitable ones. The retreat comes with a new mandate for incoming CEO Amit Nanda, a former Amazon India executive, after Tata Sons chairman Noel Tata reportedly pulled the company up over high cash burn and mounting losses.
The numbers behind the retreat
Per the report, BigBasket runs about 700 dark stores and handles 5 to 6 lakh orders a day. Blinkit does roughly 30 lakh daily orders from 2,243 stores, Zepto around 24 to 25 lakh from 1,139, and Instamart about 12.5 lakh. BigBasket’s FY25 loss widened 42 percent to Rs 2,006.8 Cr while operating revenue slipped 2 percent to Rs 9,866.7 Cr. Founder Hari Menon has acknowledged the company underestimated quick commerce when the segment took off. Scale did not follow the store count, so the store count is being cut.
Density beats coverage
The plan concentrates BigBasket in larger cities where population density is higher. That is the correct read of this market. Quick commerce economics reward clusters of busy stores, not thin national coverage. A 40-city BigBasket with healthier order volumes per store is a more useful shelf for brands than a 76-city network that quietly under-serves half its map. Expect the exits to hand tier 2 demand to Blinkit, Zepto, Instamart, Flipkart Minutes and Amazon Now, all of which are expanding into exactly the towns BigBasket is leaving.
What an operator does with this
Audit your city-level sales on BigBasket now and ask your account team for the retained city list before festive planning locks. Reallocate inventory and ad budgets from exiting cities to the platforms that stay, and treat the surviving 40 cities as a denser, better-converting BigBasket where share of shelf is worth defending. Distribution maps in quick commerce are being redrawn every quarter, so build this review into your channel cadence rather than treating it as a one-off scramble.
Zane’s analysis draws on original reporting by Inc42. Read the original report.