BigBasket has acquired RainCan, a Pune-based grocery subscription delivery service for an undisclosed amount. This development was first reported by Entrackr, citing a notification RainCan sent to its users. RainCan will be renamed BBdaily, according to the report.
A RainCan employee confirmed the acquisition to MediaNama, and said that the whole team would join BigBasket. As of now, RainCan has two projects: subscription based services which RainCan currently offers, and the another called ‘Instant delivery’ which is yet to be launched. RainCan users’ subscriptions and account balance would remain intact, the service would remain the same except for the renaming to BBdaily, the employee said.
We’ve reached out to BigBasket for comment as well, and will update this when we hear from them.
While there is no notification of the acquisition on the RainCan website, the website has become slightly unresponsive, and one can see that its developer has been renamed to BigBasket on the Google Play Store. As of now, the Android app has 50,000 installs. RainCan also seems to have an inbuilt wallet.
Also read: Grofers has partnered with — wait for it — Eros Now
According to a YourStory report from 2015, users could order groceries, fruits and vegetables from the app through the website, phone call or WhatsApp. The company would source the items from the distributor early morning and then deliver using its own resources. In the same year, the company raised $100,000 in seed funding from angel investor Ajeet Khurana and other unnamed individuals. RainCan was founded by Munendra Singh and Abhijeet Kumar in 2015.
BigBasket funding
BigBasket last raised $300 million from the Alibaba Group and other investors in February this year. It said then that it would use the funding to improve its technology, analytics and infrastructure. Competitor Grofers raised $61.6 million from Tiger Global and Softbank in March.
Hyperlocal grocery delivery is a crowded space with everybody wanting a share of the pie.
- In August, Flipkart launched its long awaited online grocery service called Supermart in Bangalore, with plans to expand to 5 – 6 (unnamed) major cities by the end of 2018.
- In July, Grofers forayed into the FMCG segment with the launch of seven new brands under two categories – Budget and Popular G-Brands.
- In June, Amazon India rebranded its app-only grocery service to Prime Now from Amazon Now. Amazon India added 15 new Fulfillment Centres for its grocery delivery service to its existing 41 Fulfillment Centres; Amazon also bought a stake in offline supermarket More.
- In the same month, Future Group was planning to start hyperlocal grocery delivery by end of June.
- In April, Food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy was reportedly diversifying its hyperlocal delivery segment by adding groceries and medicines through a service called Dash.
