The Chinese ecommerce major Alibaba has reportedly joined investee Paytm Mall in their talks to pick up a stake in the online grocery retail startup, BigBasket. The Economic Times reported the online grocer is also holding talks with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings and China’s Fosun Group along with Alibaba.
Paytm Mall, according to media reports, was also in talks with BigBasket for buying a minority stake by investing about $ 200 million in the homegrown startup. Alibaba Group Holdings have a majority ownership of the digital payment platform Paytm’s ecommerce arm.
According to Economic Times, Alibaba and Paytm plan to invest $ 200 million in BigBasket at a post investment valuation of nearly $ 900 million. They have also started the due diligence for this potential investment. Kinzon Capital which is the venture capital arm of Fosun is in discussions with BigBasket to join the ongoing funding round with an investment of about $ 20 – $ 30 million.
It is unclear if the Singapore based wealth fund, Temasek will join this round of funding or if they will directly invest in BigBasket later. Economic Times also reported, an associate on behalf of Temasek said, “As matter of policy, we do not comment on market speculation and rumours,” in response to their queries.
BigBasket was also reportedly in talks with Amazon for a sellout which fell through due to differences over valuation. The global ecommerce giant recently also got the government’s approval to invest $ 500 million in the food retail sector. Ecommerce rival Alibaba has also been doubling down on grocery and physical retail investments globally. They recently acquired the Singapore based online grocer RedMart and have invested $ 305 million in offline discount supermarket chain Sanjiang Shopping Club in China.
Hari Menon, Abhinay Choudhari, V.S. Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh and V.S. Ramesh founded the online grocery retail startup in 2011. Investment bank Morgan Stanley is advising BigBasket in these talks.
