BigBasket finally started to sell offline. According to an internal corporate email, the online grocer established its first physical store in Bengaluru earlier this week under the brand name Fresho. The grocery startup has been using the brand ‘Fresho’ for its private label products in the online store.
Surprisingly, the ‘Fresho’ brand has not always gone the discount path, frequently selling at a premium to established brands by using alternate avenues such as organic produce or premium ingredients.
BigBasket co-founder VS Sudhakar told all company employees that the store in Bengaluru’s Basaveshwar Nagar has been open to customers since October 25.
Sudhakar said in the email that opening the store is a “extremely critical, strategic initiative.” The store is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. The email also included images of the store. However, no BigBasket or Fresho signage has yet been installed at the store.
“Since this is running on a pretty new tech stack with some very interesting features like self-weighing and check out, farmer traceability etc and our first customer walkin interaction, we wanted to be cautious about opening it out to too many customers too soon,” Sudhakar wrote in the email. “Hence we have not even put up the signage on the Store”.
Sudhakar’s email also claimed that, even without the signage, the store has had over 100 walk-ins and approximately 80 orders each day since opening.
