Focus is shifting to profitability without compromising growth

After completing its pivot from scheduled delivery to quick commerce with 900 dark stores across 40 cities, Tata Digitalowned BigBasket is now setting its sights on achieving contribution margin positivity by the end of 2026, while aiming for 50-60% revenue growth.

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Vipul Parekh, co-founder and CMO, BigBasket, speaks with Anees Hussain about the company's strategic positioning and plans for the year ahead. Excerpts:

Where do you stand on dark store infrastructure?

We have 900 dark stores, around 5,300 square feet each. About 65-70% are in top 10 tier-1 cities, rest are across 40 tier-2 cities. These serve a 2-km radius, with 8085% orders from within 11.5 km, enabling 10-12 minute delivery. We've consciously chosen larger format stores to accommodate more and different kinds of SKUs. The average customer search now begins from quick commerce. Earlier discovery began on Google, then shifted to Amazon or Flipkart. Products customers want quickly have expanded dramatically-from groceries to phones, electronics, festival items, gold coins, etc. The real bottleneck is supply, not demand. Our mid-sized stores deliver more SKUs in a single 10-minute order at lower cost versus splitting pickups between large warehouses and mini dark stores.

What are your expansion plans?