Bangalore-based online grocery retailer BigBasket will be tying up with around 1,800 grocery stores to sell its private label products at their offline stores, reports Livemint. This will include products like staples, fruits, meat, vegetables and bread which it sells under the brand names Royal, Popular and Fresho. BigBasket mentions it will also launch another private label, a coffee brand, sometime next week, and eventually venture into flavored tea and cookies. Additionally, the platform is looking to expand to 50 new locations within a year. These locations will be clustered in groups of 5-6 cities, which will then be served by six central locations. The company mentions that products will be transported everyday from central locations to cities in these clusters. Interestingly, the company mentions its private labels currently account for around 35% of its revenues. Online to offline trend: Online healthcare and fitness store HealthKart launched its second offline store in Chandigarh in August 2013. Similarly, online baby-care products retailer Firstcry.com had announced its plans to increase its number of offline franchise stores to 100 by setting up 30 new stores by end of 2014, while Meritnation had said it would launch 6 new offline digital learning centres starting with Chandigarh and Lucknow. Note that, at launch of its offline store, HealthKart had said that offline stores were being set up as an experiment in order to increase brand awareness among consumers using offline channels. Similarly, this move makes sense for BigBasket, as it will help it establishing its…
