In its first year, Hari Menon's first online store did not make a single sale.
He has said so himself. Fabmart started in 1999 as a general store on the internet, long before India had many people online. Menon told a podcast that it was simply too early. People were afraid to type their bank details into a website. Zero transactions, in the first year.
What almost nobody sees is how long the same small group of people stayed together.
The obvious move was to quit. The team, he said, decided to stay on and run it at a lower scale. Fabmart sold music first, then books, toys and jewellery, and early in 2000 started selling groceries in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad.
None of that is in the usual BigBasket origin story, which jumps to 2011. But it is where the product came from.
What almost nobody sees is how long the same small group of people stayed together. V S Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh, Hari Menon and V S Ramesh had worked together on the earlier ventures. A 2012 report notes that the team behind Fabmart reunited to launch an e-grocery business. They were joined by Abhinay Choudhari. The headline of a 2022 YourStory podcast says Menon started BigBasket at about 50, an age at which many founders are advised to stop.
The company took shape in Bengaluru with an initial $10 million from Ascent Capital. By 2016 it was India's biggest e-grocer in eight cities. In 2019 it became a unicorn. In 2021 Tata Digital bought 64 percent at about a $1.85 billion valuation, and in January 2023 a $200 million round valued it at $3.2 billion.
The price came later. In October 2020 a data breach reportedly exposed data of more than 20 million users. Quick-commerce rivals arrived with 10-minute promises, and BigBasket answered with its own pilot in 2025. In FY24 revenue was about Rs 10,100 crore with a net loss of Rs 1,415 crore. Menon has since stepped down as CEO, though he remains on the board with Parekh.
A founder in a hurry should note how long the first idea took to find its market. The sale that never came in 1999 was not the end of the story. It was the first draft of a business that needed the world to catch up.