Scott P. Arroyo 
Tata Group-owned online grocery seller BigBasket has acquired the business unit of a high-tech company Agrima Infotech incubated by Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) with the aim of revolutionizing offline retail in the country, the company said on Saturday.
BigBasket, a Tata venture, will implement Kochi-based start-up Agrima Infotech’s unique customer insight technology platform, Psyight, to the vending machines of old-fashioned retail stores, he said in a statement.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition brings a lot of value to our company. BigBasket will use this expertise on AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to enrich and improve a whole bunch of technological innovations in the company. We look forward to working with the Agrima team to create solid innovation in the grocery industry, said Hari Menon, CEO of BigBasket.
The deal was announced on the sidelines of KSUM’s Huddle Global 2022.
Psyight, created by Anoop Balakrishnan, Arun Ravi and Nikhil Dharman under Agrima Infotech, helps identify all Indian fruits and vegetables uniquely from an image without using barcodes.
Describing the acquisition as a “milestone”, KSUM CEO John M Thomas said: “It not only reiterates the strength of our startup ecosystem, but also shows the great impression companies such as BigBasket have on our startups,” he noted. “I hope the agreement will encourage startups to move forward with strength in their attempt to grow their business.”
Agrima Infotech co-founder and CEO Anoop Balakrishnan said his startup teaming up with BigBasket would redefine the offline shopping experience in the country.
Recently, BigBasket opened its first tech-driven self-service retail store “Frestho” in Bangalore.
Bengaluru-based BigBasket investors include Helion Ventures, CDC, Bessemer Venture Partners and Mirae Asset Venture Investments in South Korea.
In May last year, Tata Sons subsidiary Tata Digital acquired a 64.3% stake in Supermarket Grocery Supplies (SGS), the parent company and business-to-business (B2B) operator of Bigbasket, offering exits to at least two top institutional backers, including Alibaba. Group and Actis LLP.
KSUM is the nodal agency of the Government of Kerala for entrepreneurship development and incubation activities in the state.
Agrima co-founder and COO Arun Ravi said detecting raw foods such as fruits and vegetables from an image alone is a complex machine vision problem because the appearance of these items may vary depending on their place of origin and the seasons. “We captured thousands of images of each SKU (stock keeping unit) across seasons and from different locations to achieve one hundred percent accuracy,” he added.
BigBasket, which competes with giants Flipkart and Amazon, plans to open 200 brick-and-mortar outlets across the country by fiscal year 2023. It aims to increase that number to 800 stores by 2026.
