Assignment 1

KEY LEARNINGS FROM ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY OF HARI MENON

Hari Menon – Founder of BigBasket
Name: Arghadeep Saha PRN: 20020841009 Section: A

Brief Introduction:
Hari Menon was born in 1996 in Bandra West, Mumbai into a
middle-class family. He is married to ‘Shanti Menon’, daughter of
‘E Shreedharan’, the man behind the Delhi Metro. His wife, Shanti
was a principal of Bangalore-based “The Deen’s Academy”. Hari is
the CEO and Co-Founder of BigBasket, India’s largest supermarket.
He is also a Founder of Symphony Industrial AI.
Before finding Big Basket, he served as the CEO for various
companies including Tumri, Serus Corporation, and Timeli.
He completed his graduation from Birla Institute of Technology
and Science, Pilani. He holds an MBA (Master of Business
Administration) degree from Carnegie Mellon University. Hari
Menon had started his career as a Business Head with ‘Wipro’ an Indian multinational corporation that
provides consulting, information technology, and business process services.
He was fond of music and an avid cricket fan, he considered himself a Music enthusiast. Hari is a member
of the ‘Karnataka Cricket Association’.
Menon, identified as India’s one of the most influential entrepreneurs, have started from the scratch. This
article maps his life and major events to my learnings in Entrepreneurship Course.

Entrepreneurship Behaviour
Entrepreneurial behaviour is a preference for innovation and a change in existing institutions and the
status quo. It can be as simple as the willingness to buy a new electronic gadget or as involved as rebelling
against the existing political regime and starting a new nation.
We can identify the below 3 behaviours as key characteristics of any successful businessperson:
- Management of innovation
Hari Menon had a vast domain of ideas and business when compared to other such start-ups.
Today, the online grocery store has happy customers because they did not hurry to expand it
horizontally.
- In an environment of incomplete information
Menon while launching both Fabmart and BigBasket was venturing in completely unknown waters.
Indian mentality of buying groceries and veggies is by trying and testing the products with their
hands and then buying. Delivering the same products online also with the cost paid prior to delivery
was a humongous challenge to overcome.
- Involving exposure to extraordinary risk
The first six months of BigBasket were the most challenging ones. The biggest challenge for him was
to maintain a building capacity to meet customer demand.
Since Hari Menon had already faced the heat once with Fabmall and Fabmart, the pressure was
even more. He successfully pulled this off and was able to grab a growth of 30-35 % in their
customers Month-on-Month demands.

Entrepreneurship Skills:
Along with Entrepreneurial behaviour another major factor is the skillset possessed. We classify
Entrepreneurship Skills in 3 major categories, namely, Personal Entrepreneurship Skills, Technical Skills,
Business Management Skills. Below are some examples of how Hari Menon has displayed these skills
during his stint with BigBasket.

Business Management Skills

Planning
BigBasket is not only a dream of entrepreneurs but is a well-planned out business that primarily targeted
for the larger cities. During the first year of his online platform, there were no transactions but only noise,
as it could not generate enough revenue.
There were many reasons for this, such as in India; the conditions were unfavourable for any online
venture, no secure digital payment gateway and many more.
Decision making
The setback of Fabmart was not enough to stop Hari Menon and other co-founders; they decided to focus
on physical retail chain of a grocery store.
They launched Fabmall, India’s pioneering e-commerce company and a physical version of Fabmart. Now,
this idea clicked very well.
Fabmall was India’s first integrated online-to-offline retail company. They also merged this physical retail
chain of a grocery store with ‘Trinethra’, another grocery retail chain.
They expanded their physical retail chain of grocery store to 300 stores across Tamil Nadu, Andhra
Pradesh, Kerala, and Karnataka. Around the same time, Hari Menon decided to sell-off the business to
Aditya Birla Group.
Technical Skills
Communication
Credits to communication skills here goes to the entire team that Hari Menon built up. The biggest
challenge for him was to maintain a building capacity to meet customer demand. But the team was able to
successfully pass on the message and today the start-up run in 30+ cities of India.
Environment Scanning
Hari Menon had already faced the heat once with Fabmall and Fabmart. For BigBasket, he successfully
pulled off and was able to grab a growth of 30-35 % in their customers Month-on-Month demands.
Bigbasket has a valuation of 1.8 Billion dollars. It has reached unicorn status. The investors include Alibaba
Group, Abraaj Group, Ascent Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Brand Capital, Helion Venture Partners,
ICICI Venture, IFC Venture Capital Group, LionRock Capital, Paytm Mall, Sands Capital Management, Sands
Capital Ventures, Trifecta Capital and Zodius Capital.
Big basket has acquired 100% stakes in milk delivery ventures Raincan and morningcart. It got a controlling
stake in smart vending machine startup Kwik24. It also acquired a hyperlocal delivery startup named
delyver. It helped to strengthen its delivery system in all the cities it is operating in.
Team Player
His skills of being a team player is clearly visible how he has right from the beginning founded as well as
managing the company with 4 friends Vipul Parekh, V S Sudhakar, Abhinay Choudhari, and V S Ramesh.

Personal Entrepreneurship Skills

Innovative
The idea that a business could be run on such a model was the innovative thinking that kept them afloat
this far. Fabmart is an online platform, which performed the same functions that Amazon, Flipkart does
today. Fabmart was one of the pioneers in e-commerce in India.
Persistent
Persistant nature of Menon is realised as we see non-stop efforts, he makes to give a shape to his idea.
Soon after the launch of Bigbasket, they also got first funding of $10 Mn from ChrysCapital and Ascent
Capital. ChrysCapital founded by Raj Kondur.
Visionary Leader
Today, BigBasket is closing more than 50,000 orders a day, or 1,50,00,000 - 2,50,00,000 orders a month,
with an average monthly cart size of ₹2500/per order.
The online grocery story is drawing roughly ₹20 crores from only Bangalore. Bigbasket is now a 3000-
strong team across 30 cities. Today it has more than 20000 products and 1000 brands in its catalogue.