Fruits and vegetables are part of daily diet. The products are perishable, and hence, vendors right from unorganized wholesale markets to organized retail showrooms are running ahead of time to provide the most fresh produce possible. Vipul Mittal, National Category Head - F&V, BigBasket, opines on how the food aggregator platform has achieved customer confidence on freshness, quality, and price point with a slew of corrective measures.

Calculating The Right Price

The foremost challenge of unorganized F&V business is price discovery. Prices are decided daily in every market and fixing the right buying price from farmers to consumers needs elimination of unnecessary intermediaries. To streamline this segment, BigBasket runs apps that capture prices in the markets they are available in. This is then used with technology to triangulate prices across other markets to ultimately derive the right buying price from farmers. BigBasket’s collection centers reach small and marginal farmers and their digitized screens transmit prices directly to farmers, thus preventing price leakage and ensuring confidence of the supply chain.

“The traditional vegetable and fruit supply chain will typically have 3-5 intermediaries from the farm to customers’ doorstep. Here, it’s only the farmer, us, and the consumer. We buy from farmers, ship the produce to the distribution centre which delivers to households. By virtue of that, we are able to give a better price to farmers and charge customers much more reasonably,” said Mittal.  

Another challenge is to ensure quality check online while breaking the age-old barrier of touch-and-feel in physical shops. Several parameters such as ripeness, color, seasonality, and size help customers decide, as BigBasket succeeds with aggregation of volumes in this vertical. Computerized sorting and grading lines sort all SKUs on colour, size, quality, which creates differentiated offerings for end-users. BigBasket keeps buyers informed online via push notifications, banners, emails, regular updates of their product description pages and meticulous attention to customer feedback. 

Ensuring Optimum Freshness

Farmers harvest once a day, so freshness is preserved if the supply chain manages to deliver harvested produce in 24 hours. The supply chain in wholesale markets have fresh vegetables arriving around 12 am to 4 am, which actually gets harvested the day before. Wholesale players auction to retailers, who sell to customers by 8 am-9 am. “Therefore, customers buying from unorganized sectors anywhere in India are consuming products harvested within 24-30 hours prior. If we beat this delivery time, we will provide the most fresh products,” he reasoned. 

A rising point of concern is presence of harmful chemicals in the products, which is where BigBasket’s farmer connect program comes in handy. Connecting to 45,000 farmers across 75+ collection centers countrywide, their on-ground teams have trained agronomists who assess adherence of best practices by farmers. Due attention to temperature and humidity of products ensure optimum shelf life and BigBasket’s infrastructure consisting of refrigerators, humidifiers, and ripening chambers cater to those basic requirements. Leveling up with organic produce, BigBasket also identifies pockets to grow organic products and has provided  farmers with premium on their produce to support their operation costs. The brand has also partnered with Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore, for technology relating to cutting vegetables and fruits for optimum health benefits, which is present in-house for each BigBasket distribution center. 

Innovation Surging Product Demand

Customer penetration and frequency of purchase are two determiners to assess the performance of F&V. BigBasket has aced that game with innovation that enhances demand with greater utility, such as shaved coconuts for easier consumption and organic sprouts, being the only certified player in India to sell the latter.

Packaging plays an important role in ensuring delivery of any produce in its healthiest state, and BigBasket cut back on plastic to deliver fruits and vegetables loose for preservation of nutrients and prevention of harmful chemicals. In case of leafy vegetables, they always make it a point to cut the roots in order to stop customers form getting exposed to mud, dirt, harmful bacteria, and insects. Ensuring transparency, the brand has made a major shift from number of items to the weight of the item, with measurements being made at the last point of sale. “Fruits and vegetables constantly loose weight due to moisture loss, and many players prefer selling in pieces to hide the fact of moisture loss from unsuspecting buyers. Our mechanism enables weighing the product at the last point of sale, that gives absolute weight and the right purchase experience,” Mittal maintained.

With remarkable performances of front-end dark stores, Mittal believes that customers are ready to trade delivery time with price, specially in F&V. Be it quick delivery, standard, or subscription model, BigBasket is as deeply penetrated in India as any other player. As long as customers are ready to pay for convenience, organized retail in fruits and vegetables will quickly become the norm.