CCI OKAYS TATA’S BIG BASKET BUY

The Competition Commission of India has given its go ahead for the acquisition of Big Basket by the Tata Group.

The CCI has approved acquisition of up to 64.3 per cent of the total share capital of Supermarket Grocery Supplies (SGS) and SGS’ sole control over Innovative Retail Concepts by Tata Digital.

SGS is into business-tobusiness sales through the portal business.bigbasket.com.

Innovative Retail Concepts Pvt Ltd (IRC) is engaged in business-toconsumer sales through www.bigbasket.com and related mobile applications.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Pvt Ltd, TDL, provides technology services related to identity and access management, loyalty programmes, offers and payments. The acquisition through primary and secondary transactions will see SGS first acquiring sole control over Innovative Retail Concepts and then Tata Digital acquiring 64.3 per cent controlling stake of SGS.

Tata has proposed to acquire the stakes of BigBasket for about $1.2 billion. As per reports, the deal will provide exit to investors like Alibaba that holds around 29 per cent stake in the company, Abraaj Group that has 16.3 per cent stake and IFC with 4.1 per cent stake.

BigBasket, Grofers, Walmart-owned Flipkart, Amazon and Reliance Industries’ JioMart are the five big players in India’s online grocery space. The $525 billion food and grocery market is expected to grow by a CAGR of 9 per cent to $880 billion by 2023, as per a study by RedSeer Consulting.