Bengaluru: Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd. plans to buy a majority stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.-backed online grocery seller BigBasket, a filing with the Competition Commission of India () showed on Friday.
The Tata-BigBasket deal, if appproved, would put the conglomerate in direct competition with Amazon, Walmart’s Flipkart and Reliance Retail‘s JioMart, backed by billionaire Mukesh Ambani.
In the filing with the CCI , Tata Digital Ltd., a wholly owned unit of Tata Sons, proposed to buy 64.3% of an entity that runs business-to-business sales for BigBasket. The Economic Times had previously reported that Tata Group aims to take control of more than 60% of BigBasket, buying out Alibaba’s stake.
The proposal comes as e-commerce sales, especially of food and groceries, have exploded in India as the Covid-19 pandemic spurred a shift to online shopping.
BigBasket’s rivals are expected to spend heavily on the e-grocery business.
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Flipkart has announced plans to expand to more Indian cities, while Jio Platforms, Reliance’s digital unit which is likely to support its grocery service, has raised more than $ 20 billion from investors including Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
