NDR and Indus help Online grocery store BigBasketcom raise Rs 35 crore

Bangalore-based private equity firm Ascent Capital has invested Rs. 35 crore ($7 million) in the first round of funding in BigBasket.com, an online grocery store..Narasappa, Doraswamy & Raja advised Ascent Capital with a team led by Partner Siddharth Raja along with Senior Associate Neela Badami and Associate Mukund Thirumalai Srikanth..IndusLaw advised the company and the promoters with a team led by Partner Srinivas Katta..According to VCCircle, the transaction is believed to be the first institutional investment in an online grocery retailer and the largest series A round in an e-tailing firm in India. The latest round of funding will be used to increase capacity, service and merchandise selection. Currently present only in Bangalore, BigBasket plans to expand to five cities by the end of this year..BigBasket.com has been founded by VS Sudhakar, Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, VS Ramesh and Abhinay Choudhari. The team has both offline and online retail experience as they had set up India’s first e-commerce site FabMart.com in 1999, and then established the Fabmall-Trinethra chain of more than 200 grocery supermarket stores in southern India. Trinethra was sold to Aditya Birla Group in 2006 and currently operates under the brand name ‘More’..Dealcurry reports, BigBasket offers over 6,000 products all categories. It caters to 300 daily transactions with average billing of Rs. 1,200..Ascent Capital currently manages $600 Mn across three funds.Its portfolio investments include GMR Energy,IVRCL Infrastructure, Laqshya, Shriram EPC, Ramkrishna Forgings among others.