Bigbasket is focusing on 10-minute delivery format this festive season: Raagaleena Sripada

This time of the year marks one of the most crucial periods for businesses as consumer sentiment is at its highest, with spending patterns reflecting the festive spirit. From offers and discounts to large-scale campaigns and personalized engagement, brands are exploring every avenue to stand out in a highly competitive marketplace. The rise of digital marketing and the increasing role of e-commerce have also intensified the focus on omnichannel strategies, ensuring that consumers are met with consistent messaging across both online and offline platforms.

Adgully’s special annual column, FESTIVE MOOD, delves deep into the intricacies of these marketing activities, offering a holistic perspective on the trends that define this season. From ad spend projections to consumer behaviour analysis, the column covers all aspects of the festive landscape. It highlights how brands are planning to position themselves, what marketing strategies are being adopted, and how consumer sentiment is shaping the promotional and communication tactics being deployed.

In this interaction with Adgully, Raagaleena Sripada, Head of Marketing, Bigbasket, one of the leading players in the quick commerce space, speaks about Bigbasket’s festive marketing strategy for this year, highlighting its commitment to becoming the go-to platform for all Diwali needs. She also speaks about their expanded offerings in non-grocery categories, including electronics and home appliances, as well as their strategic partnerships with brands like Chroma and Tanishq. The discussion also touches upon their influencer marketing approach and the allocation of advertising budgets amidst the fragmented media landscape, providing insights into how Bigbasket aims to capitalize on the festive fervour.

What are your observations on the overall consumer and market sentiment during the festive season this year?

It is a very positive sentiment this year, across tiers, especially Tier 2, we will see good uptake in online purchase to begin with. And to top that with the offering that the quick commerce, including Bigbasket is able to give for electronics or home appliances as categories particularly, there is expected to be an upsurge. For instance, for Akshay Tritiya, we have seen tremendous growth in the adoption of gold coins purchased online in the last few years. So, we’re expecting a similar sort of uptake even for Diwali. During Dhanteras, specific articles like steel utensils or even brooms, cleaning objects, etc., see great traction. So, overall we are expecting a spike this season.

What forms the core of Bigbasket’s festive marketing strategy this year?

The core of the strategy this time is to really position us as the quick commerce player to go to for all your Diwali needs. And for the first time, we are not only strong with our grocery needs, which means all your pantry essentials and your fridge essentials, we are also very, very strong this time with non-grocery items, which include categories like electronics or home appliances. By electronics, I mean speakers, Bluetooth, laptops, phones. That’s the kind of category that we are entering into this Diwali. While, we’ve had presence in this category, but the focus is stronger this Diwali. Home appliances will include all mixers, grinders, OTG ovens, toasters, and much more. In fact, we have an exclusive tie-up with Chroma and you will see some of their range coming up on Bigbasket season. We also have a big play with Tanishq and the Tata ecosystem with gold coins and silver coins. Of course, we do have our regular grocery as well as gifting, such as dry fruits. All of those are core assortment for us. Apart from this, we will be focusing on the 10-minute delivery of all these Diwali essentials.

Speaking about electronics, Bigbasket recently did a partnership with Chrome for iPhone 16 delivery. Could you tell us more about it?

iPhones did very well for us. They flew off the shelf. We could anticipate the demand. We are glad that customers are actually looking at us for newer categories like phones. This partnership with Chroma is very strategic for us. Also, we have an entire campaign scheduled for Dussehra and Diwali focusing on all of this. It will be a 360 degree plan with a heavy focus on digital. We are hoping it will create a lot of conversations for us on online.

Is there any celebrity endorsement that we can expect from Bigbasket for this festive season?

This Diwali, we are connecting with almost 20-plus influencers pan-India. I wouldn’t call them celebrities, but they definitely are high profile influencers. We won’t be going for mega stars like Shahrukh Khan for this season. However, there’s something in store for the future.

What is your marketing/ advertising budget for the festive season in 2024? What percentage increase (or decrease) is it compared to the previous year?

There is an incremental budget. However, we are not allowed to share that. Although I can say one thing, that whatever the budget is that we have taken incrementally is supposed to drive 100% jump in traffic for us.

Given the increasing fragmentation of media consumption, how are you allocating festive ad budgets across different platforms?

For Diwali, we are not focussing on one particular channel as there’s a lot of fragmentation in the way consumers are consuming media today. Our intent with Diwali is to really do an integrated marketing campaign across channels. Depending on the nature of the channels, the budget will be up and down. Doing a BTL is very different from doing a social or influencer campaign. So, budgets are allocated accordingly. But the goal this time for us is to really deliver a seamless integrated campaign across channels and across pan-India.

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