How Big Basket’s Hari Menon Revolutionized Grocery Shopping in India
Hari Menon, a name who changed India’s Traditional Grocery Shopping Style. He was born in 1963 in Mumbai in a normal middle class family. Hari Menon is linked to the family of E Shreedharan, the man behind the Delhi Metro as his daughter was married to him. Shanti Menon, wife of Hari was a principal of Bangalore based “The Deen’s Academy”.
Hari is the CEO and Co-Founder of Big Basket, India’s largest Super Market. He also served as the CEO of Tumri, Serus Corporation and Timeli. He completed his education from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. He did MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. His hobbies include music and cricket. He is also a member of ‘Karnataka Cricket Association’.
Hari Menon had started his career as a Business head with ‘Wipro’ an Indian multinational corporation that provides consulting, information technology and business process services. He is one of those Indian entrepreneurs, who struggled a lot in his initial life and then came to the market with a unique business idea and got success by his pivotal efforts.
Before starting Big Basket, Hari along with his 5 friends started and cofounded Fabmart in 1999. It is an online platform which provides the same services as Amazon and Flipkart does today. During the first year, fabmart could not generate enough revenue because conditions in India were not favourable for online platforms then. The setback of Fabmart made them to focus on physical retail chain of a grocery store. Hari Menon along with his other friends founded Bigbasket in October 2011. It is India’s largest online food and grocery store owned and operated by Innovative Retail Concepts Private Limited.