BigBasket accused of corporate bullying by a startup

BigBasket accused of corporate bullying by a startup

Coimbatore startup DailyBasket says it will fight back to cease and desist letter that demands handing over domain, mobile app and stop oprtations

The Coimbatore-based startup DailyBasket is in for a rude jolt with the well-established and similar sounding BigBasked accusing it of trademark infringement for using the world 'Basket' in its brand name.

The online grocery giant BigBasket, which is backed by Jack Ma's Alibaba Group, has also issued it a case and desist letter, demanding the startup to stop using the domain name dailybasket.com, discontinue the mobile app, stop its operations, transfer the domain name dailybasket.com and pay Rs 2 lakh as legal fees.

"As a company that has painstakingly built a trusted brand over the last nine years, it is necessary for bigbasket to protect its trademarks. While checking the trademark registry, we recently came across a filing for "DailyBasket", which, in the context of the online grocery business, is a combination of two of our registered trademarks "bigbasket" and "bbdaily". And even startups, however small, need to operate within the boundaries of the law," BigBasket said in a statement.

"The very purpose of the trademark registry is to put trademark applications in the public domain for 60 days so that companies with existing trademarks may raise objections if any. The typical next step in such cases is to send the relevant company a notice, which is exactly what we did," BigBasket said while explaining that they too were a startup not long back and would not like to create inconvenience to another startup.

Interestingly, BigBasket itself continues to confuse customers. Despite it being in existence for many years, many customers still feel BigBasket is an arm of Big Bazaar.

DailyBasket, however, is no mood to give up without a fight. While BigBasket says it wants to work in a "fair manner" with the founder of DailyBasket to resove the issue "amicably" while protecting their brand and trademark, DailyBasket has taken the fight to the opposite camp by launching an online campaign against the grocery giant.

DailyBasket has termed BigBasket's cease and desist letter as a form of "corporate bullying" and trying to eliminate a startup and upcoming competition from the market.

DailyBasket has launched a website bbisabully.com which reads "BigBasket is bullying dailybasket.com and has displayed comparisions of their respective websites and mobile apps to establish the dissimilarities between the two.

"We are a tiny bootstrapped company currently only serving in Coimbatore and about to open our first physical location," DailyBasket has said while adding that they lack power and money to engatge with BigBasket in endless lawsuits and unlawful intimidations.