Daily Basket accuses BigBasket of ‘corporate bullying’, Coimbatore startup plans to fight back

Stocks

In response to the notice, Daily Basket came up with a website within days, bbisabully.com (Big Basket is a bully), which displays “BigBasket is bullying dailybasket.com with cease and desist letter” as a header.

(Credits: BigBasket)

(Credits: BigBasket)

Responding to grocery giant BigBasket’s ‘cease and desist letter,’ Coimbatore startup DailyBasket said that the notice was a form of “corporate bullying” trying to eliminate an “upcomer as a competition”.

The Alibaba-backed BigBasket sent a notice to bootstrapped DailyBasket alleging trademark infringement for the use of the word ‘Basket’ in its name. Within days, in response to the notice, the startup came up with a website bbisabully.com (Big Basket is a bully), which displays “BigBasket is bullying dailybasket.com with cease and desist letter” as a header.

Listing down the allegations on its website, DailyBasket said that the giant corporation was demanding the startup to stop using the domain name dailybasket.com, discontinue the mobile apps, stop its operations, transfer the domain name dailybasket.com and pay Rs. 2 lakh as legal fees. It is also withholding the right to use “similar domain containing “basket” as a prominent feature ever again,” it said.

Following these allegations, the website then goes on to show a side-by-side comparison of the websites and mobile applications of the companies in order to display the difference between them.

The company further said that it was planning to fight BigBasket.

“We are a tiny bootstrapped company currently only serving in Coimbatore and about to open our first physical location,” it said adding that they did not have that “mighty power and money” like BigBasket to engage in “endless lawsuits and unlawful intimidations”.

Urging the management of the big corporation to look into this matter and stop sending threatening emails to upcoming startups, the two person startup pledged to “show the truth in public to everyone”.

Smriti Chaudhary