Coimbatore startup Daily Basket accuses BigBasket of 'corporate bullying'

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.