The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has halted the food license and operations of a BigBasket store located on Karve Road, across from Sahyadri Hospital in Sadashiv Peth, Pune. This action follows an inspection that revealed multiple food safety violations at the outlet.
The outlet is run by Innovative Retail Concepts Private Limited, the company that operates the BigBasket brand. It functions not just as a retail store but also as a storage facility, cold and refrigerated storage unit, distributor and wholesaler — which meant the violations found there carried added weight, given how much food passes through the premises in different forms. Taken together, these were classified as serious non-compliances under Schedule IV of the applicable food safety regulations. This isn’t an isolated case. Licences of ten hotels, restaurants, bakeries and other food businesses were suspended in total, with the BigBasket outlet and a dosa centre in Karvenagar among those flagged for the most serious violations.
The BigBasket suspension is part of a broader enforcement push by the FDA’s Pune division, which ran a special drive against food adulteration, misbranding and safety violations across the region between September 16 and 22, timed to the festive season when food consumption typically spikes. During that drive, the department inspected 41 establishments across Pune, Solapur, Sangli, Kolhapur and Satara districts, seizing food products worth roughly ₹23.89 lakh on suspicion of adulteration and mislabelling.
Officials found expired and damaged food products still present at the outlet, along with signs of pest activity, improper storage and segregation of food items, and lapses in temperature control and cold-chain management, according to the inspection report. The BigBasket case adds another name to that list, and comes at a time when the department has been running its “Safe Food, Safe Drug, Safe Maharashtra” campaign fairly aggressively across the state.
