The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suspended the food licence and operations of a BigBasket outlet on Karve Road, opposite Sahyadri Hospital in Sadashiv Peth, Pune, after an inspection uncovered a string of food safety violations at the store.
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.
According to the inspection report, 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.
Taken together, these were classified as serious non-compliances under Schedule IV of the applicable food safety regulations.
The sequence of events moved fairly quickly. The inspection itself was carried out on September 21. A hearing followed the very next day, on September 22, and the suspension order was issued the same day a turnaround that reflects how the FDA has been treating this category of violation with urgency, particularly for outlets that double up as cold storage and distribution points.
The FDA has cited the seriousness of the lapses and the need to protect consumer health as the basis for ordering an immediate suspension, rather than allowing time for corrective action before halting operations.
This isn’t an isolated case. 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. 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.
Quick-commerce and large retail chains have increasingly come under the FDA’s scanner in Maharashtra this year, with similar action taken earlier against Blinkit and Zepto outlets in Pune and Mumbai over comparable issues expired stock, poor cold-storage discipline, and inadequate pest control.
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.
The outlet will remain shut until it addresses the violations and satisfies the FDA that it meets the required safety standards.
