Licious - Critical analysis of a fresh meat delivering Indian startup

Vision - Licious exists because we deserve better meat

Mission - Delivering quality meat product

Licious was founded by Abhay Hanjuraand and Vivek Gupta in September 2015. It is a Bangalore based meat and sea-food brand. It operates across a few cities like Bangalore, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Pondicherry, Jaipur, Kochi, Vizag, Kolkata, and Vijayawada. It operates on a farm-to-fork model, which means it controls the entire back-end supply chain as well as the cold chain. They also have a food blog where they teach customers to cook delicious food as well as exotic dishes.

Licious is India’s 29th unicorn. The company has delivered to more than 2 million customers and 90% of them are repeat customers. That means most of its customers are coming back probably because of its good service and the quality of the product they are serving.

How did it start?

More than 50% of the Indians consume meat. For decades India’s meat industry is dominated by small butcher shops. But the Indian meat and seafood market was very unorganized. There were no big companies or startups in this market because the meat is culturally not accepted by the majority of the Indians. Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura thought of delivering an exceptional meaty experience to Indians. They wanted to change the way Indian experience meat. They wanted to build an Infrastructure to deliver quality meat with global quality standards. So they started Licious. Initially, they wanted Licious to be like zomato or swiggy for meat. They wanted to connect consumers with butchers. Soon they realize that in this way it is very difficult to maintain the quality of the meat as they won’t have any control over the hygiene, storage and health of the animals being slaughtered.

Starting afresh meat business is not easy. It is very difficult to create and manage the whole supply chain. Also, to keep the meat fresh it needs to be stored between 0-4 degrees Celsius. So they started a tiered company based on a farm-to-fork model where they could control the whole supply chain.

Together with their new cofounder Joe Manvalan, they established a meat processing centre in Hennur, Bengaluru, and staffed it with professional butchers, as well as a meat delivery hub in Marathahalli, where they brought in a team of delivery partners to get the meat into the hands of their customers. It started its operations in 2015. As soon as they started their operations their whole supply chain collapsed after almost 35 orders. Soon they brought changes to their business model. They relaunched the company. After that, they took a small break. During that period they trained their workforce and took some stringent measures to maintain the quality of meat. Soon, they relaunched the company. And they received 1,300 orders in their first month of business. Their initial growth helped them to get some investment. 3one4 Capital was their initial investor and one of the biggest tills now. Licious also received a fair amount of investment from foreign investors.

Business model

Licious has an interesting farm-to-fork model. The corporation is responsible for everything from sourcing to processing to storage to delivery to the consumer. They handle the entire supply chain. They have a web app as well as a mobile app. The company does all the necessary things to maintain the freshness of the meat. The company’s Android app is downloaded by more than five million people only on the play store.

The selling of meats, seafood, marinate, and eggs account for a large portion of Licious' revenue. The company’s valuation has crossed 1 billion and it is India’s 29th unicorn. According to a report published in the Times of India, over 95 per cent of Licious purchases are made through their app and site. 

Competitors

Main competitors of licious are -

FreshToHome: It is also a Bangalore-based commerce startup that sells fresh vegetables, fish, chicken and other kinds of meat. The firm, which operates in numerous major Indian cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, and Hyderabad, is currently processing 1.5 million orders per month, up from 420,000 orders per month last year.

ZappFresh: It is a Gurugram-based fresh meat delivery startup. It sells raw and ready-to-cook meat. It was founded by Deepanshu Manchanda and Shruti Gochhwal in 2015.

TendorCuts: It is a Chennai based meat and seafood brand founded by Nishanth Chandran.

 

So, we can see here that there are many new startups getting the stage in the market. So, I believe that in the coming years the market is going to be very competitive.

Funding 

Licious investors include 3one4 Capital, Mayfield Capital, Sistema Asia Fund, Korea-based Neoplux, IIFL etc. In FY21, the company reported operating revenues of Rs 420.3 crores, a 3.2X increase from Rs 131.8 crores in FY20. On the other hand, the company's overall expenses increased by 128 per cent to Rs 646.5 crores in FY21, up from Rs 283.8 crores in FY20. The company is currently experiencing losses, which have increased by 153% from Rs 146.3 crores in FY21 to Rs 370 crores.  Licious had its last funding round in October 2021. It was led by IIFL. The startup raised 192$ million at a valuation of about 650$ million.

Future Plans

They are planning to expand in other cities and also strengthen product and tech teams. Further are also considering their global expansion

by Anant Kumar