Licious: Case Study, Company Profile, Founding Team, and Many More

Introduction:

Licious is an Indian online meat and seafood delivery service that specializes in providing high-quality, fresh, and hygienically processed meat products directly to consumers. Founded in 2015, Licious offers a wide range of products, including fresh chicken, mutton, fish, and other seafood, as well as ready-to-cook meals and marinated options. The company aims to revolutionize the traditional meat-buying experience by offering a convenient, hygienic, and trustworthy alternative to purchasing meat from local markets.

Key Features of Licious:

1. Freshness and Quality: Licious ensures the freshness of its products by sourcing meat from trusted suppliers and maintaining a cold supply chain. The meat is processed and packed in a state-of-the-art facility with a focus on hygiene and quality control.
2. Wide Product Range: In addition to fresh meat and seafood, Licious offers marinated options, ready-to-cook meals, and value-added products like kebabs, sausages, and meat cuts.
3. Home Delivery: Licious operates on a direct-to-doorstep delivery model, allowing customers to order their desired meat products online via the website or mobile app. The company ensures timely delivery, often within a few hours of the order.
4. Hygiene and Safety: Licious places a strong emphasis on maintaining high standards of hygiene and food safety throughout the entire supply chain, from sourcing to delivery.
5. Packaging: The products are packaged in eco-friendly, vacuum-sealed packaging to preserve freshness and extend shelf life. The packaging also helps in maintaining product quality during transit.
6. Technology-Driven: Licious uses technology to optimize its operations, streamline inventory management, and ensure seamless customer experiences. The platform offers easy online ordering, tracking, and payment options.
7. Expansion: Initially launched in Bangalore, Licious has expanded to several cities across India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and more.

Company Highlights:

In Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Gurugram, it has three processing facilities. Owning the complete back-end supply chain and cold chain, it runs on a farm-to-fork business model. Funding for Licious has come from a number of sources, including Mohandas Pai, Mayfield Capital, Vertex Growth Fund, UCLA, Sistema Asia Fund, and InnoVen Capital.

Founder & Team:

It was founded by Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura. Licious’ co-founder is Vivek Gupta as a Corporate Finance Manager for Tavant Technologies, he began his career. The other co-founder of Licious is Abhay Hanjura. He is a Hindu pandit from Kashmir and served as Infosys’ campus ambassador. In 2015, they started the business.

Startup Story:

Abhay Hanjura approached Vivek Gupta, who was then employed at Helion Ventures, to examine the possibility of delivering fresh meat and seafood in India. Even though 73 percent of Indians consume meat and fish, the sector is very unstructured. The only brand of food that meat is excluded from in an average Indian household’s consumption is that of dairy (well, almost).

An unclean local market, filth, stink, and a bad shopping experience are typical images that come to mind when thinking about India’s fresh meat and seafood business, which is unorganised to a greater than 95% extent. The pair aimed to alter how Indians view meat.

Abhay and Vivek were talking about the company idea over lunch. They were consuming extremely subpar chicken. Abhay Hanjura chose to leave his well-paying position at an insurance brokerage company in order to pursue this notion of altering how meat is obtained, processed, and marketed in India.

Mission & Vision:

With an unrivalled selection of meat and meat products, Licians will create the most adored meat brand in the world!

Business Model:

It uses a farm to fork business approach. The business manages the entire supply chain. The corporation is ultimately responsible for everything, from product sourcing through processing and storage to delivery to the consumer. To cut out the middlemen and take full control of sourcing, processing, and marketing, it appears that the firm has taken a page from Amul’s playbook.

According to Licious, its own farms produce 50% of the meat that the firm sells, growing from 10% in 2020. It also owns facilities for processing and distribution. From the very first day, it began to dispel the stigma associated with meat. Licious marketed meat in organised cartons, leak-proof pouches, and containers rather than black plastic bags.

Revenue:

Sales of Licious’ meat, seafood, marinades, and eggs account for a sizable portion of its earnings. The remaining income is generated through the provision of the products and other connected services. To present, it has been successful in acquiring more than 1 million distinct consumers. The typical basket is 700 INR in size. The business made 1.47 crores of Indian rupees in income in its first year. The total amount of money received in FY2019–20 was INR 131.8 crore.

Licious’ operating revenue increased by 3.2X from Rs 131.8 crore in FY20 to Rs 420.3 crore in FY21. Sales of its fresh meat, fish, and seafood items, marinades, and eggs accounted for approximately 97.2% of its total sales. Deliveries and other related services accounted for the remaining percentage of company revenues. The company’s EBITDA margins improved dramatically during FY21, going from -95.12 percent to -43.31 percent, although Licious’ losses grew by another 153% to Rs 370 cr. It claimed earning Rs. 69.4 crore in revenue for FY19.

As Licious’ income increased from Rs 283.8 crore in FY20 to Rs 646.5 crore in FY21, so did its expenses. It spent Rs 148.5 crore in fiscal year 2019. Despite dropping to Rs 146.3 crore in FY20 from Rs 438.7 crore in FY19, the Licious losses increased once more to reach Rs 370 crore in FY21.

Products & Services:

From Licious, customers can purchase chicken, mutton, seafood (fish, prawns, and crabs), marinades, and cold cuts.

Funding & Investors:

Including the most recent investment round, which was led by Amansa Capital, Kotak PE, Axis Growth, and others on March 15, 2022, and in which the investors invested $150 mn, Licious has raised a total of $488.3 million. With the addition of this fundraising round, it has become the highest valued D2C business in India, with a valuation believed to be about $2 bn. It joins the likes of Lenskart, The Good Glamm Club FirstCry, and others in this group.

By leading the last round of funding for Licious, IIFL AMC’s Late Stage Tech Fund helped the company reach a valuation of $1 billion as of October 5, 2021. With this investment, it became the 29th Indian unicorn in 2021 and the first unicorn startup in the direct-to-consumer market.

TV Mohandas Pai, Vertex Growth Fund, Nichirei Corp, 3one4 Capital, Bertelsmann India Investments, UCLA, Sistema Asia Fund, Mayfield Capital, Korea-based Neoplux Technology Fund, and Innoven Capital are a few of the investors in the business. Brunei Investment Agency and Multiples Alternate Asset Management were the newest investors in the Series F round of funding.

It has only ever made one investment. On April 27, 2022, Licious made its first investment, investing over $1 million in Pawfectly Made. Additionally, Licious joined as a strategic partner of the pet food firm situated in Bengaluru.

Employees:

Licious has around 6,000 employees.

Challenges Faced:

Even before Licious was introduced, there were difficulties from the beginning. Abhay Hanjura, a Jammu native and member of a family of Kashmiri pandits, faced opposition from his family, who are strict vegetarians, when he tried to move through with one of his business ideas including meat. Things outside of Abhay’s home got so terrible that the firm, which was launched in a nation that ranks No. 4 in the world for meat production, had to suspend operations on the first day of operation.

Deliveries made by the company were all delayed. Although the brand sought a high-quality product solution, they did not put as much effort into their supply chain management. For this reason, it took Licious 15–20 extra days to resume operations.

• The increase in the number of rivals and the level of competitiveness in the online meat market.
• Infectious outbreaks in animals.
• The increase in meat alternatives.
• The costs associated with handling smaller purchases.
• A consumer’s preference is to get meat from a local butcher.

Acquisitions:

It raises $150 million to use for technological investments and tactical acquisitions.

Growth:

In the previous year, the company’s growth was 500 percent, and it has kept up its momentum. The ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat product categories considerably increased sales even though all product categories experienced increases. Products like the kebab range and chicken spreads became popular, and new offerings like tandoori products are also gaining fast traction. It is widely acknowledged that Licious is the dominant player in this market.

According to Licious, two million orders have currently been delivered to distinct clients. Additionally, each consumer’s average basket size increased by 30%. Ninety percent of customers continue to use the company’s services again. In addition, It is proud of the fact that in the previous year, it successfully supplied over 2 million different consumers.

Competitors:

Top rivals of Licious include:

• FreshToHome.
• ZappFresh.
• Captain Fresh.
• TenderCuts.
• Freshtohome.
• Jumbotail.
• Spice Story.
• FreshR.
• Blinkit.
• Satvacart.

Awards & Achievements:

• One of the top 12 rising startups in 2016 according to CB Insights.
• Listed in 2017’s SuperStartups Asia.
• In 2018, BW Disrupt included Licious in its list of the 40 under 40.
• The creators of Licious were listed among the 50 Most Influential Indians by GQ India.
• In 2018, the business received the FSSC22000 UKAS accreditation.
• One of the Most Innovative Startups in 2018 according to INC42 was Licious.
• It was spotted by Entrepreneur Magazine in its 2019 list of the 35 Under 35.
• In 2019, It was listed among Fortune’s 40 Under 40.
• The same year that it made BW’s list of the 35 Under 35 artists.
• In the category of Small & Medium Manufacturing Food Businesses -Rising Star – Meat & Poultry in 2019, it won the CII_ Outstanding Performance in Food Safety Award.
• In 2019, Licious Spreads won the Frost & Sullivan Innovation Award.
• It was named one of the Most Promising Business Leaders in Asia in 2019 by the Economic Times.
• According to Entrepreneur Magazine, it was the 2020 Food & Beverage Start-up of the Year.

Future Plan:

Over 2020 and 2021, Licious’ footprints greatly grew. Licious once served 14 markets in India, including Bangalore, Hyderabad, NCR, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Kochi, Puducherry, Vizag, and Vijayawada. It currently serves 16 cities. It will continue to spread to more than 10 Indian cities during the coming year. Additionally, a future global expansion is anticipated.

FAQs :

What does Licious do?

Licious is an Indian online meat and seafood delivery service that specializes in providing high-quality, fresh, and hygienically processed meat products directly to consumers.

When was Licious founded?

It was established in 2015.

Who is the founder of Licious Corporation?

The founders are Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura.

Who are the main competitors of Licious?

Top 10 Licious competitors

• Captain Fresh.
• TenderCuts.
• Freshtohome.
• Jumbotail.
• Spice Story.
• FreshR.
• Blinkit.
• Satvacart.

Which cities are served by Licious?

The company operates on a farm-to-fork model, owning the entire back-end supply chain and cold chain. It operates in 28 Indian cities including, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Kochi, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Pondicherry and Kolkata.

Conclusion:

Licious has successfully carved out a unique space in the Indian market by combining quality, convenience, and hygiene in the online meat and seafood delivery industry. By providing fresh, high-quality meat products with a focus on hygiene and safety, Licious has addressed a long-standing gap in the traditional meat-buying experience. The company’s direct-to-doorstep delivery model, along with its wide range of products and innovative packaging, has made it a preferred choice for health-conscious consumers and busy professionals.

Sai Sandhya

My name is Sai Sandhya, and I work as a senior SEO strategist for the content writing team. I enjoy creating case studies, articles on startups, and listicles.