Licious, a unicorn that operates on a farm-to-fork model, and sells fresh meat and seafood online is the latest admission to the Indian unicorn club after reaching the valuation of billion dollars. The Bangalore headquartered firm is the first direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand to reach a billion dollars valuation.
A direct-to-consumer brand sells its products directly to the customers, eliminating the intermediaries. Whereas a traditional retailer relies on a longer supply chain which involves — manufacturer/producer → wholesaler→ distributor → retailer→ customer.
In a fundraising round led by IIFL AMC’s Late Stage Tech Fund, the fresh meat and seafood supplying brand Licious raised $52 million.
Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to Licious for the transaction.
To date, the company has raised $310 million with $192 million it raised in the last round in July this year. Temasek, along with 3one4 Capital, Bertelsmann India Investments, Vertex Growth Fund and others were the key investors.
Due to Covid-19, in many of the states lockdowns were imposed, restricting the movement of people, and subsequently, many customers shifted from offline shopping to online shopping including food and groceries. Many of the people tried something new on their taste buds which automatically opened doors for companies like Licious which became a go-to option for many to procure meat and seafood from. Licious’ assessment shows that the meat and seafood market could balloon to over $40 billion by 2025 and it is just a start.
It also busts a myth that is long associated with India being a largely vegetarian society. The rise of Licious and others like Fresh-to-Home gave an insight into the eating habits of Indians.
According to a recent survey done by the Washington-based think tank Pew, while 81 percent of Indian people have put some meat-related restrictions on themselves, just 39 percent identify as vegetarians.
92 percent of Jains said they were vegetarians, compared to only 8% of Muslims and 10% of Christians, whereas among the country’s biggest religious group– only 44% of Hindus are vegetarian.
“Even though the funding for [the] D2C sector has grown significantly, FMCG [fast moving consumer goods] is still not considered the most attractive category. The fresh meats and seafood sector are still largely underserved and unorganised that holds a vast opportunity of $40 billion,” Licious’ cofounders Hanjura and Gupta added in a joint statement.
Founded by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta in 2015 the company operates in a farm-to-fork model and owns a robust cold chain control system to maintain the quality of its products–chicken, goat, lamb and pork meat, among others– from procurement, processing to storage. The company also offers fish and seafood products, along with exotic meat varieties like turkey, blue crab.