Fresh Meat Delivery Platform Licious Gobbles $10 Mn From Mayfield India, Others

Bengaluru-based gourmet meat delivery, Licious, has secured $10 Mn in a Series B round led by Mayfield India, 3one4 Capital, Sistema Asia Fund, and Neoplux Technology Fund. With this investment, Sistema Asia, a Russia-based venture fund will make their first consumer investment in India along with South Korea’s, Neoplux Technology Fund.

The raised funds will help the company boost business growth and facilitate expansion plans in markets like Hyderabad and Delhi-NCR.

Commenting on the development, Nikhil Khattau, MD, Mayfield India said, “There is growing demand for branded fresh meat and meat products in India. The Licious brand, with its focus on taste, quality, and hygiene, is well on its way to serve this market need. The company is driven by product innovation and technology combined with a focus on traditional business fundamentals that has helped scale the business and build India’s first fresh meat brand.”

Owned and operated under Delightful Gourmet Pvt. Ltd, Licious was founded in July  2015 by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta. They follow an end-to-end business based on the hub-and-spoke model that starts from procuring fresh produce to processing, storage and delivery.

Through this entire supply chain, the company claims that the freshness and nutritional content of the meat is maintained till they deliver at the doorstep of the consumer.

“Being a modern consumer brand that places high importance on product quality and bespoke consumer-led innovations in our product range, complemented by assured delivery promise, we wanted to establish a startup that revolutionises the meat industry in India. We are extremely happy that Licious has started off in the right direction and is now the highest funded startup in the meat industry,” said Abhay Hanjura, co-founder, Licious.

They have contractual arrangements with large institutional meat vendors who are trained on managing livestock and meat handling techniques. Licious further claims that they deliver within 120 minutes of ordering, either through the web site or the Licious app.

Currently, Licious possesses 11 delivery hubs and employs around 250 people across different functions in their company. The company claims that the number of orders has grown from 1,000 in July 2015, to 50,000 orders in 2017. Since launching, the startup  has reportedly witnessed 80% repeat customer rate.

Prior to this round of funding, in September 2015, Licious had raised Seed funding of $1 Mn from angel investors such as Mohandas Pai, Kanwaljeet Singh and Kaushal Agarwal. Later in April 2016, the firm received Series A funding of $3 Mn from 3one4 Capital and Mayfield Capital.

In August 2016, Pune-based raw meat etailer, EasyMeat had acquired Nonveggies in an undisclosed all cash deal. Other startups in the similar space include Zappresh, OnlyMeat, Brown Apron, to name a few.