Bengaluru-based Foodtech Unicorn Licious Secures $150 Million from Amansa Capital & Others
Bengaluru-based Licious, India's first D2C foodtech unicorn, has secured $150 million from Amansa Capital, Kotak PE, and Axis Growth Avenues AIF – I.
Existing investors such as Aman Gupta of boAt, Nithin & Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha, and Haresh Chawla, Partner, True North, participated in the Series F2 round.
The current round follows the unicorn-making round of $52 million raised by the gourmet meat delivery company in October 2021. Temasek, Brunei Investment Agency, and existing investors Bertelsmann India Investments, 3one4 Capital, Vertex Growth Fund, and Vertex Ventures previously invested $192 million in a Series F round.
Licious has now raised a total of $360 million from a variety of investors, including the current round.
With this financing, the business claims to be India's most valuable D2C brand. While its valuation is unknown, it is likely to have exceeded $2 billion, given that the highest-valued D2C startups in India include Peeyush Bhansal's Lenskart, The Good Glamm Group, FirstCry, and, which are all valued at $1.2 billion.
Licious is a farm-to-fork food company founded in 2015 by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta. The startup controls the entire back-end supply chain, including strict cold chain management, procurement, processing, and storage, to ensure that product quality and freshness are maintained from the beginning to the conclusion.
Licious specialises in chicken breast, chicken drumsticks, goat keema, and lamb chops, among other things, in the fresh meat sector. Licious also sells a variety of fish and seafood, such as basa fillet, mackerel, sardines, and prawns, among other things.
Exotic meats such as turkey, blue crab, quail, and Atlantic salmon are also available at Licious. Spreads, marinades, and pickles have also been introduced to the startup's fresh meat and seafood range as value-added items.
The direct-to-consumer meat market, which is worth $40 billion globally, is still mostly untapped in India. So, the potential and market opportunity are driving the upswing in India, and Licious has gotten a big piece of that, according to Gupta, who spoke at The D2C Summit.
During the summit, Gupta also revealed that Licious has a staggering annual sales rate of INR 1,000 crores, a 500 percent year-on-year growth rate, a workforce of 5,000 people, and operations in 14 cities throughout India with over 2 million consumers.
Licious has launched its first Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) monetisation option for 600 of its employees, worth INR 30 crore. Surprisingly, the stock option extends to the company's production and delivery teams, i.e., blue-collar workers—a rarity among Indian businesses.
While Licious has a substantial market share in the meat area, BigBasket, Reliance JioMart, and Amazon are all major players in the delivery of meat and meat goods. Other Indian companies like FreshToHome, Zappfresh, and TenderCuts, as well as offline and multichannel players like Venky's, Nandu's, and Suguna Foods, are putting pressure on Licious.
Existing investors such as Aman Gupta of boAt, Nithin & Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha, and Haresh Chawla, Partner, True North, participated in the Series F2 round.
The current round follows the unicorn-making round of $52 million raised by the gourmet meat delivery company in October 2021. Temasek, Brunei Investment Agency, and existing investors Bertelsmann India Investments, 3one4 Capital, Vertex Growth Fund, and Vertex Ventures previously invested $192 million in a Series F round.
Licious has now raised a total of $360 million from a variety of investors, including the current round.
With this financing, the business claims to be India's most valuable D2C brand. While its valuation is unknown, it is likely to have exceeded $2 billion, given that the highest-valued D2C startups in India include Peeyush Bhansal's Lenskart, The Good Glamm Group, FirstCry, and, which are all valued at $1.2 billion.
Licious is a farm-to-fork food company founded in 2015 by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta. The startup controls the entire back-end supply chain, including strict cold chain management, procurement, processing, and storage, to ensure that product quality and freshness are maintained from the beginning to the conclusion.
Licious specialises in chicken breast, chicken drumsticks, goat keema, and lamb chops, among other things, in the fresh meat sector. Licious also sells a variety of fish and seafood, such as basa fillet, mackerel, sardines, and prawns, among other things.
Exotic meats such as turkey, blue crab, quail, and Atlantic salmon are also available at Licious. Spreads, marinades, and pickles have also been introduced to the startup's fresh meat and seafood range as value-added items.
The direct-to-consumer meat market, which is worth $40 billion globally, is still mostly untapped in India. So, the potential and market opportunity are driving the upswing in India, and Licious has gotten a big piece of that, according to Gupta, who spoke at The D2C Summit.
During the summit, Gupta also revealed that Licious has a staggering annual sales rate of INR 1,000 crores, a 500 percent year-on-year growth rate, a workforce of 5,000 people, and operations in 14 cities throughout India with over 2 million consumers.
Licious has launched its first Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) monetisation option for 600 of its employees, worth INR 30 crore. Surprisingly, the stock option extends to the company's production and delivery teams, i.e., blue-collar workers—a rarity among Indian businesses.
While Licious has a substantial market share in the meat area, BigBasket, Reliance JioMart, and Amazon are all major players in the delivery of meat and meat goods. Other Indian companies like FreshToHome, Zappfresh, and TenderCuts, as well as offline and multichannel players like Venky's, Nandu's, and Suguna Foods, are putting pressure on Licious.
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