Licious Becomes India's First Meat Delivery Unicorn

With Licious, India gets its first meat delivery unicorn.

Nishant Sharma @nishantstv

05 Oct 2021, 12:49 PM IST

<div class="paragraphs"><p>Licious, at present, employs 2,000 people across seven cities and processes more than 17,000 orders a day. (Photo: Licious website)</p></div>

Licious, at present, employs 2,000 people across seven cities and processes more than 17,000 orders a day. (Photo: Licious website)

Licious has raised Rs 388 crore (about $52 million) in a round led by IIFL Asset Management Ltd.'s private equity fund, catapulting the meat delivery startup into the unicorn club with a valuation of more than $1 billion (Rs 7,454 crore).

The Bengaluru-based startup, run by Delightful Gourmet Pvt., sells fresh meat and seafood online and has processed more than 20 lakh orders to date. It plans to use the proceeds to double down on investments in technology for supply chain excellence, product innovation, talent, and vendor partner upgrades, according to a statement.

The latest investment by IIFL Asset Management's late-stage tech fund comes just two months after Licious raised Rs 1,431 crore (or $192 million) in a round led by Temasek and Multiples Private Equity.

"Even though the funding for the direct-to-consumer sector has grown significantly, FMCG is still not considered the most attractive category. We expect that Licious' unicorn status will change that,” Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, co-founders of Licious, said in the statement. The fresh meat and seafood sector, they said, is still largely underserved and unorganised with an opportunity of $40 billion (about Rs 2.98 lakh crore).