LICIOUS

-BORN TO MEAT

Yashika Damodar
PES1202101810

ABSTRACT

This research paper is about Licious, a D2C meat and seafood chain, which has seen tremendous growth in the
last 6 years since inception and has now become one of India’s Unicorn start-ups. This paper tracks down the
history of Licious, the conception of the idea, and how it all began. This paper gives an insight into Licious’s
Financials, Strategic plans, STP, and Marketing Mix of the firm, which has efficiently worked for the firm and has
brought success as well. Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta, are the driving force behind the idea of Licious. They
can be called the masterminds behind the ‘Licious idea’. The paper has details about the potential competition
and some of the future prospects of Licious.

Keywords: Licious, STP, Marketing mix.

CASE STUDY

“We were just driven by one aim: to provide quality, safe, hygienic meat to people like myself who love their
meat.”
- Abhay Hanjura, Co-Founder, Licious

Back in 2015, when the idea of an online meat supply was building and both Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta
were conceptualizing their idea, funding their vision was the first major step. They approached a lot of VCs within
the country and after a struggle through the initial stages, in 2015 T.V. Mohandas Pai, Manipal Global Education
Services, and their ex-bosses believed in their concept and funded them with $1 million. Today, after 6 years of
existence in the market, Licious has secured a total of USD 338.5 million in investment, including the most recent
round led by IIFL AMC's ‘Late-Stage Tech Fund’, which increased the company's valuation to $1 billion as of
October 5, 2021. Licious has become the 29th unicorn in India so far in 2021, and the first unicorn startup from
the D2C category thanks to the latest injection.
The Investors

Some of the company's investors include TV Mohandas Pai, Vertex Growth Fund, Nichirei Corp, 3one4 Capital,
Bertelsmann India Investments, UCLA, Sistema Asia Fund, Mayfield Capital, Sistema Asia Fund, Korea-based
Neoplux Technology fund, and Innoven Capital. Multiples Alternate Asset Management and Brunei Investment
Agency are the newest investors in the Series F round of funding. On October 5 th, IIFL joined the investor’s list in
the Series G funding.

Current Revenue, Growth, and Profits

Talking about revenue and profits, Licious has announced steady growth in the fiscal year 2020, lowering its
losses by 66% to INR 146.3 crore. For the fiscal year ending 2020, the company's income increased to INR 138
crore, while its costs increased to INR 283.8 crore. While losses have decreased from INR 438.7 Cr in FY2019 to
INR 146.3 Cr, this substantial decline is attributed to a fair value loss on financial obligations with a fair value of
INR 376.9 Cr. In FY2020, Licious had a fair value loss on a financial liability with a fair value of INR 145.2 Cr and a
gain on financial obligation derecognition of INR 144.7 Cr.

As a result, rather than focusing on the bottom line, it's more important to consider the company's growth
through product sales. Licious' income has climbed by 75% from INR 78.96 Cr to INR 140.7 Cr in the previous year,
but costs have increased by 102 percent from INR 140.7 Cr.

OVERVIEW

This study is about Licious, an Indian online meat stall. Licious was an idea, visioned by two visionaries who have a
profound love for meat and have a passion for cooking. Vivek Gupta & Abhay Hanjura founded Licious, in 2015.
The firm offers a vast variety of fresh meat and seafood that can be ordered online and delivered anywhere in the
country. Today, Licious is India's first direct-to-consumer startup, based in Bengaluru, Karnataka. “Farm-to-fork”
is the firm's business model, with the corporation owning the full back-end supply chain and cold chain.
Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Noida, Faridabad, Gurugram, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Coimbatore,
Chennai, Kochi, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Pondicherry, and Kolkata are some of the cities where it works.
There are five processing centres in all, one in each of Hyderabad, Mumbai, Gurugram, and Bengaluru. The
FSSC22000 UKAS accreditation for food safety has been awarded to Licious. In fact, Licious is the only company
with UKAS accreditation, making it the first of a kind. Its apps are accessible on the Google Play and Apple App
Stores. A website, www.Licious.in, is also available for desktop convenience.

HISTORY AND FOUNDATION OF LICIOUS

Abhay was the head of business intelligence in an insurance risk management firm, while Vivek was a finance
controller in a Bengaluru-based VC firm. Both being avid meat lovers were intrigued by a small idea, and the idea
was to start an online meat delivery chain in India. Like most of us, even they thought that India is a vegetarian
country, with a majority of consumers consuming a plant-based diet. But on doing research and surveys, they
noticed that around 68-70% of Indians at some time or the other, consume meat. Even though around 70 percent
of Indians consume meat and fish, the business is poorly structured. The main item of concern was sourcing the
meat. An average Indian, by a majority, procures his meat from:
 1. Neighborhood butcher
2. Meat specialty stores
3. Frozen foods section in nearby hypermarkets.

Out of the 3 sources, Meat specialty stores are only found in big cities. Not everyone can access hypermarkets
easily, and sometimes they might seem too expensive for a common man. The only option easily accessible is the
neighborhood butcher. In this case, both the butcher and the consumer are unaware of the quality of meat being
sourced. Such butchers most of the time tend to be unhygienic and have no cold storage facilities supporting
their supply. More than 95% of India's fresh meat and seafood business is unorganized, conjuring up images of
filthy local markets, odor, and an unpleasant shopping experience. Vivek quickly saw that the problem in the
Indian meat market was not a lack of availability, but a lack of trust, as is characteristic of an experienced
investor/VC. As a result, rather than focusing just on an online marketplace, they began to focus on developing a
consumer brand. The two intended to alter how Indians perceive meat.

“We wanted to do something that leaves a long-term impact, makes a difference to the industry……. We want
Licious to outlive us.”
- Vivek Gupta, Co-Founder, Licious

And to name the idea, after considering more than 300 name options, they settled on Licious, which is derived
from the word "delicious." "We wanted to call our organization something that appeals to people's emotions,"
Abhay explained why they chose that name. Our goal was to create a full-service meat company."

Both Abhay and Vivek spent almost 3 months researching their market and looking for people who could envision
their dream as well as they could do, and rope them in for more workforce. Joe Manavalan (Co-founder, chef),
joined this project who then became the man behind Licious’s ‘Ready to eat’ products.

Post all this, and the acquiring of the funds ($1 million/6.5 crores INR) from potential investors, their ideas started
to take a faster pace gradually.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

The main aim of Licious was to set a farm to fork brand, which meant:

Step 1. to set up a reliable supply chain

Step 2. finding livestock farmers and fishermen
Step 3. setting up a cold chain and a deep high-in-tech processing unit

The main plan was to change the way people saw meat. They wanted to remove the usual black bags and replace
them with clean white boxes. They wanted to only provide fresh temperature-controlled meat, with no odor and
quality meat being door delivered. They of course needed a more localized supply chain to achieve their goal. It
was all about the touch and feel experience, hence it was an omnichannel strategy.

Licious began in June 2015 with a simple goal statement: it will not sell anything that its cofounders would not
eat. Simple promotions like word of mouth and recommendations fetched them 45 first-day orders. Moving
ahead that month, Licious had processed around 1300 orders in the first month. It has now grown into one of
India's most disruptive consumer brands, with over 20,000 orders per day with a focus on a meat and seafood
delivery in raw and fresh, ready-to-cook, and ready-to-eat categories. The firm promises to sell no frozen items
and operates in the 'fresh' category. All of its goods are kept at a temperature of 0-40 degrees Fahrenheit and are
free of antibiotics, chemicals, artificial preservatives, color, and flavoring.

Licious employs technology to innovate across the supply chain, including the cold chain, where they leverage
IoT, AI, and other technologies. To ensure that items are accessible, they employ clever demand forecasting
technologies. In fact, Licious has incorporated technology into our back-end research and development. Licious is
a brand that does not cut corners when it comes to quality.

In the Direct-To-Consumer market, where Licious and a few other firms operate, the supply chain consists solely
of:

FARMERS BUTCHERS START-UP

Licious has a 90% repeat customer rate. According to Vivek Gupta, there is no secret to their client retention
success. Licious, he added, abandoned the baggage of traditional 'knowledge' connected with the meat business
right from the start and focused on providing a world-class product. To that purpose, they decided early on to
take control of the whole end-to-end supply chain, as well as the cold chain.

This guarantees a profit margin of 30-40% for the businesses. However, Licious has achieved 90 percent return
customers who account for 85 percent of its sales by using D2C as a direct marketing channel to reach out to
consumers. IIFL AMC's Chetan Naik stated that Licious has built a strong brand by focusing on product quality,
freshness, and innovation, making them the unchallenged category leader. Licious is now one of India's quickest
D2C companies, as well as one of the few consumer firms with excellent revenue turnover numbers. 

CUSTOMER OFFERINGS

Customer offerings of Licious are pretty clear and transparent. They focus on three main checkpoints.

1. They sell the meat only if they feel it can be consumed by them as consumers. They tell themselves to be
extremely picky and being extreme meat lovers in Licious, they claim to handpick and verify each product
that goes out from the warehouse.
2. They make sure that if the meat isn’t fresh, they will not sell it. They make sure that the meat is kept in
temperature-controlled spaces with a ranging temperature from 0 to 5 degrees, right from procurement
of meat until the meat reaches the customer’s doorstep.
3. They charge only for what the consumers buy from them and do not consider any unconsumable parts of
the bird/animal.
They offer a wide range of products ranging from eggs, chicken, mutton, fish, and seafood to ready to cook
delicacies and spreads.

Concerning the main service they provide to consumers, we can stress the vision and mission statements of the
firm to understand their service better.

 VISION: ‘Licious exists because we deserve better meat.’

  MISSION: ‘Licians will build the most loved meat brand by delighting the world with an unmatched range
of meat and meat products.”

CONTROL OF VALUE CHAIN

Kotler defines value as the total of all advantages provided by a company to its customers minus the cost incurred
by the client to get those benefits.

As a result,

Benefits Cost Value

The value that organizations deliver to their clients determines whether they succeed or fail. Licious has always
placed a high emphasis on its customers, which has resulted in significant growth in the target market.

These start-ups are aware of the urban population's rising fixation with fresh, organic, and chemical-free food, in
addition to hygiene. The chemical-free part is a little more challenging in the meat industry since meat is such a
perishable product that it requires the usage of chemicals to keep it from spoiling. However, some of these
businesses claim that appropriate handling and efficient cold supply chains prevent the usage of chemicals.

Licious does this by forming partnerships with farmers, selecting the birds, determining fees, and monitoring
immunization, cleanliness, and other factors. Licious controls and runs the whole back-end supply chain,
removing any intermediaries. Using a middleman may result in the company's requirements not being met.
Unlike other start-ups that have established cold-storage systems and are now selling fruits, milk, and other
products, Licious intends to stick to the meat. However, it has been launching several new value-added goods,
such as cold cuts, spreads, and fry-and-eat items, to broaden its consumer base. It also provides a variety of cuts
for various recipes. The corporation has also begun to put up experience centres to persuade clients of the
authenticity and hygiene of the product. The move is in keeping with the omnichannel approach of the
corporation.

SEGMENTATION AND TARGETING

 Demographic segmentation: Income

 Geographic segmentation:
1. Neighborhood
2. Postal/ZIP code
3. State
 Psychographic segmentation:
1. Hygiene conscious
2. Fast and instant cooking

Licious’s target market consists of quality and health-conscious individuals who appreciate hygienic products that
are worth the money you pay for. Licious also offers items for people who are busy and have a time constraint
and cannot cook for longer durations. Licious sells quality, vacuum-sealed meat, and seafood which can be used
instantly. Adding on to it, they also provide ready to cook marinated meat and seafood, which can cook within
10-20 mins, like cutlets, curries, kebabs, tandoors, etc. The income segmentation approach works since almost all
of Licious's goods are priced in between medium and high ranges, since the products are gourmet and exotic. But
Licious tries to keep the prices as accessible as possible so that even low-income people can avail quality meat
and food. So we can say that Licious's products were initially targeted at middle and high-income groups, but with
current revenue of close to $133 million, as per July 2021. Concerning geographical segmentation, since the reach
needs to be localized, Licious works in zonal segments.

POSITIONING

Licious- ‘For the love of meat’/ ‘Born to meat’ - Licious positions itself majorly into the market for people who are
meat-eaters. The firm concentrates on an audience who have a passion for food and cooking non-vegetarian
delicacies. Licious believes that people who genuinely have a love for meat will prefer quality over quantity
because the quality of meat has a huge impact on taste.

BRANDING

Licious has been identified with excellent grade meat and fish since its debut. The brand has been essential in
driving the category via product development, digital assistance, and supply chain restructuring since it is
obsessed with quality and consumer centricity. Licious is now poised to improve lives via meat and seafood after
establishing a presence in seven cities and serving over three million orders! The brand is releasing a new brand
identity to create a higher-order emotional connection with its audience, to instill fresh enthusiasm among its
audience and other ecosystem contributors.

Apart from that, the brand is recognized by the logo of Licious:

Licious is developing an innovative and consistent experience - from enhancing and affecting the ecology to
changing everyday ordinary moments into extraordinary experiences - with the firm idea that there is more to
meat. To reach this ambitious aim, the firm is raising the bar in sourcing, manufacturing, and customer service.
Licious is improving the lives of livestock producers and fishers by defining quality criteria, offering training, and
giving economic stability as part of this ecosystem overhaul. The idea pervades all parts of the company's
operations, as well as its existing and potential personnel.

COMPETITION

Considering the delivery of fresh quality meat, and online-based service, currently there are some competitors
that Licious has to watch out for:
 1. FreshtoHome is a vertically oriented e-grocery startup established in Bangalore that sells fish, meat, and
vegetables.
2. Zappfresh is an online fresh meat brand operated by Gurugram-based DSM Fresh Foods Pvt Ltd, which
assures that the meat delivered to consumers' doorsteps is sanitary and free of contaminants.
3. Meatigo is online meat and seafood delivery platform which started its operations in 2017, from
Gurugram. It expanded its scale of business to 6 big cities in just 3 years.
4. TenderCuts launched in 2016 is also an omnichannel, and tech-driven brand that provides fresh cut meat
and seafood via neighborhood stores.
5. Jalongi is also a Gurugram based online fresh fish and seafood retailer, founded in 2018 which operates in
both Kolkata and Delhi NCR as of now.

MARKETING MIX

1. PRODUCT

-Screenshot from www. licious.in

Concerning the products offered by Licious, the product ranges from:

 Varieties of eggs, like quail eggs, chicken eggs, duck eggs, brown eggs, country eggs, kadaknath eggs in
packs of 6, 12, and 30.
 Chicken curry cut, Chicken breast, Chicken tenders, Chicken drumsticks, Chicken wings, Chicken mince,
Chicken legs, Kadaknath chicken, etc.
 Mutton curry cut, Lamb racks, Mutton brain, Mutton fat, Mutton mince, Mutton heart, Boneless mutton,
Mutton soup bones, Paya, etc.
 Fishes like Catla, Rohu, Basa, Sea bass, White Pomfret, Anchovy, Seer, Cod, etc.
 Prawns like Tiger prawns, Flower shrimp, seawater prawns, Scampi, Sea white prawns, etc.
 Blue Crabs
 Ready to cook varieties like kebabs and tandooris, tikkas and cutlets, specialty marination, etc.
 Cold cuts like Salami, sausages, etc.
 Spreads like chunky continental chicken, chunky butter chicken, etc. When the spreads were launched, it
was a first-of-its-kind product. The food industry hadn’t come across such an innovation.

These products are FSSC 22000 certified, which is India’s first firm to receive this license.

As per the services,

 Licious provides smart combo options, of two products that might go well together. This combo is priced
at a much lesser price when compared to both the products individually.
 Licious opened an exclusive subscription-based service option called Licious Meatopia. Meatopia is a
membership service that provides subscribers with special privileges. One-month, three-month, and six-
month programmes are now offered.
 Licious offers constant coupons and discounts to first-time buyers and regular customers.
  Licious created a relationship module dubbed 'priority desk' for repeat purchasers. Premium clients will be
assigned a relationship manager who will be in charge of all issues ranging from placing an order to
receiving the items. In the initial stage, they introduced it for 5000 super users, to reach at least 50,000
members in the following 12 months.

2. PRICE

 Eggs: Eggs in Licious are sold in packs of 6, 12 and 30, and are priced accordingly. Prices start from INR 55
and go up to INR 299, depending on the egg the consumer wants to buy from the wide range of choices
that Licious provides. Exotic products like quail eggs, duck eggs can also be procured at a price less than
INR 100 for a pack of 6.
 Chicken: For the variety of chicken sold in Licious, like the various cuts and parts, are sold in different
quantities on the website. Basic curry cut, weighing 500 grams is priced at INR 139. We can procure meat
in two sizes, 500 and 1000 grams. It is seen that the prices aren’t exceeding a price of INR 450, making it
easily purchasable.
 Mutton: All the parts of mutton sold on the website, right from lamb fat, costing around INR 89 up to
boneless lamb meat, costing INR 949 for 500 grams.
 Fish: Curry cut sea bass, of 350 grams if priced at INR 495, 500 grams of Rohu is priced between INR 200-
290, a fillet of Basa, of 450 grams is INR 349, 450 grams of white pomfret is INR 509. Gourmet fish like
Himalayan trout is priced at INR 739 for 300 grams, and whole Emperor approximately 900 grams by
weight is priced at INR 949.
 Prawns: Of the wide varieties of prawns supplied by Licious, some of them are Scampi, at INR 552, for 500
grams, Tiger prawns at INR 589, for 250 grams, etc.
 Ready to cook: Around 250 grams of ready to cook chicken variety, irrespective of the marinade or the
dish, is priced from INR 100 to INR 200. Dishes like crumb-coated prawns, Mediterranean prawns are
priced from INR 250 to INR 400. The price range of Kebabs starts from INR 250, goes up to INR 500. Some
unique platter combos, with 3,4, and 5 varieties, and their prices start from INR 470 to INR 800.
 Spreads: A one-time serve spread is priced at INR 29, a 200 grams bottle is priced at INR 199, and a combo
of 1+1 bottle is priced 338. An exotic spread flavor is priced at INR 249 per 200 grams.
 Cold cuts: The cold cuts of Licious ranges from INR 199 to INR 315.
 Combo: The combos are priced with discount rates ranging from 5% to 19%.

3. PROMOTION

Since 2015, the promotion team has always been ideating and has kept customers’ requirements as the crux of
their promotion strategy.

 Initially when Licious was launched, Word of mouth communication and recommendations was their
promotion, where people re-purchased meat because of a prior experience, which was good.
 Licious did newspaper campaigns, which facilitated wider reach in regions where they serviced.
 Licious had unique TV commercials with well-known actors. They had catchy taglines like “Licious Ek Aisi
soch hai, jo bath badal de”, “Master-chef nahi, Faster-chef”, ‘Samadar se leke, Ghar ke andar’, and ‘Licious
 fresh, delicious fresh’. All these commercials have a signature background music of Licious, which people
can recognize as well.
 They conduct creative and attractive product launching. For example, When Licious spreads were
launched, they installed pop-up stores in different locations, and also had Bollywood actor, Shilpa Shetty
unveil the product for the first time.
 Turning loyal customers into brand ambassadors was one new initiative Licious conceived. Online teasers
were circulated online, and the brand ambassadors were chosen via interactive contests. These
ambassadors even launched their marinades. And these are the faces we find on their vacuum-sealed
white boxes when we buy their products.
 They also have famous Bollywood stars roped in as the brand ambassadors, like Anil Kapoor and Arjun
Kapoor. The recent commercial, which stars them, is a tribute to the meat lover that brings a meat lover's
'nakhras' to life and emotionally connects with people, according to the firm.

4. PLACE

 Licious being an e-commerce market, people avail their products and services via ‘www.Licious.in’.
 Understanding the supply chain of Licious and the locations they serve, i.e. Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Kolkata,
Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Panchkula, Mohali, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Cochin,
Vijayawada, Vishakhapatnam, Pondicherry, and Trichy.
 They promise to deliver the order within 12 hours. Once the order is processed and ready for delivery, it
will be delivered within 90-120 minutes.
 If the customer adds any out-of-stock item into their virtual cart, it will be delivered the next day. This
kind of distribution was new to the e-commerce industry.
 Since it is a meat-based segment, and the freshness of the meat and the seafood they serve, needs to be
retained, Licious limits its hub to a certain radius so that from the hub to the delivery location, the iced
boxed can remain chilled.
 As of the offline experience stores, Licious opened two stores in Ascendas Park Square Mall, Bengaluru,
and in Galleria Mall, Gurugram.

The above-mentioned strategies have helped Licious become a Unicorn startup in 2021 with an added funding of
$52 million. It is the world’s first D2C to attain unicorn status and enter the $1 billion valuations.

THE FUTURE OF LICIOUS

THE ROAD AHEAD

The firm hopes to capitalize on the significant market opportunity in the fresh meat and seafood area by
expanding its roster of 7 existent markets in India. Licious' expansion into these critical areas, which include Tier-II
cities, demonstrates the company's dedication to bringing order to a sector that is currently 96% unorganized.
With almost 73 percent of India's population eating meat, the country's meat sector is worth INR 4000 crores.
Apart from this expansion within the country, shortly, a global expansion is also planned. Gupta noted that
Licious' development objectives include building an omnichannel presence, expanding the market to 20 more
Indian cities in the next six months, and exploring the Middle East market in 2022. Licious also intends to launch a
ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat product line. Licious intends to sell its whole product line of over 200 SKUs in all
of its new markets. Fresh cuts of chicken biryani, fish and shellfish, cold cuts, ready-to-cook specialties like
kebabs, and the brand's famous chicken and prawn spreads in the ready-to-eat category are among them.

As e-commerce services for critical items, meat, and groceries grew in popularity, there are several signs that
Licious will witness an increase in users. The present objective is to devote considerable resources to increasing
consumer value and product innovation. It also has ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat items. In India, the firm
aspires to lead the way in terms of meat innovation and consumption. As a result, after the next ten years, Licious
will be on the cutting edge of transformation.

CONCLUSION

Licious is a one-stop-shop for all of your fresh meat needs. Only the freshest meat and fish are available here, and
they are delivered to your house. You may now purchase beef from the comfort of your own home, at any time.
Chicken, Mutton, Seafood (Fish, Prawns, Crabs), Marinades, and Cold Cuts are among the many options available.
All of the goods are healthy and natural. You'll never buy meat and seafood the same way again after
experiencing Licious.
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