Meat and seafood brand Licious is now worth over a billion dollars

• Licious has raised $52 million in a round led by IIFL AMC’s Late Stage Tech Fund.
• The company manages its own supply chain from sourcing to selling.
• It has raised over $310 million to date and counts Temasek, 3one4 Capital, Bertelsmann India Investments as investors.

Licious — which sells meat and seafood online — is now the latest entrant to the Indian unicorn club after being valued at a billion dollars. The New Delhi-based startup is the first direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand to achieve this valuation.

A direct-to-consumer brand is a company that sells its products directly to customers without relying on third parties in a big way. A more traditional retailer follows a longer chain to provide a product to customers — manufacturer/producer> to a wholesaler> to a distributor> to a retailer > to customer.

The meat and seafood brand Licious achieved this valuation after raising $52 million in a round led by IIFL AMC’s Late Stage Tech Fund. Avendus Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Licious for the transaction.

Licious was founded by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta about six years ago. The company works on a farm-to folk business model, which means that it owns the entire supply chain from sourcing to selling. The company has created a robust cold chain control system to maintain the quality of its products from procurement, processing to storage.

The company specialises in chicken, goat, lamb and pork meat, among others. It also offers fish and seafood products, along with exotic meat varieties like turkey, blue crab and more.

The company has raised over $310 million to date, with $192 million being infused in its last round raised in July this year. The Series F round was led by Temasek, with participation from 3one4 Capital, Bertelsmann India Investments, Vertex Growth Fund and others.

“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 is still largely underserved and unorganised that holds a vast opportunity of $40 billion,” Licious’ cofounders Hanjura and Gupta added in a joint statement.

The entry of Licious into the unicorn club is just one example of the increasing valuations and demand of D2C brands in India. Over the last year, this segment of the retail and ecommerce industry has witnessed a significant uptick in its usage.

Soon brands like Mamaearth and MyGlamm others will be next in line to be valued at over $1 billion.

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