Thanks to the digital revolution that has come in the recent times, one can now go online to order fresh meat at the click of a mouse, with start-ups like
"In a short span of eight months, we have been successful in breaking even. We deliver to more than 12,000 customers in a 30-day cycle. We started with 12 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) in July 2015 and currently have over 60 SKUs and are expanding," Deepanshu Manchanda, one of the founders of Zappfresh, a meat delivery start-up in Gurgaon, told ET.
Manchanda co-founded Zappfresh along with Shruti Gochhwal in July 2015, with just Rs 20 lakh as an investment, which has now sprawled into a 3000 sq ft storage and processing unit in Gurgaon, managing six tonnes of meat every day. They even aim to introduce around 100 SKUs in both fresh and processed meat segments by the end of this year.
However, the industry is still quite unorganised, because of an inefficient supply chain and retail market that is predominantly occupied by local butcher shops. The Indian meat industry, which is pegged at over Rs 100,000 crore, has grown around 20% annually over the past four years. Moreover, meat consumption in India has grown over the past two decades, with an average per capita consumption of almost 6 kg/year.
The risks in this segment can be traced to the gap in the demand-supply chain of the meat industry and the fact that maintaining cold chain temperatures throughout the lifecycle of the highly perishable product is an expensive affair.
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