Meat brand Licious, operated by Delightful Gourmet Pvt Ltd, said it has raised fresh capital from Gruhas Proptech LLP, which is backed by Zerodha’s Nithin and Nikhil Kamath, Haresh Chawla, partner at private equity firm True North and boAT Co-Founder Aman Gupta.
According to the company's regulatory filings, Haresh Chawla, Aman Gupta, Sameer Mehta, Narshing Das Makkar and Ashish Aggarwal each received 87 Series F1A preference shares at an issue price of Rs 10,50,738.
Gruhas Proptech LLP led the round with a Rs 3.47 crore investment, followed by Chawla with a Rs 2 crore investment.
According to documents, Gupta, Mehta, and Makkar each put in Rs 1.05 crore, with Agarwal putting in the remaining funds.
In October, Licious raised $52 million from IIFL AMC’s Private Equity Fund at a billion-dollar valuation, making it the 29th such startup to enter the unicorn club in 2021. Licious is also the first direct-to-consumer (D2C) startup to achieve unicorn valuation.
Licious last raised $192 million in July 2021 at a valuation of around $650 million. Then round was led by homegrown private equity fund Temasek Holdings and Multiples Alternate Asset Management.
Licious was founded by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta in 2015.
In the five years since its launch, it claims to have witnessed a 300% growth and has served over three million packs of world-class meat products to consumers across Bangalore, Hyderabad, NCR, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Kochi, Puducherry, Vizag, Vijayawada and Kolkata. Licious serves over one million orders every month with over 90% repeat consumption across markets, according to its website.
Licious reported a net loss of Rs 369.8 crore in the fiscal year 2021 against Rs 146.3 crore in the previous financial year. However, the company reported over 3X jump in total income which stood at Rs 435 crore in FY21, compared to Rs 138 crore in FY20.
Last year in November, the company announced a new employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), christened ‘Everyday Vesting, Anytime Liquidation’, starting this year. Currently, the firm has over a 3,500-member team with employees across different disciplines and functions.
