Meat brand Licious, operated by Delightful Gourmet Pvt Ltd, on Tuesday said it has raised $150 million (Rs 1,146 crore) in an extended Series F round of funding led by Singapore-based Amansa Capital.
New investors, Kotak PE and Axis Growth Avenues AIF-I also invested in the latest funding round of the startup, which became the first unicorn in direct-to-consumer(D2C) space six months ago, said Licious in a statement. Unicorns are private companies that boast of a valuation of at least $1 billion.
The company’s existing investors also participated in the round along with prominent angel investors including Nithin & Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha, BoAt’s Aman Gupta and Haresh Chawla, Partner, True North. The Bengaluru-based firm counts IIFL AMC’s Private Equity Fund, Multiples PE and Temasek among its existing backers.
“The growing interest of investors from India and abroad alike is an added assurance that obsession with customers, quality and service standards are the pillars of the best businesses,” said Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, Co-Founders at Licious.
The company will use the fresh capital to invest in technological intervention that will help category development and improve overall customer experience. Part of the funds will also be deployed for strategic acquisition and expansion of the brand's reach.
“Due to Licious’ focus on quality and strong execution, its successfully creating a habituated and loyal customer base. We believe under the leadership of Abhay and Vivek, Licious is best positioned to serve the fresh meat and seafood need of India,” said S Sriniwasan, MD at Kotak Investment Advisors Ltd. Kotak has invested in Licious through Kotak Pre-IPO Opportunities Fund which owns a total corpus of Rs 2,000 crore.
Avendus acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Licious for the transaction.
In October 2021, Licious raised $52 million from IIFL AMC’s Private Equity Fund at a billion-dollar valuation, making it one of the over 40 startups to enter the unicorn club in 2021.
Priot to this, Licious raised $192 million in July 2021 at a valuation of around $650 million. That round was led by Temasek Holdings and Multiples Alternate Asset Management.
Its competitor Fresh-to-Home was also in talks to raise capital at a unicorn valuation, VCCircle reported in November.
Licious was founded by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta in 2015.
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 2020-2021 against Rs 146.3 crore in the previous financial year. However, the company reported over 3x jump in total income 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.