Bangalore-based Delightful Gourmet Pvt Ltd, which operates online meat and fish ordering platform Licious, has secured $10 million (Rs 65 crore) in Series B funding from a clutch of investors, a company statement said.
The participating investors include Mayfield India, Mohandas Pai’s 3one4 Capital, Russia-based Sistema Asia Fund and Korea-based Neoplux Technology Fund, the press note added.
Last month, VCCircle first reported that the firm was in advanced stages of talks to raise fresh capital from one of its existing investors.
The company will use the funds to expand its operations to other Indian cities including Delhi-NCR and Hyderabad, the statement said.
“The Series B Fund will greatly aid us in beefing up our back-end and expanding in newer markets after strongly laying the foundation in the Bangalore market,†said Vivek Gupta, co-founder at Licious.
Founded in June 2015 by Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, Licious runs an end-to-end business model for meat delivery that comprises procurement, processing, storage and delivery. The firm claims to deliver within 90 minutes of ordering on its site. Hanjura formerly worked in the insurance industry, while Gupta was the former finance controller at Helion Venture Partners. Licious claims to have a customer base of 60,000.
The firm had raised $3 million (around Rs 19.9 crore then) in a Series A round from early-stage investor Mayfield. The first tranche of $500,000 of the $3 million funding came in December 2015, according to VCCEdge, the data research platform of News Corp VCCircle.
In 2015, Licious received $1 million (Rs 6.4 crore) in seed investment from former Infosys board member and CFO TV Mohandas Pai, former co-founder and senior managing director of Helion Venture Partners Kanwaljit Singh and a few undisclosed investors.
Besides Licious, other players in the meat ordering and delivery business are Gurgaon-based DSM Fresh Foods Pvt. Ltd, which runs online startup Zappfresh, to sell raw meat and associated ready-to-eat products. In August last year, the startup raised an undisclosed amount in a fresh round of funding.
Late last year, VCCircle reported that early-stage investor Ventureast Fund Advisors India Ltd was looking to sell its entire stake in its portfolio firm VKS Farms Pvt Ltd, a frozen meat and poultry firm.
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