The funding round was led by Bertelsmann India Investments, Vertex Ventures along with UCLA. Existing investors Mayfield India, Sistema Asia Fund, 3one4 Capital and Innoven Capital also participated in the round. The funds will be used to expand to new cities, fostering the value-added product category, and strengthening the supply chain.
This is a second fundraise by Investec India this September. Earlier, the company had announced the successful fundraise for Kissht, India’s leading consumer fin-tech business.
Investec India has built a strong advisory business over the last few years within the Indian venture capital ecosystem. Investec India has advised companies across a wide range of sectors on Equity Fundraises at Series B and above, including Kissht, Bizongo, Treebo Hotels, OfBusiness, BigBasket, Pepperfry and Quikr. The firm also advised on the sale of CitrusPay to Naspers– one of India’s largest Fin-Tech M&A, and on the sale of Sokrati to Dentsu – one of India’s largest Digital Media M&A.
Frankie Brown of Investec India said: “In a large and unorganised market with broken supply and demand side, there clearly exists in our view a huge opportunity to build a large consumer brand in India’s meat market. Licious founders have assembled an excellent team with strong execution capabilities and built an outstanding quality of business and in our view clearly have an advantage to be a market leader. We are delighted to have advised them on a successful $25m Series C fundraise with Vertex and Bertelsmann as two lead investors to place them perfectly for the next chapter in the Licious story.”
Licious was launched in September 2015 by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta, who sensed a huge business opportunity in offering prime quality meat products in a market that was otherwise dominated by the unhygienic and unreliable wet market followed by frozen meat options, both of which are unpopular workaround for Indian consumers.
Licious follows an end-to-end business based on the hub and spoke model that starts from procuring the fresh produce to processing, storage and delivery. Through this entire supply chain, the freshness and nutritional content of the meat is strictly maintained till the delivery at the doorstep of the consumer. Licious was started with the aim of satisfying customers with world class meat, fish and seafood. Powered by technology, Licious delivers within 120 minutes of ordering through either the web site or the Licious app.
Today the business operates in Bangalore, Hyderabad and NCR, with plans to launch in Pune and Mumbai by the end of the year.
For more information, please contact:
Swapna Bhandarkar
swapna.bhandarkar@investec.co.in
Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt Ltd.
+91 9892507742
Notes to editors
About Investec India
Investec India is a leading specialist international financial services company supporting mid-market entrepreneurs, corporates and PE. We also provide exceptional equity analysis, ideas and execution services for investors interested in Indian equities.
About Licious
Licious, operated by Delightful Gourmet Pvt. Ltd, is India’s leading food brand operating in the meat and seafood category. Headquartered out of Bangalore, and presence across Delhi NCR and Hyderabad, Licious was launched in 2015 by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta to build a food brand offering prime quality meat products which was otherwise dominated by the unhygienic and unreliable wet market followed by frozen meat options which is an unpopular workaround for Indian consumers. Licious follows farm to folk model where the company owns the entire back-end supply chain powered by world class processing facilities along with stringent cold chain control to scientifically maintain the quality and freshness of each product that reaches the end user. Powered by technology, Licious delivers within 120 minutes of ordering through either the web site or the Licious app. For more details, please visit www.licious.in/