Heat and eat: Licious takes on restaurants and cloud kitchens with ready-to-cook non-veg dishes

Love biriyani but can't spend a couple of hours in the kitchen? In the mood for some Goan prawn curry but clueless about how to make it? Well, what if you only needed to spend a few minutes to get it ready, steaming and on your dining table?

Online meat and seafood delivery company Licious is aiming to help its users do just that.

The direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand is taking competition from restaurants and cloud kitchens head on with its ‘Ready to Cook’ category, through which it has launched new products such as burger patties and biryani, cutlets and curries, as well as stuffed chicken, marinated meat and seafood.

This category had become popular during the pandemic as people were working from home and did not have time to cook. With the accelerated growth, domestic research firm RedSeer estimates that this market could grow at a CAGR of 18% and reach Rs 4,800 crore by 2024 from Rs 2,100 crore in 2019.

“Licious operates at the intersection of the product-platform-experience. This proposition is unique to us. Also, we are arguably the only true D2C brand in the country. In that sense, we do not really look at these players as competitors,” Vivek Gupta, co-founder of Licious told Moneycontrol.

“We understand that we operate in an ecosystem and industry that is still largely unorganised. So, our biggest challenge is to continue disrupting this industry with tech, quality and global standards of processing and packaging.”
 The category currently contributes 15-17% to its revenue and is expected to increase.

Other brands in this category with other products include iD Fresh, Amul, Adani Wilmar, Jubilant FoodWorks and Veeba Foods and Freshtohome.

What's next on the horizon
On adding more categories, Abhay Hanjura, co-founder of Licious, said the company was keenly looking at the alternative-protein category, including plant-based meat, but is not launching it at the moment.

"This has to be solved with taste and nutritional quality, protein and so on and so forth. We have our R&D team and are tracking it," said Hanjura.

Licious has also started expanding offline, and has opened two ‘meat cafes’ so far, in Bengaluru and Gurgaon.  The brand plans to launch 6-10 new stores in the next 90-120 days.

Notably, a number of D2C brands are expanding offline as the online market is stagnating. The omnichannel route has become the next play for Nykaa, Sugar cosmetics and Purplle, as they look to drive their next phase of growth.

Expansion plans
“Our expansion plans are on track. We are currently in 28 cities and plan to expand to around 45 in the next 12-18 months,” said Licious’ Gupta. The brand has a presence in cities such as Raipur, Surat, Thrissur, Trichy, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam, among others.

Commenting on rising inflation, Gupta said, “As a brand you can't behave tactically in some of these environments. It is not that something has become expensive for us so we can pass it on to the consumers. A brand is generally a trustworthy, dependable source. So, in these temporary moments, brands also absorb some of these costs and pass on very little. But in the long run, if this inflation stays, then consumers will have to face it.”

Eye on the bottomline 
Licious has slowed down its hiring for the year and is focusing on profitability.It has over 2.5 million customers registered on the platform. and currently gets 85% of its business from repeat customers on a monthly basis.

The company had earlier said that it will be looking at strategic acquisitions and invested $1 million in Bengaluru-based fresh pet food startup Pawfectly Made. But, currently it is not looking at any more investments or acquisitions.

Last October, the company raised $52 million at a valuation of a billion dollars, making it one of the first unicorns in the D2C space. Licious raised another $150 million earlier this year.