EXCLUSIVE: Meaty Licious Ventures Into Veg Zone, Soon To Launch Veg Ready-To-Cook Range

Licious, India바카라�s first D2C unicorn, seems anything but stoppable. After disrupting India바카라�s animal protein and seafood space in a never seen style, the six-year-old startup, is ready with its plan of action. 바카라�We plan to launch something in alternative protein such as plant protein. It is an interesting area that is growing globally but hasn바카라�t penetrated India much,바카라� says Vivek Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, Licious. But isn바카라�t it going against the grain of the company? 바카라�Not really,바카라� Gupta continues confidently.

바카라�Vegetarians will not consume plant protein because they have enough food choices in India. They will never appreciate the taste of meat (even if it's plant protein). Non-vegetarians, who don바카라�t want to consume animal protein due to health issues or during festivals, are our target customers,바카라� Gupta says.

That바카라�s not all. In another two months, the founder duo of Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, have plans to open state-of-the-art experiential meat stores in Bangalore and NCR to provide a never-before experience to customers. 바카라�They will be a meat-lover바카라�s paradise. That much we can guarantee,바카라� Gupta says.

But what looks like an aspirational and easy achievement for team Licious, is actually, years of research and hard work. 바카라�On one side, we had to work with the animal rearing sector, own a processing plant, and establish a cold supply chain, while on the other, the requirement of time and money, worried us. For the first 2.5 years, we stayed in just one part of Bangalore. We wanted to remain small and create a consumer proposition in a way that once they try us, they don바카라�t leave us,바카라� says Gupta.

And that바카라�s what happened. In the second month of launching in 2015, 90 per cent of its customers made repeat orders and just kept coming back. Even today, 90 per cent of the company바카라�s monthly business comes from repeat customers.

The company thrives on quality and sticks by it. 바카라�Our simple benchmark was: can we feed our children what we are selling?바카라� says Gupta. One of the key pillars of Licious바카라� success has been its supply and cold chain. The company had to own its supply chain because nothing existed before that. The founders also spent a lot of time touring Japan and Korea to understand how the meat moves so that it remains fresh.

바카라�Our next halt was at the chicken suppliers. We went with a 140-point checklist about various quality parameters and asked them to grow chicken per that. We gave them a pre-order of a ton of chicken for a month바카라�s supply. That one ton a month demand has now risen to 30 tons of chicken a day,바카라� says Gupta with a glint in his eyes.

Over the years, Licious has thrived on innovation. Apart from offering 26 different cuts of chicken and several cuts for mutton, it launched the world바카라�s first meat-based spread with actual chunks of meat. Understandably, it was a super hit. In fact, its ready-to-cook seekh kebab range took 1.5 years to come to its final shape. Really? 바카라�That바카라�s because while the specimen tasted fine when it was cooked in the Licious kitchen when I cooked it at home, it tasted weird. So, we had to make it suitable for 바카라�idiot-free cooking바카라�,바카라� says Gupta.

But people often find Licious products a bit highly-priced바카라� 바카라�When the conversation is taken away from the mandi price to quality, people perceive it as premium. If a farmer is under constant pressure to meet a certain price for his product to be sold, neither will he make money nor will consumers get the desired quality. We, consciously, have stayed away from that price war and only concentrated on the principle that we started with 바카라� quality,바카라� says Vivek.

Licious is delicious. We say?