They are getting to the meat of the matter and have already proven their prowess in the meat delivery space. Abhay Hanjura says he studied all kinds of weird things before he joined the entrepreneur bandwagon with licious.in. He quips, “I’m a biotech and genetics graduate who ended up with a triple qualification of business management and entrepreneurship, a fellowship in risk management along with my biotech degree, till the entrepreneur in me knocked at my heart’s doorstep. I was joined by my friend Vivek Gupta, a rank holder commerce graduate and chartered accountant, who also came out of his career at Helion and following my entrepreneurial streak. We started Licious as we both are food connoisseurs and wanted to build India’s largest food brand,” states Abhay on how the duo built their startup in Bengaluru after a bad experience with buying meat here.
There is a whole market of meats to choose from and all of this at the click of a button — Chicken curry cuts, peri peri chicken, spicy chicken wings, chicken lollypop, minced chicken, lamb curry cut, lamb chops, lamb mince and in the seafood section there’s a whole gamut of mackeral, seer steak, rohu, catla, pomfret and prawns. There’s also cold cuts like salamis, breakfast sausages, turkey, frankfurter, hams and more. Talking of the challenges, Abhay confesses, “It was easy to get complacent and be lost in a comfort zone. We incidentally are passionate food lovers and used to bond over good food, especially meat. This is where we realised the need for others looking for good meats at their doorstep. We had to meet all the challenges right from getting the right raw material, to processing the products without a trace of unwanted fat, trimmings and similar waste by our expert butchers and handling the product within the global cold chain standards from source to last mile.”
The boys soon got lucky when Mohandas Pai and a few other angel investors decided to invest in their startup. Revealing how it all happened, Abhay says, “Mohandas Pai related to this glaring problem and loved the fact that we’re trying to build a ‘gourmet food brand’. Looking ahead, we’re committed to consolidate our leadership position in Bengaluru before we move on to other cities in India.”
