Licious narrows FY20 losses, revenues surge nearly 90%

Delightful Gourmet, the parent company of online meat and seafood brand Licious, narrowed its losses in the financial year 2019-2020 (FY20) to Rs 146.4 crore in the financial year ended March 2020. 

The Bengaluru based company had closed FY19 with net losses at Rs 438.7 crore.

Revenues from operations during the year under review surged 89.8% to Rs 131.8 crore against Rs 69.4 crore in FY19.

FY20 also saw total expenses more than double to Rs 283.8 crore from Rs 140.7 crore the previous year, according to Registrar of Companies filings accessed from VCCEdge. 

The filing noted difficulty in continuing business operations in the wake of the pandemic and lockdown in March 2020. In the beginning of 2020, poultry was one of the worst hit industries surrounded by misinformation around meat being a possible carrier of the coronavirus. Between February and March alone, the prices of chicken had slashed by 70-80%. 

However, after things started to normalise and there was more information about the virus in the public domain, online fish and meat retailing brands such as Licious benefitted the most largely on account of a surge in online demand for essentials, including meat. 

Founded in 2015 by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta, the startup manufactures and retails all varieties of meat products, sea-food, marinates, spreads and eggs. The startup claims over 10,000 orders a day across 12 cities. Apart from regular meat cuts, it offers ready to cook and meat-based spreads in its value added product categories.

Licious competes with Zappfresh, FreshToHome and Meatigo.