Online meat and seafood delivery platform Licious is switching gears with a plan to open 500 physical stores across the top 20 cities where it currently operates. About 75% of these stores will be in Delhi, NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, and Chennai.
In a conversation with Business Today, the company’s co-founders, Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, said the first five stores are planned for Bengaluru over the next 2-3 months. Branded as Licious, these stores are intended to complement the existing online business and attract new customers.
Gupta says going offline will give the Licious brand more visibility, while Hanjura describes it as a natural evolution for the brand. The promise is a very sophisticated experience, unlike a wet market. “You can ask for cuts and will get it all in sealed packaging. It is meant to be a fun way to shop,” says Gupta. Licious will own the stores, which in Bengaluru will be spread over an area of 700-800 square feet due to affordable real estate. The six existing Licious stores today are extensions of the online business and serve as sampling channels. Value-added offerings like ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat products in the offline stores will give Licious an edge over neighborhood meat shops.
The stores can be located in townships or prime commercial areas. “We don’t need to be on high streets. In smaller centers, we can open stores first,” says Hanjura. The company’s five processing plants and the existing supply chain will help Licious open offline stores faster. While India is predominantly a meat-eating country, there is still a long way to go in terms of meat consumption. In the US, per capita meat consumption is 112 kg. “If you look at a nation’s per capita income, there is a deep correlation with meat consumption. For instance, in China, it was 4-5 kg in the 1960s and is 65 kg today,” Hanjura says. In India, it was 4 kg in 2000 and reached 8 kg when Licious started operations in 2015. “Today, it is at 12 kg, and there is no question that the number will increase.”
How Licious manages to recover the capex for each store will be a challenge and depends on the number of footfalls and the premium consumers are willing to pay.
(To read the detailed story on Licious' brand new game plan, check out the latest issue of Business Today, or read the story here: