Licious, a meat firm, has raised $52 million in investment, making it a unicorn.

Mumbai: Direct-to-consumer contemporary meat and food complete Licious has raised $52 million towards its Series G spherical light-emitting diode by IIFL’s Late Stage technical school Fund and Avendus, a senior company official told ET. This spherical takes the corporate to a post-money valuation of $1.05 billion, creating it the most recent entrant to the in-demand imaginary creature club of firms having quite a billion greenbacks in valuation.

“We can use these funds to grow our offline business, more are ability to eat product portfolio and for our geographic growth,” Vivek Gupta, cofounder, Licious, told ET.

In Gregorian calendar month this year, the corporate had raised $192 million as a part of its Series F spherical, light-emitting diode by the Singapore government’s investment trust Temasek, and Multiples non-public Equity, valuing it at $650 million. It counts funds like Brunei Investment Agency, 3one4 Capital, Bertelsmann Asian nation Investments, Vertex Growth Fund, and Vertex Ventures geographic area and Asian nation conjointly as its investors.

“We can opportunistically cross-check growing inorganically by deed smaller businesses within the accessory segments and business areas,” Gupta another.

According to Gupta, the company’s current revenue run rate stands at Rs one,000 crore. “Having big around an hour since our last fundraise we have a tendency to expect to shut the year at Rs one,500 crores. in keeping with the corporate, the D2C market in the Asian nations is at associate inflection purpose and is predicted to achieve a size of quite a hundred billion by 2025. The pandemic has competed for a significant role in fast growth for the arena.

“The contemporary meats and food sector remain mostly underserved and unorganized that holds a massive chance of $40 billion. we are going to still build the class through investments in technology for offer chain excellence, product innovation, talent, and marketer partner upgrades,” aforesaid Abhay Hanjura, cofounder, Licious.

“Licious has discontinuous the meat and food class, that has mostly been unorganized and underserved. Licious’ concentrate on product quality, freshness, and innovation has created a powerful complete creating them the undisputed class leader. Today, Licious is amongst the fastest-growing D2C brands and is one among the few client businesses in the Asian nation with terribly robust revenue retention metrics,” aforesaid Chetan Naik of IIFL AMC.

Founded in 2015 by Gupta and Hanjura, Licious presently serves fourteen Indian cities like city, Hyderabad, NCR, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Kochi, Puducherry, Vizag, Vijayawada, and city. it's delivered to quite two million customers to date. in keeping with the corporate, it serves over one million orders every month with over ninetieth repeat consumption across markets.

The D2C market in the Asian nations is at associate inflection purpose and is predicted to achieve a size of $100 billion+ by 2025. The pandemic has competed for a significant role in fast growth for the arena, the corporate aforesaid.