Licious enters plant-based meat business with new brand Uncrave

Online meat retailer Licious has entered the plant-based meat business with a new brand called Uncrave.

Unlike typical mock-meat brands that sell to vegan customers and ‘activists’, Licious will offer Uncrave to its core meat-consuming customers as an alternative for occasions when they abstain from eating meat, such as Navaratri, cofounder Abhay Hanjura told ET.

“There has not been a brand that truly focusses on Indian customers and the needs of those customers in this space,” Hanjura said.

The products — chicken and mutton mock meats — have been in the making for close to two years.

The company is targeting at least 20% of its three million repeat customers and aiming to become the market leader in a year.

Hanjura said the company’s revenue in the financial year 2021-22 (FY22) was more than Rs 800 crore but less than its target of Rs 1,000 crore.

Discover the stories of your interest

“We could not reach the target primarily because we could not serve the demand,” he said. “We will be clocking close to Rs 1,500 crore this year,” he added.

Former Titan and Wildcraft executive Simeran Bhasin heads Licious’s alternative protein business.

“Licious is the only Indian company to house both animal and alternative protein under one roof. We have been able to achieve this because we have always made our consumers — Indian meat eaters — our biggest priority,” Bhasin said. “When it came to developing the Uncrave range we relied completely on our consumer-backward R&D and innovation process.”

Licious became a unicorn – a privately held firm valued at $1 billion or more – in October 2021 after it raised $52 million in a funding round led by IIFL Late Stage Tech Fund and Avendus.

In March this year, the company raised another $150 million led by Singapore-based Amansa Capital.

Other companies in the plant-based meat space include Tata with its Tata Simply Better brands, Bengaluru-based Shaka Harry, and international brands such as Beyond Meat.

The Uncrave brand will be initially available in all major metro cities and the product will be manufactured in a separate facility in Bengaluru, from where it is shipped.

Hanjura said that the company would focus on going deeper into existing cities.

“We were around eight cities (operations) around Covid-19 and we launched 15 new cities in this period. Each of these cities has seen great progress,” he said. “Cities like Vizag, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Lucknow, and Ahmedabad have seen great growth. Kolkata has grown faster than any city in the past.”