Licious catches $25m

Licious, the India-based operator of a meat and fish e-commerce platform, has received $25m in a round co-led by UCLA Investment Company, an arm of University of California Los Angeles’ endowment, UCLA Foundation, the Economic Times has reported.
Bertelsmann India Investments, part of media group Bertelsmann, and Vertex Ventures, the venture capital unit of Singaporean government-owned Temasek, co-led the round, which included diversified conglomerate Sistema’s Asia Fund, Mayfield India, 3one4 Capital and InnoVen Capital.
Founded in 2015, Licious runs an online platform that sells fresh meat, fish, eggs, pickles and spreads, delivering them to a customer’s home.
The company is present in Bengaluru, NCR and Hyderabad but will use the funding to expand into the cities of Mumbai and Pune this year. It also plans to enhance its supply chain.
Licious raised $1m in a 2015 seed round featuring angel investors including Mohandas Pai and Kanwaljit Singh before adding $3m in an April 2016 series A.
Mayfield India led the company’s $10m series B round a year later, investing with Sistema Asia Fund, 3one4 Capital and Neoplux Technology Fund, a subsidiary of conglomerate Doosan.
Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta, co-founders of Licious, said in a statement: “We are extremely bullish about our plans going ahead. These funds will greatly aid us in deepening and widening our market presence and enable us to offer new products and services to our customers.”
– A version of this article first appeared on our sister site, Global Corporate Venturing.