Licious focuses on micro-markets to scale growth, expand dark stores

Licious is focusing on micro-markets within cities to drive growth, planning to scale dark stores and deepen presence in high-demand neighbourhoods

Direct-to-consumer meat and seafood platform Licious is betting big on “micro markets” within cities as the next lever of growth.

 

The company is looking to deepen penetration in high-demand neighbourhoods rather than expand widely across new geographies, said sources in the know.

 

The Temasek-backed company has identified 120 such micro markets across India and aims to establish a presence in at least 25 of them by FY27. To cater to these 120 micro markets, the company aims to have 400 dark stores, up from the current 130, they added.

 

A micro market refers to a specific locality within a city where demand density allows the company to scale operations by going deeper into the market.

 

The strategy works particularly well for Licious, as meat is a category with high-repeat consumption.

 

The company, however, declined to comment.

 

 Some of the micro markets identified by the firm include Electronic City and Whitefield in Bengaluru, Thane in Mumbai, and Gurugram and Noida in North India.

 

To give an instance of this opportunity, a study conducted by the company highlighted that Whitefield alone consumes nearly ₹750 crore worth of meat annually, making it an attractive pocket for focused expansion.

 

 The strategy is already showing results. Within a year, revenue from Whitefield has more than doubled from a run rate of ₹30 crore, and the company aims to take this to ₹100 crore by June, said one of the sources.

 

This is also expected to help the company deliver revenue growth of over 40 per cent in FY26. “Licious will close the financial year with a revenue of around ₹1,100 crore,” said the source.

 

In FY25, Licious reported revenue of ₹795 crore, up 16 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y).

 

“Meat as a category allows the company to go deep into such markets. This category is not a low-cost item — the average customer spend is about ₹1,800 per month on the platform,” added the source.

 

For Licious, almost 85 per cent of its revenue comes from repeat customers, and 80 per cent of that is from its own channel, licious.com.

 

These micro markets will see a combination of dark stores and offline retail outlets.

 

In Whitefield, for instance, Licious currently operates four delivery centres and four offline stores, but its 30-minute delivery coverage still extends to only about 50 per cent of the area.

 

Rather the micro market strategy will also bring focus on 30-minute delivery.

 

For this expansion, the company may not look at tapping equity partners, said the source.

 

Rather, it may now look for a fundraise only before a listing, which has been pushed to two-three years.

 

The company's last funding round was in 2022 when it raised around $150 million. The firm became a unicorn in 2021.