Online meat seller Licious has raised a series C round of $25 million from Bertelsmann and Vertex Ventures.

Investec India was the sole adviser in the deal that also saw participation of UCLA and existinginvestors Mayfield India, Sistema Asia Fund, 3one4 Capital and Innoven Capital also participated in the round. The funds will be used to expand to new cities, fostering the value-added product category and strengthening the supply chain, the company said in a statement.

Frankie Brown of Investec India said,“In a large and unorganised market with broken supply and demand side, there clearly exists in our view a huge opportunity to build a large consumer brand in India’s meat market. Licious founders have assembled an excellent team with strong execution capabilities and built an outstanding quality of business and in our view clearly have an advantage to be a market leader.”

Licious was launched in September 2015 by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta, offers prime quality meat products in a market that was otherwise dominated by the unhygienic and unreliable wet markets followed by frozen meat options, both of which are unpopular workaround for Indian consumers.

The company follows an end-to-end business based on the hub and spoke model that starts from procuring the fresh produce to processing, storage and delivery. Through this entire supply chain, the freshness and nutritional content of the meat is strictly maintained till the delivery at the doorstep of the consumer.

Licious was started with the aim of satisfying customers with world class meat, fish and seafood. Powered by technology, it delivers the products within 120 minutes of ordering through either the web site or its app

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