Struggles of Licious in Winning Over Indian Meat Consumers
India is a land highly rich in diversified culinary traditions wherein food, to its inhabitants, is not limited to only providing sustenance, but more profoundly a very much inherent component of culture, identity, and community.
Meat preparation and consumption are matters so closely guarded, cultivated for so many ages as being strictly made-to-order affairs solely for regional taste and preferences.
In this cultural context, consumer behavior in the meat industry is heavily influenced with regional butchers and markets surviving against online platforms such as Licious.
Freshness in the Cultural Sense in Meat of India
In India, people consider “fresh” first for the sake of meat. Many define “fresh” to be when a product of meat is purchased right from the butcher shop itself.
These would commonly slaughter an animal moments before when a buyer did come by and one would get fresh-cut meat.
With businesses that are that close and transparent in how carried out the dealings are, the person will inspect first hand regarding quality and texture and even on occasion smells when making a purchase.
Local butchers also service extremely niche regional needs. For instance, southern India has a great love for a particular variety of fish while in northern India, goat meat, also called mutton is the favourite.
The cut and preparation can even differ with “kadaknath chicken” available only in central India and available either bone-in or boneless.
Such niches are incredibly difficult for Licious-type platforms to compete as scalability requires standardization.
Another very important aspect is the personal contact that many Indian households have with their local meat vendors. Trust is built over years, and such familiarity is not easily established through online platforms.
Buyers will often rely on their butcher’s judgment regarding what type of meat to buy, a layer of interaction missing in digital transactions.
About Licious and Its Market Position
Licious is a D2C meat and seafood delivery service that has premium online delivery and was founded by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta in 2015. Being a D2C company ensures end-to-end control over sourcing, processing, and delivery.
The business model of Licious emphasizes hygiene, convenience, and quality, significantly different from the informal meat market, where strict quality control hardly exists.
Licious caters more to the urban consumer who is conscious of the value of convenience and is willing to pay for it.
The company has a large portfolio of fresh meat, seafood, ready-to-cook products, as well as cold cuts. The USP lies in offering vacuum-sealed, temperature-controlled, and neatly packed meats. It wishes to redefine the perception of the consumer in terms of freshness and hygiene.
Licious operates in a highly fragmented market. The meat industry in India is largely unorganized, wherein an estimated 90% market share is still left with informal sellers.
The Indian meat market is valued to be around $35 billion, and Licious only commands a minuscule share therein. Its revenue has crossed over ₹1,500 crore annually for FY23 but lags far behind in comparison to the gigantic market size that it is competing against.
Indian Meat Market Penetration Problems
1. Cultural Resistances and Patterns
The Indian consumers generally resist the purchase of pre-packaged meat. It is a product not perceived to carry freshness. From semi-urban to rural levels, the common public is not in the habit of buying the meat without having seen it first.
2. Price
The other barrier is price sensitivity. Licious has a premium tag attached to it, but the local butcher is cheaper. In small towns and cities, the variation is very stark with less disposable income.
3. Lack of Personalization
Customization is one of the significant advantages that local meat vendors have over an online platform.
Whether it’s the thickness of a chicken breast or the bones removed from the fish, local butchers have the expertise in fulfilling specific needs of customers in the same day. Licious, with standard cuts, very rarely matches that level of customization.
4. Limited Regional Penetration
Licious focuses mainly on metropolitan cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi. It reaches out very minimally to smaller towns where the major chunk of India’s population lives. The logistics issue is a huge challenge as far as cold chain transportation and last-mile delivery is concerned, making it all the more complicated to reach those places.
5. Trust and Loyalty
It is tough to win trust in an informal-driven market. Licious speaks a lot about hygiene and quality but is competing with decades-old relationships between consumers and their local butchers. That kind of relationship takes time and consistent performance.
Consumer Preferences: Data and Insights
A 2022 NRAI survey of Indian households reported that nearly 70% of Indian households preferred to buy meat from local markets because of perceived freshness and affordability. A Nielsen report further suggests that in urban India, online meat delivery platforms had seen penetration of merely 15% of meat consumers.
On the other hand, Licious’s target customers are working professionals and young couples in cities. These segments prefer convenience over tradition, which is exactly what Licious is offering. But this is still a niche compared to the enormous informal market.
Opportunities for Licious to Adapt
1. Improving Customization
To bridge this gap, Licious can offer even more customized options, such as region-specific cuts and preparation methods. Offering options to let customers specify their preferences at checkout may increase satisfaction and loyalty.
2.Consumer Education
Still, a significant market share is not aware of the hygiene standards Licious maintains or the quality of meat it delivers. Education campaigns, workshops on cooking, and teaming with chefs can de-glamorize ready-to-cook packaged meat and give it the importance of deserving respect.
3. Entry into Tier-2 and Tier-3 Cities
By using a hybrid model where local hubs or partner butchers augment online orders, Licious would be better placed to enter the smaller cities. Budget options will attract price-sensitive consumers.
4. Use Technology for Trust
Blockchain or equivalent technology to create end-to-end transparency regarding sourcing, processing, and delivery may help gain trust from the skeptical consumer. Updates in real-time and more details about sourcing could replicate the level of transparency from local sellers.
It’s undeniably given a good shock to the Indian meat market in terms of hygiene, convenience, and quality.
The problem it is facing, however, is how to get through the diverse consumer base, who are culturally rich and highly sensitive to prices and the importance they place on tradition, trust, and personal interaction.
Although it has been successful among urban consumers, it still remains restricted because it cannot penetrate into the rest of the larger market’s preference needs.
Licious needs to combine its premium products with the personal touch and affordability of traditional sellers to win over Indian meat consumers.
If it gives in to regional diversity and gets closer to their clients, then surely, the company will bridge even closer the current gap between tradition and modernity in the meat consumption trends of Indians.
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