Vivek Gupta, Abhay Hanjura, 

When Gupta and Hanjura ditched their high-paying jobs in 2015 to set up Licious, an e-commerce only meat and seafood brand, their parents frowned on the concept. “Couldn’t you find a better business than selling meat?” their parents asked. But food ties them together. “Our friendship is based on lamb chops. We both are big meat eaters,” says Hanjura (right) who was a consultant with Futurisk Insurance Broking Company in his earlier avatar while Gupta was working with venture capital firm Helion Ventures. With a presence across six cities, Licious today has managed to crack the usual customer pain points of quality, hygiene, freshness, and convenience in a highly unorganised and underserved meat and seafood market in India, pegged at $40 billion. The Bengaluru-based startup operates its own cold chain to maintain the freshness of products from the time of procurement, processing, and storage to the time it reaches the consumer. Licious says it has served over 600,000 customers so far with over 90% repeat business monthly. The startup has raised funding of $64 million since inception and says it is profitable in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.