You decided to make a chicken dinner on a Sunday afternoon. How do you acquire fresh meat without stepping out of the house and risking hygiene and safety at an overcrowded butcher’s shop? Besides, most local meat shops remain closed due to frequent lockdowns. Without much thought, you can easily order fresh meat on a home delivery app like Licious or BigBasket. This is India’s online meat market. 

How this unorganised sector is undergoing a transformation

The online meat delivery market has stayed nascent valued at just INR 700 Cr. In 2019, the broader meat market has also remained largely unorganised. But with the faster emergence of online players, it is slowly transforming. Start-ups like Licious, FreshToHome, ZappFresh, BigBasket have seen 3X growth ever since the pandemic broke out. 

Key Forecasts of the Industry

India’s overall meat market is set to grow to more than INR 460,000 Cr by 2024 in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV). It has a large growth runway ahead and is also welcoming of disruption by branded players. The online meat market in India has huge headroom for growth. The demand is only surging, and the sales of online meat players are seeing a significant rise. This trend will further intensify, and India’s online meat market will be very interesting soon. 

What are the consumer pain points?

Purchasing meat from local butchers

The Covid-19 scare forced people to stop going to their friendly neighbourhood meat shops, which has helped online players to a great extent. Super verticals in online grocery and food delivery like Licious, FreshToHome, and BigBasket turned out to be safe and convenient options to acquire fresh meat directly to the doorstep. Covid-19  transformed the fish and meat purchasing behaviour of consumers dramatically. 

Due to safety concerns, consumers moved to e-commerce and online demand shot up for most of the companies. Covid-related apprehensions in purchasing from local/offline butchers led to offline players effectively communicating their superior quality and hygiene practices which boosted customer confidence.

Hygiene issues

As we are aware, the local butcher shops chop meat in roadside stalls which are most often open, teeming with fleas, and are surrounded by unhygienic conditions like open sewers, garbage dumps, stray animals, traffic, and pollution. Online meat companies slice, chop, store, and pack their meat in interiors at controlled temperatures against hygienic, conducive settings for the meat to remain fresh as long as it makes its way to the consumer’s table. The meat provided by online players is clean, without any stain of blood, and has negligible odour. 

Start-ups like Licious adopted industry-first and global standard food safety, and quality management systems right from the beginning of their journey to always ensure hygiene. The success of online meat providers is attributed to vertically integrated supply chains with high bars on quality. Licious is a INR 1000 Cr ARR (annual recurring rate) meat brand. 

Less options

With the local butcher, you can’t place too many demands or requests on the specific cut of meat you want, whether you want your shrimp deveined on both sides, or not. They are mostly overburdened with too many orders and are mostly unable to accommodate too many requests. Also, local butchers usually store 1 or few kinds of options in terms of tenderness of the meat or even in terms of the variety of meat and seafood available. 

Online meat marketplaces like FreshToHome offer a myriad of options including fish  and seafood, poultry, mutton, steaks and fillet, and even Ready To Cook pre-marinated meats, gravies, and curries. The pieces that are provided by online meat marketplaces are of high quality, rich in nutritional benefits, and ideal for young, working consumers. 

The players have innovated to provide consumers a wide set of offerings and attracted them through highly relevant and contextual marketing. FreshToHome enables its marketplace sellers to source and sell high-quality meat and fish directly from livestock farmers and fishermen. They receive close to 15 Mn orders per month and $85 Mn in annualised sales run rate. 

Longer wait times

Butcher shops are overcrowded with people placing orders. They are also short-staffed, and orders get vastly delayed. However, in online meat delivery, you can choose the delivery slots which are mostly not one or two hours later than the delivery time. The customer’s order will be delivered, packed, sealed, and fresh, right at the doorstep. 

It used to be a widely believed notion that for a brand to have national appeal and outreach, it needed to rely heavily on traditional strategies and physical structures more than anything. But the truth is that physical markets typically account for the highest expenditure shares towards rental and business expenses and pose different challenges in expansion processes.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, many restaurants had to close because they could not pay the rental and administrative fees. And that is where cloud kitchens became the game-changers. Cloud kitchens are a reality today and will continue to exist for various profitable reasons such as accessible scaling capacity and low operating costs. The cloud cooking industry had also performed well in the pre-COVID era; the pandemic gave this idea the boost it needed.

What are cloud kitchens?

A cloud kitchen is a commercial facility explicitly designed for the preparation of takeout meals. Cloud kitchens are sometimes also referred to as virtual kitchens, ghost kitchens, or shared kitchens.

Buying meat in India is nothing less of an ordeal. A buyer has to walk through the narrow blood-smeared lanes of the butcher’s colony only to be welcomed by flies and cross the beeline of customers to grab the best meat before the stock finishes. 

The meat industry of India is highly fragmented, its current market size is worth Rs 1,80,000 crore and 90 percent is dominated by the unorganised butcher shops according to FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Association of India). 

Besides the market is fragmented, inadequate hygiene measures and lack of surveillance of unhealthy or diseased animals makes the consumption of meat worrisome. Therefore, a tech intervention in the meat industry can improve the value chain operation. 

With online selling channels being incorporated by businesses across verticals, founders Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura of Licious decided to follow an e-commerce suit in the meat market. 

What is Licious? 

Licious, founded in 2015 by Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, is an online D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) meat brand that built a supply chain network by partnering with 180 vendors to deliver fresh and clean meat products within hours of order. 

The customers can order meat either from the company’s website or app. Licious currently has 3 lakh customers and delivers a minimum of 5,000 orders each day across five cities. 

Natural ice creams are all the rage, especially since the average consumer is shunning the overtly sweet, chemical, and additive infused commercial ice creams from big brands. They are favouring Brands like ‘Naturals Ice Cream’ that have a soft, melting texture, and subtle sweetness not to mention unique flavours. A number of gourmet brands that rely on advanced storage technology to get that perfect creaminess are on the rise. Here are some of the new-age refrigeration techniques used by them for storing dairy products like milk, cheese, and ice cream.

For Milk

Vapour Compression Refrigeration System

Vapour compression refrigeration system is an innovative technique for storing dairy products, especially Milk. Fresh raw milk is frozen at 4°C as soon as it arrives at the cooling centre. This system comprises bulk double or triple walled insulated storage tanks. These tanks usually have compact polyurethane foam or expanded polystyrene. They offer in-depth insulation for 12-hour milk cooling and storage with 1°C temperature rise at ambient room temperature of 30°C.

For Ice Cream

Low Temperature Extrusion

In this technique, the product undergoes high shear stresses. Ice creams taken out of the continuous freezer are pumped into an extruder.

Ultra-High-Pressure Homogenisation

This is a storage technique which precedes the freezing process. It stabilises the ice cream by lowering the rate of fat agglomeration.

Pre-Aeration

The pre-aeration process is best done upstream from the freezer using a separate high-shear mixer. When the stock is subjected to pre-aeration, small air cells form on the surface of the product which helps in shape retention of the ice cream during distribution.

Use Case – Prerna’s Handcrafted Ice Creams

Prerna’s Handcrafted Ice Creams is a Food and Beverage start-up based in Delhi and a new entrant to the Dairy Industry. They make gourmet ice creams and rely on the innovative dairy and ice cream refrigeration techniques mentioned above to make their products smooth and creamy.

Apart from Nycil’s prickly heat powder commercials on TV, the arrival of summers in India is marked by the airing of ice cream commercials. Ice cream- a single scoop or cone that offers 90-100 ml of heavenly bliss without which we consider our summers or any party to be incomplete was suddenly faced with an identity crisis. In 2017, the Amul ice cream commercial sparked off a controversy where a series of commercials conveyed that desserts containing vegetable fats cannot be termed as ‘real’ ice cream. This portrayal of frozen dessert led HUL to file a lawsuit in Bombay high court claiming that Amul’s commercial was maligning their frozen dessert brand ‘Kwality Walls’. 

Through this ice cream commercial of Amul, the consumers might have experienced an epiphany that several food brands, under the garb of ice-cream advertisements, were selling frozen desserts. But why would brands do that? 

Frozen Desserts Vs Ice Creams – The Identity Dilemma 

According to FSSAI, Ice creams are categorised under ‘dairy-based desserts /confections’ that can be further classified as plain, medium fat and low fat depending on the percentage of total solids, milk fat and milk protein used. Whereas frozen dessert/frozen confection is obtained by freezing a pasteurized mix prepared with milk fat and edible vegetable oils.

Also, the Prevention of Food Adulteration Rules, 1955,  states that ice cream is a product that contains not less than 10 per cent of milk fat. 

The Indian food and beverage industry has had a hard time adopting the direct consumer (D2C) category, mainly due to a long tradition of regular consumer visits to supermarkets and the lack of better online options. However, this tradition is changing. The latest figures show that D2C’s food businesses and beverage brands invested 24.8% in 2019, increasing from 12.5% in 2015, making this segment the fastest-growing category in D2C.

With the development of digital infrastructure, there has been an increase in the number of conscientious consumers ready to try new products and intervene directly and personally with the brand.

Volnaa, a beverage company has come up with a unique and surprising product to tackle the mounting problem of plastic pollution due to packaged drinking water. The product is named Volnaa and is a very sleek, interesting answer to on-the-go purchase of plastic water bottles. Volnaa water is ‘Bottled’ in aluminium cans which are 100% recyclable with ‘relock revolution’ – technology that allows for relocking the lids. 

Volnaa Beverages Private Limited is an F&B start-up co-founded in 2020 by Kartik Rajput and Kushagra Sharma. The company is mainly involved in the collection, purification, and distribution of water. However, the idea behind their product is much bigger than this process. Volnaa sources natural mineral water from the Himalayas with a pH level of 7.9.

Reducing plastic pollution: an industry trend

The founders of Volnaa have redefined the generic packaged water bottle. A single use plastic bottle which is responsible for a major portion of the global plastic pollution. By redesigning the packaging of water in an eco-friendly manner, Volnaa has spurred a new market for aluminium can water with relock lid technology. Last year a similar beverage brand ‘Responsible whatr’ had unveiled their ‘water in a can’ product. This goes to show that the trend is catching on in India with new players showing themselves in the new market. 

Increase in sales even with 6x price

The fact that the average price of the aluminium can packaged water costs 6 times higher than regular bottled water doesn’t seem to deter consumers. 

Nevertheless, if the solution is for a good cause, the price paid is worth it. And the problem to be solved is one that’s extremely important if we want to save the Earth from the dangerous plastic pollution which has already reached its peak. Global warming which is showing itself with unpredictable climate change across the globe needs to be tackled now. Putting an end to the production of single-use plastic bottles is a big leap towards ridding the earth of plastic waste.