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Attending to the meat of the matter, Advertising and marketing & Promoting Information, ET BrandEquity

Licious.  (Image courtesy: Licious website)

Licious. (Image courtesy: Licious website)There is no doubt that D2C is the reigning buzzword among businesses with new age players, and legacy companies alike dabbing in the model. While digital native and bootstrapped startups may have pioneered the model in recent years, the proliferation of D2C companies has meant a fast cluttering market, even in niches like meat and poultry as Licious can attest.

The freshness clutter

Contrary to perception, India does have a significant non-vegetarian eating population. In fact, a Statista report from 2020 indicates that only 400 million Indians are vegetarians. So the potential for business in the meat and poultry segment is huge; something that many companies are now catching on to.

Licious operates in the digital D2C market taking on players like Meatigo and Fresh To Home in addition to local/regional players. It also competes with traditional meat and poultry brands like Zorabian that are available on various physical and online grocery platforms, and food retailers like Godrej Nature’s Basket and Foodhall; to say nothing of the vastly unorganized segment of the market consisting of local butchers. And all of them have one proposition – freshness.

Vakul Agarwal, vice president – growth at Licious accepts that when it comes to marketing in the meat and poultry segment, the proposition of ‘freshness’ cannot be escaped. While there may be a debate as to the definition of “fresh” and the actual freshness of the produce, what the consumers see is a bunch of brands, all claiming to be fresher than the rest.

To break this clutter, Agarwal explains, Licious has zeroed in on three aspects of their business. “We believe that the three pillars that will help us stand out from the crowd are our product, our platform experience, and the delivery experience. We are the only D2C player that processes the meat and poultry we sell. That in itself gives us greater control over the product in terms of quality,” he explains.

Explaining further, Agarwal says that defining these pillars for themselves has helped Licious benchmark against the best in the business. For example, when it comes to platform experience, they are not competing only with meat and poultry platforms, but also the likes of Swiggy and Zomato.

Similarly, when it comes to delivery time, they look at how efficient they can be when compared to the local neighborhood butcher, who may be 10 minutes away from one’s house. “For instance, we used to have next day delivery, and now it’s on the same day. The effort is on to reduce the delivery time as much as possible,” he adds.

While breaking through the clutter of D2C brands is one part of the challenge, competing with the neighborhood butchers comes with a different set of challenges. This is where pricing comes into play. If businesses want to scale up and go mass, they need to have competitive pricing, especially in a market as price conscious as India. Agarwal however feels that the triangle of the pillars mentioned will convince the consumers of the higher price of product and service.

Innovation and beyond

Innovation is another aspect that Agarwal expects will drive Licious to edge past the rest. “To break the clutter, you have to offer something more. I cannot reveal much but we are testing packaging that will indicate the level of freshness of the product. So there can be indicators on the packaging itself which will tell the consumer how fresh the product is, what its pH its etc.” he reveals.

This innovation also comes with a nuance of educating the consumer, which is another consumer touchpoint for Licious. It already has features like videos showing the methods to cook produce available on its platform. In addition to resting on the platform, these videos are also sent to buyers over WhatsApp once a product is delivered.

Licious also innovated in terms of packaging. “The idea was to de-stigmatize buying meat or poultry. Till date in most markets when one buys meat or even eggs, they are given the produce in black bags as if no one should know one has bought meat. We wanted to remove that stigma and so our packaging is red and white,” says Agarwal.

A distinct feature about the Licious’ packaging is that it features its customers’ sketches. What started as a small exercise in consumer engagement now gets the brands multiple queries every month to be featured on their packaging. The brand welcomes requests, and tries to feature as many customers as possible.

Meaty marketing mantras

Being a digital native brand, Licious has certain advantages, like access to first party data. However, sometimes, too much data can also be a challenge. In this case, it meant fragmentation by market, and the urge to customize campaigns for each market. However, over time, the brand realized that marrying insights from different markets to create a consolidated campaign is the best way to go.

The data does help the brand gauge consumer shifts in different markets, and helps in developing its portfolio of new products.

The next phase of marketing and consumer outreach for Licious lies in the physical world. It has set up two experience centres, both in Bengaluru, where customers can visit to “experience the product”. Elaborating on the concept Agarwal says, “They are not your typical stores. We do have products on sale, but the main focus is getting the consumer to visit and experience the brand and the products. So we have different recipes that can use our products, information about the brands and so on and so forth.”

The phygital strategy is not new when it comes to D2C brands. Furniture retail platform started the Pepperfry Studios across destinations for a similar purpose. For Licious too, the physical footprint will drive engagement while the online platform will continue to be the main point of sale.

The physical footprint will grow over time, but no two Licious experience centers may be the same. Leveraging the power of data, the brand intends to customize the offerings of the outlets according to the meat affinity in the region. So an experience center in Kolkata will look very different from one in Delhi, Mumbai, or Bengaluru.

Agarwal explains that all marketing efforts at this point in time are towards becoming part of the consumers’ meat buying habit. This includes communicating the brand’s superiority when it comes to the three pillars of Licious’ business mentioned earlier, and the innovations in store, in addition to providing a physical touchpoint to engage with the brand and its offerings.

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