AIMA honours Vivek Gupta & Abhay Hanjura as Entrepreneur of the Year

Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, co-founders of Licious, a premium D2C meat and seafood brand, have been honored with the “Entrepreneur of the Year Award” by the All-India Management Association (AIMA) at the Managing India Awards 2024. This prestigious accolade acknowledges their contributions towards transforming the landscape of the Indian meat and seafood industry and for leading the establishment of India's first unicorn direct-to-consumer brand.

Gupta and Hanjura, former professionals with a shared passion for food, finance, and technology, came together in 2015 to redefine how India sources and consumes meat and seafood products. Over the past 8 years, Licious has democratized access to meat and seafood in India, serving close to 4 million households across 20 cities. In a largely unorganized, underserved market, the platform has delivered its promise of premium, hygiene-ensured proteins through streamlined procurement, robust supply chain management, and pioneering quality control standards. These efforts were recognized earlier this year when Licious Chicken was certified as “India’s Juiciest Chicken” by the ICAR - National Meat Research Institute.

In its citation of the award, the AIMA stated, “Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura have revolutionized meat and seafood retail and built India’s first direct-to-consumer unicorn. The duo has broken many a taboo to serve one of the most underserved grocery segments and made life easier for many meat lovers by delivering their preferred proteins to their doorstep. Their e-commerce platform is leading a transformation of a mostly unorganized, generic, and hyper-local industry.”Some of the awards received by Licious in the past have included the ‘CII Award for Food Safety 2019’, AMST Industrial Award 2021 by the Association of Meat Scientists and Technologists for outstanding contributions to the meat sector in the country, Product Innovator of the Year (2023), India Food Safety Summit by Synnex, and more.