A quiet revolution is sizzling in Indian kitchens. A powerful consumer shift, led by younger, urban demographics, is upending the traditional meat market. The demand is for convenience: clean, portioned, and recipe-ready boneless cuts of chicken, mutton, pork, and seafood. This preference is not just changing shopping baskets but is fundamentally altering how meat is processed, stored, priced, and marketed across the country.
The Premium for Convenience: Psychology and Practicality
The move towards boneless meat is driven as much by psychology as by cooking habits. Deepanshu Manchanda, founder and CEO of Gurugram-based Zappfresh, explains a common kitchen sight that deters many: when bone-in meat is heated, natural pigments seep out. This myoglobin seepage—a mix of muscle pigment and natural juices—is often mistaken for blood, making consumers uneasy. Boneless meat avoids this visual discomfort entirely.
Furthermore, modern recipes and lifestyles favor boneless options. "Whether it’s a burger or any snack, you’ll hardly find anything with bone now. New-age recipes lean heavily towards boneless because you can do so much more with it," Manchanda notes. This sentiment is echoed by butchers like Imran Qureshi from Delhi’s Ghaffar Manzil, who observes that young office-goers and those averse to handling raw meat specifically ask for boneless for its ease of cooking.
This convenience commands a hefty price premium. At Qureshi's shop, bone-in chicken sells for ₹170-₹200 per kg, while boneless fetches ₹300-₹350 per kg—a premium of 70–100%. Online, the gap is stark: on Licious, boneless meat averages ₹688/kg versus ₹367-411/kg for bone-in. Zappfresh prices it at ₹423/kg compared to ₹215/kg for bone-in. Zappfresh reports a 10-15% annual rise in boneless meat demand over the past decade, while Licious says boneless now constitutes nearly 30% of its portfolio.
A Cultural Divide and Logistical Challenges
Despite the trend, bone-in meat retains a strong cultural and culinary foothold. For many communities, it is about ritual, identity, and flavor. Traditional Muslim kitchens, coastal fish cultures, and Dalit and pastoral communities prize the bone for its gelatin, marrow, and nutritional value. "Bone gives flavour — the broth, the marrow, that depth you can’t get from boneless," says Rashid Syed, a long-time meat buyer from Delhi. Older families preparing gravies or biryani also often prefer bone-in cuts.
For meat companies, catering to the boneless boom is a costly affair. Akshat Gupta, practice leader for food and agriculture at Praxis Global Alliance, explains the heightened risks: boneless meat has greater surface exposure, losing the natural "sterile core" protection of bone-in carcasses. This makes it spoil faster and raises contamination risks, necessitating an unbroken, tightly controlled cold chain.
Companies are investing heavily in this infrastructure. Licious maintains a chilled range of 0°C to 4°C with embedded tracking and real-time alerts in its fleet. Zappfresh is expanding into frozen foods, adding expensive Individually Quick Freezing (IQF) lines and cold rooms. IQF setups alone can cost between ₹50 lakh and ₹10 crore. The process itself is less efficient: deboning increases trim loss and "purge" (watery fluid release), reducing usable weight and squeezing margins.
Waste, Innovation, and the Future Market
To combat thinning margins, processors are finding innovative ways to monetize waste. Licious is diverting trimmings into pet food, pharmaceuticals, and agri-inputs, creating new revenue streams. "The question is not just how to manage waste, but how little of it we can afford to create in the first place," say Licious co-founders Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura.
The shift is reshaping the broader market. The frozen meat and ready-to-cook segment, valued at roughly ₹10,000 crore, is growing at 13-14% annually. This growth is attracting big players; ITC acquired brands Meatigo and Prasuma in a deal worth about ₹187 crore. Even legacy chains like KFC are rethinking strategies as bone-in volumes fell 4% since 2020 while boneless grew 11%.
However, the online meat sector faces financial headwinds. While Zappfresh went public in October 2024, it has raised about $16 million, far less than Licious's $490 million or FreshToHome's $286 million. Quick-commerce experiments in meat, like those by Zepto and Dunzo, have seen limited success. Consequently, players like Licious are also expanding offline, planning to open 25 physical stores to capture the bulk of meat sales that still happen through traditional channels.
The boneless trend is also penetrating the B2B sector, with restaurants and food processors seeking standardized, boneless cuts to reduce labor. As India's meat consumption evolves, the divide between the convenience-driven future and the flavor-rich past is becoming increasingly clear, setting the stage for a complex, two-track market.
