aking a comeback in a cut-throat industry is no easy feat. Omnichannel meat retailer TenderCuts’ second innings is a journey of learning from its past when rapid expansion became its Achilles’ heel, to now tempering itself as an offline-first brand, with breakeven on the horizon.  The Chennai-based company currently operates 18 stores across Chennai, reporting an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of Rs 70 crore. The brand is on track to reach breakeven on a consolidated level in August 2025, with all its active stores hitting a positive EBITDA (earnings before net interest, income taxes, depreciation expense, and amortisation)—a rare feat in the challenging industry it operates in. TenderCuts was acquired by Delhi-NCR-based meat startup GoodToGoin 2023 in a distress sale and has since surpassed its parent in terms of scale. TenderCuts 1.0  TenderCuts was started in 2016 by Nishant Chandran as an on-demand omnichannel meat store with the promise to deliver an order within 90 minutes. The company tasted success relatively quickly, and at its peak in April 2022, TenderCuts had scaled to over 75 stores across Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru, with a 1,600-strong team driving the business to an ARR of Rs 240 crore. Since September 2017, TenderCuts had raised a total of $38.1 million across eight rounds, according to Tracxn. It counted Paragon Partners, Stride Ventures, and NABVENTURES among its principal investors.   “They went on an expansion spree, opening a lot of stores in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Originally from Chennai, they expanded cities purely to chase revenue after some investors indicated that if they doubled revenue, they would infuse additional capital,” notes Apoorva Sharma, Managing Partner at Stride Ventures, an investor in the combined entity.  However, when COVID-19 struck and presented online-first brands with a golden opportunity, the company realised it had overplayed its hand.  “We prioritised scale during the pandemic, and post COVID-19, and we could have done something better on the unit economics front while we were on the scale,” Sasikumar Kallanai, Co-founder of TenderCuts, tells YourStory.  However, after record capital inflow in 2021, the ecosystem was struck by a funding winter the next year as investors adopted a cautious approach, dealing a blow to the meat retailing industry. “In 2022, the funding environment sloweddown drastically. People were unable to raise money, and suddenly growth at all costs was no longer valued—profitability became more important than revenue growth,” adds Sharma. The dearth of capital also exposed the complex operational requirements of the industry, including specialised cold-storage equipment, frozen foods supply chain, managing inventory, and juggling regulations which change as soon as one crosses the state border. TenderCuts’ Chennai rival Fipolashut operations in 2023 after struggling to sustain high operational costs and low margins. Several other regional meat retail chains have either scaled back or exited, as investors have grown wary of the category’s capital intensity and operational complexities. Even the most visible players—like Liciousand FreshToHome—continue to post heavy losses, reinforcing the perception that achieving profitability in this segment is hard work.

Read more at: https://yourstory.com/2025/08/tendercuts-second-act-lean-stores-offline-push-focus-unit-economics