CAPTAIN FRESH ATTRACTS INVESTORS EAGER FOR RAPID GROWTH TO CONTINUE

PUBLISHING DATE
July 21, 2021

Captain Fresh, an online seafood marketplace, has raised a further $12 million (€10.2 million) in its latest funding round, with angel investors among those putting money into the Indian-based company.

The funding round – the third in eight months – will be used to hire more staff, expand globally and develop the two-year-old firm’s technology.

Captain Fresh offers procurement technology and a supply chain that, each day, is said to deliver more than 20 tonnes of seafood from dozens of species.

The latest funding round was led by Accel, the American venture capitalists, according to a statement widely reported by media.

Barath Shankar, a partner at Accel, said in the statement that the fresh fish and seafood market in India suffered “a huge supply-demand mismatch”, inconsistent quality and “fragmented channels”.

He said Captain Fresh aggregated supply through technology, standardised quality and gave retailers “better quality products, higher fill rate and predictable delivery”.

Other major investors in the funding round included Matrix Partners India, Ankur Capital and Incubate Fund, while more than half a dozen angel investors also contributed.

Utham Gowda, Captain Fresh’s founder and CEO, said improvements the company had made to its operations had been shown to be effective by “a ten times growth spurt through the pandemic”.

“We are thrilled to find ourselves at this unique intersection of a largely unsolved problem, a highly capital-efficient business model, and backed by a high-quality investor set,” he said.

Just as the conventional seafood sector is attracting investors, the alternative seafood industry is also reporting brisk interest.

Sial Paris News room reported recently how Bluu Biosciences, a German biotechnology company, had drawn in €7 million in seed funding from across the globe.


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