B2B seafood marketplace, Captain Fresh has raised $40 million Series B funding from Tiger Global and Prosus Ventures (formerly Naspers Ventures).
Existing investors such as Matrix Partners India, Accel India, Ankur Capital and Incubate Fund also participated in the round.
Founded in 2019 by Utham Gowda, Captain Fresh is a farm-to-retail platform for seafood and freshwater fishes. It procures fishes/seafood directly from the agents/farmers, and supplies across B2B, B2R and B2B2C channels, providing fishes at competitive pricing compared to unorganised channels.
Captain Fresh claims to have a distribution network of 20 cities and more than 2,000 retail businesses. Captain Fresh empowers small fishermen and farmers through its platform that aggregates the fragmented retail demand from across the country.
Through this capital infusion, the company plans to build tech interventions and deeper tech integrations across the supply and demand side network, such as, a real-time trading marketplace, pricing and quality standardization using AI, as well as the application of robotic automation to move massive volumes with precision. Captain Fresh will also utilise the funds towards expanding its team and distribution network across geographies.
Utham Gowda, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Captain Fresh, said, “For centuries, the fish and seafood industry has stayed the same with very little innovation and we have a unique opportunity to revolutionise the sector utilising technology. We are thrilled to have investors like Tiger, Prosus Ventures, Accel and Matrix believe in us, following early backers Ankur Capital and Incubate Fund, which clearly emboldens our vision. We are aggressively expanding our aspirations across all dimensions – products, value chain presence, and markets – to create an institution that could define our generation.”
Captain Fresh has reported 6x growth in the last 12 months and its reseller segment (B2B2C) has demonstrated an increase of 20x within just three months of launch, retailing about 1.2 million kg of fish and seafood every month.
Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments, India, Prosus Ventures, said, “We are thrilled to partner with Captain Fresh in their goal to transform a highly fragmented and inefficient industry. The team has demonstrated impressive execution and strong unit economics. We are confident about their ability to utilise technology to solve for efficiency and scalability challenges and at the same time make a very positive impact on a large number of fishermen in the country.”