India-based B2B seafood marketplace Captain Fresh raises US$40 million in a Series B funding round

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India-based B2B seafood marketplace, Captain Fresh raises US$40 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Prosus Ventures and Tiger Global. The investment round was joined by existing investors Matrix Partners, Accel India, Incubate Fund, and Ankur Capital.

With this latest funding, the startup’s valuation has jumped to nearly US$200 million compared to the last funding round in July 2021 when it raised US$12 million from Accel India.

Captain Fresh will be using the fresh funding to build a real-time marketplace, artificial intelligence for pricing and quality standardization and applying robotic automation to move volumes with precision. The startup will also look at expanding its distribution network and team across geographies.

Diving Deeper

Founded in 2019 by Utham Gowda, Captain Fresh offers seafood and freshwater fish supply chain platform. It helps farmers and small fishermen by aggregating countrywide retail demand on its platform

The company claims that it has rapidly emerged as a preferred monetization partner for supplier communities across the Indian coast. Its tech-enabled distribution network spreads across 20 cities with over 2000 retail businesses.

“We have grown by six times in the last one year and three times since our last funding round in terms of revenue and are looking to expand deeper in India. We are also looking at overseas markets now–primarily the US and Europe,” said Utham Gowda, CEO Captain Fresh

He added, “The company is currently on an annualised revenue run rate of around $50 million”. Annualised revenue run rate is a projection of upcoming revenue based on what the company clocked during its best performing month.

Gowda said the existing seafood traders in the country have largely been focusing on the international market and that there has not been a big domestic player trying to organise the market (here). “It is a supply deprived market with a growing population, growing affordability, growing need for protein from seafood–the gap between supply and demand is only going to expand,” he added.

“The team has demonstrated impressive execution and strong unit economics,” said Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments, India, Prosus Ventures. “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.”