Karnataka, India-based seafood supply chain platform Captain Fresh has raised USD 2.3 million (EUR 1.9 million) in a pre-series A round of funding, which it will use to boost efficiencies across its supply chain.
Captain Fresh is an online platform, established in April 2019, which matches seafood providers with retailers, facilitates e-auctions for sourcing, standardizes supplies, secures on-time payments, and uses digital traceability systems in its operations.
Captain Fresh opened its business in Bangalore and has expanded operations to other cities across the country. The company is partnering with leading brands in the meat and seafood sectors to bring their brands online. It is serving more than 120 retail businesses in all formats.
The round was led by local Ankur Capital and joined by Incubate Fund India and Silicon Valley based angel investors, Captain Fresh said in a statement provided to SeafoodSource on Thursday, 20 August.
The fund will be used to upgrade technologies including computer vision, Internet of Things (IoT), bots, data analytics in order to digitize and enhance efficiencies across the supply chain, and to serve its expansion and hiring plans.
According to Captain Fresh, Indians would like to buy more meat and fresh seafood, but the existing supply chain in the country has failed to consistently offer the products they want with reasonable prices and guaranteed quality.
The company previously received seed funding from Nekkanti Group and Sandhya Aqua, which are major exporters of frozen shrimp in India.
“With a billion aspiring Indians seeking to up the protein in their diet, we see a huge latent demand for fresh fish and seafood, already a USD 12 billion (EUR 10 billion) market, waiting to be unlocked. We believe Captain Fresh's tech-driven model, which seeks to transform the supply chain, can do just that,” Ankur Capital Partner Krishnan Neelakantan, said in a statement.
Nao Murakami, the founder and a general partner at Incubate Fund India, said the funding will help bring in best supply chain innovations and facilitate potential collaborations between Captain Fresh and Japanese businesses.
Photo courtesy of Captain Fresh
