Seafood supply chain platform Captain Fresh raises $12 mn

Infifresh Foods Pvt Ltd, which operates seafood-focused business-to-business (B2B) startup Captain Fresh, has raised $12 million (Rs 89 crore) in its Series A round of funding led by venture capital fund Accel. 

Existing investors Matrix Partners, Ankur Capital and Incubate Fund also participated in this round, as per a press statement. Several startup founders including Asish Mohapatra and Ruchi Kalra (OfBusiness), Souvik Sengupta (Infra.Market) and Rajesh Yabaji (BlackBuck) also contributed. 

“Over the last 24 odd months, we have iterated and fine-tuned the playbook for efficiently aggregating demand and supply, validated by a 10x growth spurt through the pandemic,” said Utham Gowda, CEO and founder of the startup. 

The startup – founded in April 2019 – says it uses technology to supply and deliver freshwater fish and seafood to retailers across all formats. 

The company claims to be working with more than 600 businesses across various retail formats in more than 10 Indian cities. The startup delivers more than 20,000 kg of fresh supplies across over 50 species sourced from more than 30 different coasts on an everyday basis. 

“Captain Fresh is targeting this fragmented supply base, aggregating the supply through technology, using scale, and technology to standardise the quality, and serving retailers by giving better quality products, higher fill rate, and predictable delivery,” said Barath Shankar Subramanian, partner at Accel 

The startup had raised $2.3 million in pre-Series A funding led by early stage investor Ankur Capital last year. 

The broader fresh meat and seafood segment has seen not too many deals in the recent past. In June 2021, homegrown private equity firm Multiples Alternate Asset Management Pvt Ltd picked up a minority stake in meat brand Licious by leading a Series F round of funding. 

TenderCuts, a Chennai-based omni-channel meat and seafood supplier, last year secured Rs 110 crore in a round led by homegrown private equity firm Paragon Partners. Another heavily funded player in the space is FreshToHome.