Freshwater fish and seafood supply chain platform Captain Fresh has raised USD 2.3 million (over Rs 17 crore) from investors, including Ankur Capital.
In pre-series A round of funding, Incubate Fund India and Silicon Valley-based angel investors also participated.
Captain Fresh leverages technology to deliver freshwater fish and seafood to retailers across all key formats.
“The fund will be used to invest in technologies like computer vision, IoT, bots, data analytics to digitize and drive efficiencies across the supply chain,” the company said in a statement.
Captain Fresh also plans to expand into new cities and increase headcount.
Captain Fresh was founded in April 2019 by Utham Gowda, an ex-investment banker.
Gowda said, “We started with a simple vision to build a fresh fish and seafood platform that the ecosystem could completely trust and rely on for their daily needs. We want to nurture our retail partners” businesses by providing full availability, range and high-quality fresh supplies on a daily basis.”
The Bengaluru-based company received seed investments of USD 750,000 or over Rs 5 crore from Nekkanti Group and Sandhya Aqua, leading exporters of frozen shrimp.
It currently has presence in cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad.
Its clientele base comprises 125-150 retailers in Bengaluru and two to three big players in Mumbai and Hyderabad each.
Krishnan Neelakantan, Partner at Ankur Capital, said, “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 market, waiting to be unlocked.”
Nao Murakami, Founder and General Partner at Incubate Fund India said, “As Incubate Fund is a Japanese-origin fund, we can bring best practices in supply chain innovations and support potential collaborations between Captain Fresh and Japanese companies.”