[Funding alert] Captain Fresh raises $50 Mn in Series C, valuation doubles to $500 mn

B2B seafood and meat marketplace Captain Fresh has raised $50 mn in its Series C investment round co-led by existing investors Prosus Ventures and Tiger Global.

Accel India, Matrix Partners India, Ankur Capital, and Incubate Fund also participated in the new round.

Founded in 2019 by Utham Gowda, Captain Fresh is an online business-to-business platform for wholesale trade of seafood with integrated shipping, payment protection and quality assurance services.

“It’s a very large sector but also very messy, I got a good perspective on how India as well as developed markets were looking at this category and had the opportunity to spend a lot of time on the production floor and deal with purchases.” Utham Gowda said.

The startup also claims that it has more than doubled its revenues since its Series B fundraising in December. According to the company’s regulatory filings, the majority of its revenue came from the sale of products (animal protein).

“On the supply side, from a seafood marketplace, they are now entering into the larger animal protein industry, On the demand side as well, they have expanded their focus by adding new export markets.” Ashutosh Sharma, head of investments, India, at Prosus Ventures, said.

Captain Fresh is designing a one-stop fish and seafood supply chain digitization using IOT, enabling us to perform first-in, first-out inventory management across all points. This should help them in driving down the dump rate in the supply chain.

The company said in a statement that its “vision has now expanded to build a sizeable animal protein platform with a play across multi-channel, multi-geography, multi-specie and multi-format retail (fresh/frozen/live).”