Asia-based seafood start-ups are having a moment.
The seafood industry’s newest unicorn – a start-up that has achieved a USD 1 billion (EUR 902 million) valuation – is Bandung, Indonesia-based eFishery, which offers fish and shrimp farmers an end-to-end platform to access to feed, financing, and markets. And numerous other Asia-headquartered companies, including India’s Captain Fresh, FreshToHome, and Licious have garnered hundreds of millions of dollars in financing in recent years.
At an investor panel hosted by incubator Hatch Blue at the 2024 Seafood Expo Asia in Singapore on 4 September, six young Asian firms sought to wow an investor panel and garner the attention and funding necessary to rocket themselves to similar heights as their well-heeled compatriots.
Marrying promises of solid profit margins, healthy returns on investment, and ESG credentials, executives from Forte Biotech, The Agrata Group, Living Seas Aquafeeds, JALA, Coast 4C, and Wittaya Aqua made their pitches to AgFunder Venture Capital Investor Angela Tay, Orion Capital Asia Investment Specialist Annabelle Kong, and Natixis Business Investment Manager Antoine Sahaghian.
Agrata Co-Founder and CEO James Fan explained how his company is seeking to revolutionize the mud crab (Scylla serrata) market through recirculating aquaculture system farming and the development of specialized feed.
“We want to move the industry away from wild catch and into aquaculture and there are many benefits to that,” he said.
The Singapore-based firm currently operates one RAS hatchery on nearby Bintan Island, Indonesia, and supplies 200,000 farm-raised juveniles to local farms monthly.
“The hatchery essentially acts as an engine to the commercialization of the protein. We're able to produce the juvenile animal at scale, then provide these crabs to our partners who farm them at their sites until they are market-ready, whether that's on the soft-shell crab or hard-shell crab,” Fan said. “Once they're market size, we bring them back into our processing facilities and then do the sales, thereby enabling our farmers to focus on what they do best.”
Lombok, Indonesia-based Living Seas Aquafeeds is also developing a premium feedline for …
