Duo of Indonesia fishery start-ups attracts funding

Wavemaker Partners and Aqua-Spark, a Netherlands-based sustainable aquaculture investor, also participated in the eFishery round. Northerstar is an investor in Indonesian ride-hailing giant Gojek, which is the cornerstone investor in Go-Ventures.

Efishery uses internet-of-things (IoT) technology and a cloud-based dashboard to facilitate smart feeding systems for fish and shrimp farmers across 24 Indonesian provinces. It claims that its products support the entire aquaculture ecosystem, including last-mile distribution of seafood.

The company was said to be worth $100 million as of April. Aqua-Spark and IdeoSource Venture Capital Indonesia were early investors in 2015. Previous backers also include 500 Startups, Maloekoe Ventures, Social Capital, Unreasonable Capital, and Indonesian conglomerate Triputra Group, all of which contributed to a $4 million Series A in 2018.

“EFishery’s solutions, which directly support local fish farmers, also address wider issues, including strengthening food supply chains, alleviating global food shortages and helping to boost both Indonesia’s fishing industry and overall economy," Aditya Kumar, a vice president of investments at Go-Ventures, said in a statement.

East Ventures was joined in the Aruna investment by AC Ventures and SMDV. East and SMDV also provided a seed round of undisclosed size last year. It comes as the company claims to have grown revenue by 86x year on year during the first half of 2020.

Aruna provides an e-commerce platform aimed helping the Indonesian fishery sector reach international markets while promoting a sustainable and fair-trade ecosystem. It claims to have helped thousands of fishermen in 31 coastal areas export to markets in Southeast Asia, East Asia, North America, and the Middle East.

The company has recently launched a last-mile service called Seafood by Aruna in response to a spike in demand for home deliveries associated with the coronavirus pandemic. Seafood by Aruna is available on Tokopedia, Shopee, Bukalapak, and Grab Mart.

Aquaculture and related seafood industry interests have become a significant theme in venture capital in recent years on the back of growing demand for high-quality protein in developing Asian markets as well as increasingly strict requirements around cleaner and more transparent production processes.

Recent activity in this space includes investments in Taiwan-based aquatic feed producer Grobest and Umitron, a Singaporean company using IoT and artificial intelligence to optimize fish school analysis and feeding. Earlier this year, Singapore’s 8F Asset Management closed a $358 million fund with a view to building out a global salmon fishing business.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Industrials
• Support services
• Consumer
• Early-stage
• Indonesia
• Northstar Group
• Go-Jek
• Wavemaker Partners
• East Ventures
• AC Ventures
• Sinar Mas Digital Ventures
• Agriculture