Indonesia's eFishery raises $90m Series C
Temasek Holdings, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and Sequoia Capital India have co-led a USD 90m Series C round for Indonesian aquaculture technology start-up eFishery.
Northstar Group, Go-Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, and Aqua-Spark, a Netherlands-based sector specialist, provided a Series B of undisclosed size in 2020 and re-upped in the latest round. The company was said to be worth USD 100m in April 2020.
A USD 4m Series A came in 2018 featuring Wavemaker, Aqua-Spark, and Indonesian investors Maloekoe Ventures and Triputra Group, as well as US-based 500 Startups, Social Capital, and Unreasonable Capital. Seed-stage backers include Aqua-Spark and IdeoSource Venture Capital Indonesia.
Founded in 2013, eFishery provides access to internet-of-things technology and a cloud-based dashboard to facilitate smart feeding systems, feed procurement, financing, and marketing efforts for fish and shrimp farmers. The idea is to support the entire aquaculture ecosystem, including last-mile distribution of seafood, improving profitability and sustainability.
The technology is said to increase farmers’ production capacity by up to 26% while optimizing feed efficiency by up to 30% through reducing time and labour costs. The company claims to have deployed thousands of smart feeders, serving over 30,000 farmers across 24 provinces in Indonesia. It says its network has grown tenfold since December 2020.
The capital will be used to scale up the platform, hire additional staff, and build out the technology with a view to making it the largest digital service of its kind for fish and shrimp farming globally. This includes plans to expand regionally, targeting the top 10 countries in aquaculture, including India and China. The aim is to acquire 1m farmers in the next 3-5 years.
Recent development on this front includes the launch of the eFarm and eFisheryKu platforms. EFarm provides farmers with comprehensive and easy-to-understand information about their shrimp farming operations, while eFisheryKu helps fish farmers to purchase supplies at competitive prices and access loans via eFund. To date, more than 7,000 farmers have received USD 28m in loans.
“With USD 20bn in market size, and a fragmented and complex supply chain, aquaculture is one of the largest and most attractive opportunities in Indonesia,” Aakash Kapoor, a vice president at Sequoia India, said in a statement. “That’s what makes this partnership with eFishery, the undisputed leader in the market, so exciting.”
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