Online meat startup Captain Fresh raises Rs 110 crore from Nekkanti Sea Foods, others

Online meat and seafood startup Captain Fresh has raised Rs 110 crore in funding from Andhra Pradesh-based Nekkanti Sea Foods and investment firm Shakti Finvest.

The funding was done through an issue of 1,102 convertible preference shares at a price of over Rs 9 lakh each, the firm said in a filing with the Registrar of Companies.

While Nekkanti Sea Foods was the lead investor with an infusion of about Rs 50 crore, Shakti Finvest invested Rs 30 crore as part of the latest round.


In September, ET reported that Captain Fresh had raised $20 million in a funding round led by Japan-based SBI Investment and Evolvence Capital. The extended funding round had valued the company at $500 million (over Rs 3,900 crore). The likes of Accel, Matrix Partners India, Prosus Ventures and Tiger Global Management have also invested in the firm previously.

Captain Fresh works in a business to business (B2B) format, supplying sellers with meat and seafood in India and multiple international markets in the Middle East, Europe, and the US.

In September, the company’s founder and CEO Utham Gowda had said international markets helped the company command over 15-20% earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation-level (EBITDA) margins, versus a 3% EBITDA-level margin in India. The firm already sees 70% of its revenues coming from abroad, he had added.

In November, ET had reported that executives in the online meat industry were returning to the drawing board as the reopening of physical meat markets as well as external forces like inflation were leading to a slowdown in the sector.

At the time, the online meat and seafood industry was roughly between Rs 2,500 crore to Rs 3,000 crore in size, Satish Meena, an independent ecommerce analyst and advisor at Datum Intelligence had estimated. This accounted for less than 1% of the country’s overall meat and seafood market, large swathes of which remain unorganised.