Tiger Global-backed B2B seafood chain Captain Fresh is aiming to end this fiscal year with a profitable bottomline and revenue growth in the range of $500-550 million, compared to $168 million in FY24. The startup has plans to hit the public markets in FY26.
“We started as an India-to-India business and then we became India-to-global, wherein we were buying from India and selling in the global markets. But towards the end of FY24 we started being global-to-global and FY25 is the first full year where this new supply chain will play out for us,” founder and CEO Utham Gowda told FE in an interaction.
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The company primarily exports shrimps, salmons and a few other marine species mostly from India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Phillipines. It also procures supply from some European and Latin American markets. More than 99% of the company’s revenue comes from selling in the global markets, with a largely majority of it- about 60%- coming from the US and another 30% from European markets.
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To bolster its globally spread out supply chain, it has acquired three companies in the seafood space – Fishlog in Indonesia, Poland-based Koral and Illinois-based CenSea. Gowda added that he is currently looking to make further acquisitions in the white fish and tuna industry.
In India, Captain Fresh has a comparatively small distribution business, and hence does not compete directly with D2C meat and seafood startups such as Licious. Gowda noted that the company has, in the past, tried to focus on quick-commerce channel but never liked the unit economics in that business.
“I don’t think India is large enough in terms of profit pool for us to build an organised or a branded business for this category, because for the same product we get almost 2-3x higher realisation in the US and European market,” he added.
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