Accel leads $12 Mn Series A round in Captain Fresh

B2B tech marketplace for seafood Captain Fresh has picked up $12 million in its Series A round led by Accel. The funding round saw participation from its existing investors Matrix Partners India, Ankur Capital and Incubate Fund, and angel investors, including Jitendra Gupta, Asish Mohapatra and Ruchi Kalra,  Souvik Sengupta, Rajesh Yabaji and Amrish Rau.

Four months ago, the Bengaluru-based startup had raised $3 million in a seed funding round co-led by Matrix and Ankur Capital.

Captain Fresh will use the money to strengthen its supply-side tech, expand distribution globally and grow its team, said the company in a press release.

While Captain Fresh did not disclose much details about the transactions, Fintrackr has parsed the details from its regulatory filings which shows that the company has passed a special resolution to approve the allotment of 10 equity shares and 6,094 Series A preference shares at an issue price of Rs 146,332 per share to raise Rs 89.31 crore or $12 million.

Accel had invested $7 million followed by Matrix and Ankur Capital which pumped in $3 million and $1.2 million respectively. Incubate Fund and over half a dozen angel investors have invested the remaining amount.

According to Entrackr’s sources, Captain Fresh has raised the funds at a valuation of around $40-45 million.

The two-year-old startup founded by Utham Gowda supplies freshwater fish and seafood to retailers across general and modern trade, as well as to online meat and seafood retailers. 

The company claims to work with more than 600 businesses across various retail formats in more than 10 Indian cities including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Mangaluru and Visakhapatnam.

While Captain Fresh operates in the B2B segment, two of the largest consumer brands in the fresh meat and seafood space Licious and FreshToHome have raised big rounds in the past 10 months. FreshToHome had raised $121 million in Series C round in October 2020 whereas Licious recently bagged $192 million in its Series F.