B2B seafood firm Captain Fresh receives Rs 100 Cr investment from Motilal Oswal
Motilal Oswal Wealth Limited has invested Rs 100 crore, or around $12 million, in the B2B seafood firm Captain Fresh. This is the Bengaluru-based company’s second round of funding this year.
According to its regulatory filing obtained from the Registrar of Companies (RoC), the board of Captain Fresh has passed a special resolution to issue 1,002 preference shares at an issue price of Rs 9,98,399 apiece in order to raise Rs 100 crore, or $12 million.
It looks like the additional money is a part of a pre-IPO round. Axis Capital and BofA have been named by the business as bankers for a possible $350–400 million initial public offering (IPO), according to media sources.
By giving its Norwegian entity’s owners preferential shares in its Indian arm, Captain Fresh has restructured. According to a second resolution, as part of this action, the business gave 2,355 preference shares valued at Rs 235 crore ($28 million) to investors, including Jeffery Stern, Nathon G. Torch, Futura Simul Fundacja, and GRWC Holdings, as consideration other than cash.
Motilal Oswal will own 2.26% of Captain Fresh following this investment. The startup data analytics platform TheKredible estimates that the company’s post-allotment valuation is around Rs 4,424 crore, or $526 million.
The product line of five-year-old Captain Fresh includes more than 100 fish and seafood species that are supplied from more than a dozen nations worldwide and serve consumers in more than 30 countries.
In addition to the US, Captain Fresh maintains operations in Dubai, Paris, Oslo, Amsterdam, Madrid, and India.
During the current year, Captain Fresh has been on a buying ramp, acquiring three businesses: Senecrus, a shrimp cooker and distributor located in Paris; CenSea, a US company; and Koral, a Polish company.
The Tiger Global-backed business has not yet submitted its FY24 annual results. Its sales increased from Rs 208 crore in FY22 to Rs 817 crore in FY23, a four-fold increase over the previous year. But this rapid expansion came at a price, as losses increased by 2.8X to Rs 296 crore in the same time frame.
In addition to participating in Zomato’s $1 billion fundraising campaign through a Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP), where he acquired more than 20% of the entire issue, Motilal Oswal recently led a $350 million funding round for the rapid commerce platform Zepto.
