Indian artificial intelligence-powered seafood marketplace startup Captain Fresh recently closed a $40 million Series B fundraising round that it will use to “build tech interventions and deeper tech integrations across the supply and demand-side network,” according to the company announcement.
Among those innovations are a real-time trading marketplace, pricing and quality standardization using AI and the application of robotic automation “to move massive volumes with precision,” the announcement says.
Tiger Global and Prosus Ventures, the venture arm of Dutch internet conglomerate Prosus, led Captain Fresh’s Series B funding round, which also included existing investors Accel India, Ankur Capital, Incubate Fund and Matrix Partners India.
Captain Fresh raised $12 million in Series A funding in July, led by Accel India and Matrix Partners India. The company uses digital technology to streamline India’s $30 billion seafood industry and its predictive models help source supplies of specific fish days before customers place their orders, enabling overnight delivery in some cities.
“For centuries, the fish and seafood industry has stayed the same with very little innovation, and we have a unique opportunity to revolutionise the sector utilising technology,” Utham Gowda, founder and CEO of Captain Fresh, said in the press release. Globally, fish and seafood demand is estimated to be $400 billion and represents one of the fastest-growing protein segments with an ever-expanding supply gap, according to the press release.
Captain Fresh serves 500,000 retailers and fishmongers and 75 million consumer households.
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Meanwhile, Sudhir Jha, senior vice president and head of Mastercard’s Brighterion unit, told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster in a recent On the Agenda discussion that AI can strengthen credit and risk management and broaden its value beyond improving day-to-day operations.
Enterprises that try to keep up with the rapid changes in data science and analysis on their own can be quickly overwhelmed, he said. The enterprise that starts with regression and pattern analysis solutions might scale rapidly and find benefit from neural networks, Jha told Webster.
Almost nine out of 10 (88%) of financial institutions surveyed said the pandemic has made lending and credit more challenging. Jha said that the pandemic has underlined that firms need adaptable fraud protection platforms.
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