KOCHI: Startup Freshtohome is set to fish out some quick bucks. Buoyed by the recent funding received from marquee global investors, the firm is all set to branch out to Hyderabad and Jaipur cities soon. Freshtohome is an online platform which sells mainly fish and poultry. Now it has 65,000 customers in Bangalore, Delhi, Kochi and Thiruvanathapuram and targets to increase it to 1.20 lakh in six months time.
“With the new investment, we plan to set up our own plant in Kochi. We have already done a pilot study in Hyderabad and Jaipur and will launch our service in three months. The soft launch of our service in Kochi and Thiruvanathapuram took place six months ago. Now we have plans to start the service in 10 cities in Kerala including Kottayam, Pala and Thiruvalla. Our plan is to commence service in areas where there is no possibility of getting fresh fish,” says Mathew Joseph, co-founder of the company.
The recent series-A investment to Fershtohome came from Mark Pincus,
co-founder of NASDAQ-listed social gaming company Zynga, Google Ventures CEO David Krane, Google India head Rajan Anandan, former SoftBank director Pavan Ongole, Silicon Valley venture capitalists Pete Briger and Walter Kortschak, and former Zynga executives Cadir Lee and Alex Garden. Pincus is an angel investor in Facebook and Krane is the person behind Google’s investment in Uber. The startup does not wish to reveal the investment amount.
The company claims to sell fresh sea food that has not been treated by chemicals and believes that refrigeration is the best way to preserve their product. Joseph started exporting fish to the Middle East in 2000 and also serves the markets in Singapore and Thailand. The company was originally named seatohome.com and later in March 2015 along with Shan Kadavil the portal was re-launched as freshtohome.com.
Mathew Joseph has around three decades of experience in the seafood sector. Shan Kadavil was running online and mobile games firm Zynga’s 500-strong Bengaluru office, its largest engineering force outside the US, before starting this venture.
Kadavil’s technological knowledge and experience of running tech companies combined with Joseph’s knowledge of seafood industry and operational expertise in the field gave birth to Freshtohome. “Our direct procurement and delivery help us offer better price to our vendors while selling at lower than the market price to the end customer. We share our gain from eliminating the middlemen with both the vendor and the customer,” claim founders.
The startup’s efforts at ensuring fresh and chemical-free fish and meat at competitive prices helped it gain traction with a limited Facebook campaign.