Aquaconnect, the tech-driven aquaculture-focused startup, has raised Rs 60 crore in venture debt round of funding. The round was led by Trifecta Capital.

Aquaconnect is a startup that provides its services across the entire value chain of aquaculture. Aquaconnect is planning to utilize the fresh fundings in the following ways:

• to strengthen its presence in the Indian market.
• Expansion of its franchise stores.
• To expand the scale of operations and raise its post-harvest market linkage solutions.
• The stores under the Aqua partner brand provide input products to the fish and shrimp farmers.

Aquaconnect was founded in 2017 by Rajamanohar Somasundaram. The company is planning to improvise its market linkages by which the farmers will be able to reach out to a broader range of potential buyers. Thus this will promote increasing their value realization.

Aquaconnect tied their hands with fish and shrimp farmers to improvise-

• farm productivity,
• financial access, and
• market linkage through technology solutions.

The startup has been working on digging out the challenges in the aquaculture value chain through an integrated tech-driven approach and sets a target to become the largest aquaculture value chain, aggregator.

Aquaconnect is supported by a physical & digital distribution network and is also a full-stack aquaculture input and output platform with embedded fintech. The company works with over 60,000 farmers across multiple states in the country.

EXECUTIVE OPINION:

Rajamanohar Somasundaram, Founder and CEO of Aquaconnect, said, “At Aquaconnect, our aim is to make the aquaculture value chain more efficient and transparent while increasing value realization through tech intervention. The fresh round of capital will help us achieve this goal.”

Nilesh Kothari, Managing Partner, Trifecta Capital, said, “Aquaconnect is a pioneer in the aquaculture sector and is digitizing the entire value chain connecting farmers with input manufacturers and institutional buyers. In the process, they are facilitating aquaculture farmers to realize better prices for their produce, and providing access to high quality inputs at fair prices. India is among the top three seafood producing countries and yet the sector is largely unorganized.”