Victory Farms, Kenyan aquaculture startup and farm for tilapia fish comprising hatcheries, nursery ponds and deep-water cages, has raised $5 million in new funding.
The investment was led by Ed Brakeman, a senior managing director at Bain Capital and Hans den Bieman, founder and ex-CEO of Mowi, one of the largest salmon businesses globally.
Victory Farms Fund Raising History
It is the startup’s first institutional investment following seven internal angel rounds from the same set of equity–and debt investors. Victory farms raised $40 million in debt last year.
This funding will allow the Kenyan-based Victory farms to expand its business into Rwanda, DRC and Tanzania.
Joseph Rehmann founded Victory Farms in 2015.
The firm uses technology to produce more fish and drive down costs simultaneously for the thousands of market women who buy fish in small batches to cook and sell in local food markets.
“We run a tech-enabled platform and have scaled 2x faster than any other African fish company. And using data, we have built the most efficient operation globally at half the capex of current global leader,” said Rehmann.
“We sell to mass market Africans via a high innovative RTM cold chain which uses predictive data to push fish to thousands of market women every day all across Kenya with less than 1% spoilage.”
The company has more than 54 retail locations where over 15,000 market women go to buy fish, and according to Rehmann, they use no electricity nor ice.
“We use vertical integration to drive a more robust data set from end to end,” he said.
“This allows us to innovate and create more cost-effective solutions through our systems and the power of data to deliver a better, fresher product to more consumers.”
Victory Farms claims to have one of the highest margin structures in the fishing industry globally due to its technology.
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