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Ex-UAE resident’s FreshToHome portal nets Amazon in $104m fund round, gets ready for Saudi Arabia

  Shan Kadavil, CEO and Co-Founder, FreshtoHome  Dubai: FreshToHome, a direct-to-consumer portal selling fish and meat started by an ex-UAE resident, has hooked $104 million in its latest funding round, which is led by Amazon. Existing contributors such as Investment Corporation of Dubai, ADQ and Bahrain’s Investcorp added to their earlier stakes. Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, the Dubai-based billionaire, had also been an investor in a previous round. The portal, which launched operations by sourcing fresh catch direct from fishermen in India, is operational in the UAE, including having two physical locations at Dubai Waterfront Market. With the $104 million, FreshToHome has raised more than $240 million, and sees the time as being right for major forays into Saudi Arabia and other markets. “Our business model will be direct-to-consumer, and for now we do not see any need to supply fresh supplies to third-parties such as supermarkets,” said Shan Kadavil, co-founder and CEO. (An alumni of Sharjah Indian High School, Kadavil had an extensive stint in Silicon Valley, including in gaming ventures, before launching FreshToHome …

FreshToHome’s Shan Kadavil on creating mini CEOs in the firm

Much before pandemic forced everyone to work remotely, FreshToHome, the meat, seafood and fresh produce e-tailer had embraced the flexi-work model. “I can no longer boast about it since most organisations have embraced it now,” says Shan Kadavil, the company’s founder. The model has worked well for him considering he lives “out of a suitcase right now” – Kadavil has been flitting between the company’s headquarters in Bengaluru and its office in Dubai. In an interview, Kadavil speaks to Lounge about measuring passion, encouraging team leads to become entrepreneurial,  and his experiments with plant based meat. Edited excerpts: Who do you consider your mentor and why?  I am strongly influenced by the vision of Mark Pincus, a popular entrepreneur in Silicon valley, and founder of a number of large companies such as Zynga. He was also my former boss and is a mentor and investor of FreshToHome. Mark is a visionary and his belief in the capabilities of human beings is exceptional. He sincerely believed anyone who dared to dream big will be successful if he/ she …

How FreshtoHome changed the fishy business

There was always something fishy about India’s fish market, estimated at $50 billion and an industry that employs about 14 million. A chain of middlemen in the supply-chain exploited the fishermen. They don’t always get a great price even when the price mark-up could be as high as 80 per cent between the coast and what the consumer pays. The market is fragmented and fishermen, often illiterate, depend on the middlemen to sell their produce in cities. The middlemen, who buy from the coast and then transport, are also mostly unaware of food safety. Given India’s broken supply-chain, they use preservatives to store the fish. A start-up, Freshtohome, conducted an internal survey. It found 65 per cent ammonia in the samples of various fish markets in Bangalore; about three per cent formalin. In Delhi, things got even murkier. It found 70 per cent ammonia, and 16 per cent formalin. Different states now periodically crack down on consignments that contain fish preserved in formalin. Read More