Singapore-based food tech start-up Umami Meats has secured pre-seed funding of US$2.4 million that the company will use to advance its cultivated seafood programme.
The funding round was co-led by Better Bite Ventures, an Australia-based alternative protein venture capital (VC) investor, and Genedant, a VC investing in early-stage, deep-tech biomedical and agri-food start-ups in Asia.
Further participants in the round included Cult Food Science, Impact Venture, Katapult Ocean, Plug & Play Ventures, Prithvi Ventures, The Yield Lab Asia Pacific, and Venture for America.
Umami Meats confirmed that it will utilise the funding to advance its low-cost, scalable production system for cultivating fish by establishing robust and production-ready cell lines from multiple fish species, leveraging its growth serum to enable production at price parity, and maturing production processes ahead of product demonstrations and taste tests.
“We are delighted to have partnered with this group of like-minded investors who share our vision for sustainable seafood. Seafood is a $180 billion industry faced with growing global demand and supply that is increasingly volatile and under threat from climate change, overfishing, and ocean pollutants,” Mihir Pershad, Founder and CEO of Umami Meats, said.
“Our investors’ commitment to a safer, healthier, and more sustainable food system, combined with deep industry knowledge in agri-food and alternative proteins, will be a valuable resource in establishing cultivated seafood as a viable, sustainable solution to the growing demand for seafood while reducing pressures on ocean ecosystems.”
