2 March 2022
Umami Meats, a Singapore-based food tech startup that is developing cultivated seafood, has secured pre-seed funding of US$2.4 million.
Umami Meats says that it will utilise the funding to further 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. The startup aims to pave the way for Singapore to host the leading technology platform for minimising the cost of large-scale cell-based manufacturing.
The pre-seed funding round was co-led by Better Bite Ventures, an APAC-focused alt protein VC, and Genedant, a VC investing in early-stage, deep-tech biomedical and agri-food startups in Asia. Further participants in the round include CULT Food Science, Impact Venture, Katapult Ocean, Plug & Play Ventures, Prithvi Ventures, The Yield Lab Asia Pacific and Venture for America.
Mihir Pershad, founder and CEO of Umami Meats, commented in a press release: “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.
“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.”
Umami Meats is set to be a pioneering force in sustainable seafood. With over 2 trillion fish caught every year, their ‘not caught’ approach brings together the brightest minds in conservation, food science, cell and marine biology and gastronomy to cultivate the best, freshest, and most nutritious seafood available.
