Umami Meats secures US$2.4M seed funding to scale its cultivated seafood business in Singapore

Singapore-based cultivated seafood startup Umami Meats has secured pre-seed funding of US$2.4 million.

Better Bite Ventures, an APAC-focused alt protein VC, and Genedant, an investor in early-stage, deep-tech biomedical and agri-food startups in Asia, co-led this round.

Other participating investors are CULT Food Science, Impact Venture, Katapult Ocean, Plug & Play Ventures, Prithvi Ventures, The Yield Lab Asia Pacific, and Venture for America.

Umami Meats will utilise the money to advance its low-cost, scalable production system for cultivating fish by establishing robust and production-ready cell lines from multiple fish species.

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Umami Meats produces nutritious, affordable cultivated seafood. The startup claims its cultivated, not-caught seafood offers equivalent nutrition to traditional seafood and provides a delicious culinary experience free from heavy metals, antibiotics, and microplastics.

Mihir Pershad, Founder and CEO of Umami Meats, commented: “Seafood is a US$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,” he added.

In Singapore, Shiok Meats is the other player in the cultivated seafood sector. However, its products are slightly different from that of Umami Meats. Launched in 2018 Shiok Meats has in its cap table a slew of investors, including Aqua-Spark, SEEDS Capital, Real Tech Fund (Japan), and Irongrey. Its latest investment came in 2020 (a US$12.6 million Series A funding led by Aqua-Spark).

“We are working on finfish, compared to Shiok Meats’ focus on crustaceans. Our USP is that we provide healthier seafood that is free from mercury, micro-plastics, and antibiotics while also providing a sustainable alternative for species that are IUCN-listed (i.e. endangered) and difficult to domesticate (farm),” said Pershad.

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