Sea6 Energy, which is engaged in large-scale and mechanised ocean farming, on Wednesday said it has raised $9 million (Rs 67 crore) as part of its Series B funding round.
The funding was led by Netherlands-based investment fund focused on sustainable aquaculture, Aqua Spark, Sea6 Energy said in a statement.
Singapore-based Silverstrand Capital also contributed to the funding round.
The fresh capital will help the company to increase the supply of seaweed raw material. It will also enable the company to expand its processing capacity with additional facilities to produce agricultural biostimulant and animal health products.
Bengaluru headquartered Sea6 Energy was founded in 2010 at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.
Its co-founders Sailaja Nori, Nelson Vadassery and Sowmya Balendiran had just graduated with degrees in biotechnology then while Shrikumar Suryanarayan, the former R&D head of Biocon, was an adjunct faculty at the IIT.
The company uses its proprietary technologies to convert seaweed into environmentally friendly products for a range of industries including agriculture, animal health, food ingredients, bioplastics and renewable chemicals. It has operations in India and Indonesia.
Prior to this funding, Sea6 Energy had raised Series A funding from Tata Capital Innovation Fund in 2015.
Mike Velings and Amy Novogratz, co-founders of Aqua-Spark, noted that investing in seaweed production had been a priority for the investment firm since it launched in 2015 but hadn’t come upon an operation that was both economically viable and was able to produce at scale until now.
Sea6 Energy's technology SeaCombine makes sustainably farming the ocean a possibility while capturing CO2 and transforming it into valuable products, the Aqua-Spark's co-founders added.
Aqua-Spark has 195 million euros in assets under management. It is focused on investments in areas of the aquaculture industry that will make fish farming sustainable.
In the acquaculture segment in India, aqua farmers’ network Aquaconnect raised $4 million (Rs 29.7 crore) in a pre-Series A round led by Rebright Partners and Flourish Ventures earlier this month.