Fabricated revenue topples eFishery, Indonesia's $1.4B aquaculture unicorn

Aquaculture platform: automated IoT fish-feeding devices for small farmers, plus e-commerce marketplaces for feed and fish, financing products and farm data.

Digitizing Indonesia's fragmented aquaculture — IoT feeders plus commerce, financing and data — would reach a million ponds and make fish farming a $1B+ tech business.

US$314M+ equity across five rounds, incl. a $90M Series C and a $200M Series D

Founder Gibran Huzaifah ran a catfish farm in college and saw that aquaculture had barely changed in 30 years: farmers hand-fed, fish grew unevenly, and buyers wanted uniform sizes. He founded eFishery in Bandung in 2013, betting that the same tech wave that disrupted commerce and finance would finally reach the ponds.

eFishery raised $90M in January 2022 from Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Sequoia, then a $200M Series D in July 2023 led by 42XFund at a $1.4B valuation — the first aquaculture startup past $1B. It claimed 70,000 farmers in 280 cities and expanded to India. Behind the scenes, management kept two sets of books: revenue of $752M reported for the first nine months of 2024 versus $157M actually earned.

A whistleblower's tip to a board member triggered a December 2024 investigation; co-founders Gibran and Chrisna Aditya were dismissed, FTI Consulting found most sales were faked, 90% of staff were laid off by February 2025, and India operations closed. In August 2025 Indonesian police detained Gibran on fraud and embezzlement charges.

Feed is 70–90% of fish-farming cost, so an appetite-sensing feeder attacks the farmer's real P&L — a genuine wedge that made early adoption possible.

Marquee investors (SoftBank, Temasek, Sequoia, 42XFund) plus a first-in-category unicorn label let eFishery raise $314M without the economics being stress-tested.

Two sets of books — real ERP for insiders, polished Excel for investors and auditors — kept the fiction alive from Series A onward, and scale claims were never verified on the ground.

A whistleblower, not diligence, broke the fraud; by then 90% of staff and most investor capital were already gone.

Growth metrics are only as real as the controls behind them: investors who never verify the farmers, ponds and revenue end up financing the fiction.

As of August 2025 eFishery no longer operates as the company investors funded. FTI Consulting runs the business under CEO Martin Wong, 90% of employees are gone, India has been shut down, and shareholders are deciding between restructuring and a sale of the feeder unit — reported bidders include Aqua Bridge Holding. Gibran Huzaifah was detained on July 31, 2025 and is being investigated for fraud and embezzlement alongside two former executives.