IAN Group, the country's largest early-stage investment platform, through IAN Alpha Fund, has participated in the successful closure of Aquapulse's ₹45 crore funding round, led by NABVENTURES through its AgriSURE Fund. The company plans to deploy the fresh capital to strengthen farm-level technology and disease management systems, expand its farmer procurement network across eastern India, scale processing and export operations, and build working capital infrastructure to support its growing global business.
With assistance from Aquapulse in the areas of water quality monitoring, feed discipline, disease early-warning systems, and harvesting coordination, local entrepreneurs can oversee clusters of shrimp ponds according to the company's aquapreneur concept. The Company brings increased transparency and consistency for purchasers around the world while giving smaller, shrimp farmers stable revenue streams. Pre-harvest technology assistance, lagoon-based harvesting, processing collaborations, and export logistics are all integrated by the company into a single traceable supply chain platform. At the moment, they mostly export shrimp to China, Vietnam, and Japan, but it also serves institutional and modern trade clients in the country.
Established in 2023 by Abhishek and Abhilash Dwivedy, Aquapulse uses a hub-and-spoke strategy to directly enable increased productivity and therefore earnings for small shrimp farmers. While the company started with Odisha based farmers, the company has demonstrated scale as it expanded its model to Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal farmers. The Company has created a technology-enabled, farmer-focused procurement platform that directly links shrimp producers with organized domestic and international markets.
India is one of the biggest exporters of frozen shrimp in the world, and the industry contributes significantly to the nation's seafood export in 2025, for instance, seafood exports from India amounted to US$ 8.28 billion. Nonetheless, a significant portion of shrimp output still originates from dispersed smallholder farms, which largely lack access to organized market connections, technological assistance, stable pricing, and traceability mechanisms. Simultaneously, foreign consumers are keen for end-to-end sourcing visibility, sustainability, and consistency in quality, as there is a high demand for Indian shrimps. The company’s model is based on the belief that India's strength is based on organizing its large number of small farmers by integrating technology with organized market access. For India, this is an excellent aggregation model for low-earning small farmers to access global customers, with significantly higher earnings.
Abhishek Dwivedy, Co-Founder, MD & CEO, Aquapulse, said, “This round is a vote of confidence in the smallholder shrimp farmer. The capital lets us deepen the aquapreneur cluster model, strengthen pre-harvest technology at the pond, and scale processing and exports without losing the farmer-first discipline we started with. We are not trying to replace the existing value chain overnight. We are trying to organise it — pond by pond, cluster by cluster — so that quality, traceability and farmer income all move in the same direction.”
Abhilash Dwivedy, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer, Aquapulse, said, “Our job is to make the smallholder shrimp farmer a named, recognised participant in the global seafood chain — not an anonymous input.”
Sarika Saxena, Managing Partner, IAN Alpha Fund, said, “We invest in scalable, execution-driven companies that bridge critical market gaps. Aquapulse stood out immediately due to their deep understanding of the aquaculture ecosystem and a ground-level operational model that drives genuine value for both vendors and customers. By building a seamless 'farm-to-port' platform, Abhishek and Abhilash are matching dynamic international demand with unparalleled transparency, traceability, and market access. Aquapulse perfectly aligns with our fund’s thesis: backing innovative solutions that solve real-world problems at scale."
About Aquapulse
Aquapulse is the brand of Phoenix Marine Exports and Solution Pvt. Ltd. (PMES), a pond-to-port integrated shrimp aquaculture tech and seafood export company headquartered in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. The company works directly with smallholder shrimp farmers across Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal through an aquapreneur-led hub-and-spoke model — supporting them with pre-harvest technology, lagoon-based harvesting, processing and export logistics.Aquapulse exports primarily to China, Vietnam and Japan, and serves domestic customers through a parallel channel. The company’s focus is on organising India’s fragmented smallholder shrimp value chain into a single, traceable platform that delivers consistent quality to global buyers and a more predictable livelihood to farmers at the pond.
About IAN Alpha Fund
IAN Alpha Fund, a $100 Mn SEBI-registered Category II AIF VC Fund, is the 2nd fund in IAN Group’s series of funds. The Fund explores opportunities in diverse sectors such as healthtech, cleantech, deep tech, agritech, medtech, hardware and electronics, manufacturing, Web 3.0, Metaverse, Industry 4.0, SaaS, and other sectors where innovation is transformational. The Fund invests in innovative startups solving real problems for India and the world, with sustainable business models enabling scale by leveraging technology. With the IAN Alpha Fund, IAN Group continues its two-decade legacy of building a portfolio of technology-focused, innovative companies led by founders who not only understand customer needs but also have the leadership qualities to build large and valuable businesses.
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