FTI Consulting, the Singapore-based advisor hired by the scandal-hit Indonesian aquaculture startup eFishery’s investors to review its operations, has submitted a draft forensic report that paints a grim picture of the once-storied startup.
While the company’s revenues have been dwindling for at least four quarters on the trot, with huge accumulated losses, around three-quarters of its accounts receivable—$68.2 million as of Dec 31, 2024—has been classified as bad debt and is not recoverable, according to FTI, which also took over the management of the company earlier this month.
eFishery is now being helmed by CEO Martin Wong, an executive from the advisory firm. Its former management, led by co-founders Gibran Huzaifah and Chrisna Aditya, was removed by investors in early January following allegations of financial fraud.
DealStreetAsia reported on Tuesday that there are plans to file a new police report in Singapore against the co-founders and former directors of eFishery, adding to similar filings in Indonesia. The new allegations claim the founders were responsible for losses at the company amounting to 4.1 trillion rupiah ($253 million).
The draft forensic report by FTI notes that all its business divisions—fish, shrimp, eFeeder and financial services—are loss-making on a quarterly basis.
The feeder business has been at the core of the company’s operations. eFishery installed AI-enabled feeders that connected farmers to buyers via their smartphones. Farmers could also obtain loans from P2P lenders through the startup’s platform.
However, the forensic audit says the actual number of feeders deployed by the company is only a fraction of what it originally claimed.
Only 6,300 eFeeders have been deployed (5,300 on rental and 1,000 from one-time acquisition)—far below the reported 400,000—and there are no sensing devices in ponds to relay vital data. “eFishery is essentially operating as a supplier of feed, non-feed items (e.g. probiotics and vitamins) and fingerlings to farmers in the upstream cycle and as a trader of both fish and shrimps at the downstream cycle. Both of which are traditional businesses that are labour-intensive and low yield,” the draft report said.
The farmers were manually matched by employees with buyers instead of through technology-based apps. This resulted in the need for a large workforce—a peak of 2,600 in early 2024.
The company has laid off over 90% of its staff in phases and is now left with only 116 workers.
Here are the key takeaways from FTI’s report:
Revenue slumps, losses pile up
eFishery’s top line has consistently declined in each quarter of 2024. In the fourth quarter of 2024, revenue dropped 35.3% to $24.5 million from $37.9 million in the previous quarter. Net losses were flat at $12.2 million in Q4.
The net loss margin widened in 2024 reaching 49.6% in the last quarter of the year from 32.4% in the previous quarter and 19.4% in the beginning of the year.
eFishery’s financials (Q1-Q4)
Shrimp and fish segment account for 98% of revenue
The shrimp segment and the fish segment have been the major revenue generators of the company, with the shrimp segment accounting for more than half of the company’s revenue, followed by the fish segment contributing 48%.
Financing and e-feeder segments generate just around 1% of the revenue.
All business segments suffer losses
All four segments of the aquatech company suffered losses in the year ended Dec. 31, 2024.
The Fish segment made losses of $9.9 million—the highest among all business segments—followed by the shrimp segment, which posted losses of $5.9 million.
The eFeeder segment suffered the highest net loss margin of 835.3% followed by financing at 90.8%.
eFishery’s financials for 2024
Cash & cash equivalents deplete
eFishery’s cash & cash equivalents fell to $78.5 million in December from $105.6 million in the previous month. The startup continued to burn cash and cash & cash equivalents further dropped to $51.5 million in January 2025. It is estimated to further fall to $31.8 million by June 2025.
76% of Accounts Receivable is bad debt
Around three-quarters of the $68.2 million in accounts receivable (AR) by the company have been deemed as bad debt as debtors older than 60 days are considered unrecoverable.
The biggest chunk of AR is Kabayan financing ($33.8 million), which is financing facilitated through P2P lending. Around $25.5 million of this is bad debt, according to the draft foresic report.
As of Feb 1, 2025, there are over 150, 000 transactions recorded as Kabayan amounting to $87 million disbursed by three partner P2P lenders—Julo, Kredivo and Amartha.
Around $2.6 million in Kabayan financing was outstanding as on Feb 1 with Amartha accounting for the highest share. The forensic report noted that internal checks on the borrowers were lacking at eFishery, which explains the huge amount of outstanding debt.
Employees terminated
In Indonesia, eFishery had 1882 employees as on Dec 31, 2024. The company began to terminate its employees in three phases starting Jan 31, 2025 when 190 workers were let go. This was followed by the dismissal of 984 employees on Feb 13 and 496 staff on Feb 20.
Severance pay amounted to nearly $10 million including the mandatory religious holiday pay THR), according to the draft forensic report.
The way forward
The report concluded that financially, “eFishery is not viable in any form”. The immediate priority must be to conserve cash. From a technology perspective, eFishery has achieved certain milestones but a lot needs to be done before it can create the intended disruption in the scetor
