'Inconvenience is the mother of innovation' Pescafresh, catering around 1 lakh households in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
By Sunil Pol
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While experiencing the inconvenience of buying a fresh sea food in a local fish marketplace, Mumbai based Sangram Sawant had wished to set up a company to deliver the fresh and quality fresh sea food in one call. Thus following his dream, he is now the founder and CEO of a sea food delivery company, Pescafresh, which caters to around 1 lakh households in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
What led to your interest in the field of sea food?
During 2000 I was in US where I was studying and working simultaneously. There I worked for three and half years with a sea food delivery company. In US, good sea food can be purchased from supermarket, hypermarket or online. The fresh fish is also available everywhere. But whenever I used to come to India for vacations, I had to wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning go to fish market and haggle with the fish sellers who did not have varieties and no quality assurance. Then I wished to start a company that could deliver fresh sea food over one call.
What was the family's reaction towards your new venture?
Earlier, my family was into exports of sea food, but later it shifted to real estate business. So, my family encouraged me to venturing into sea food business. But again there was no precedent as such. There was no suitable infrastructure built for the business of sea food delivery by then, so my family was also quite sceptical.
How did you secure your first order?
After building the first infrastructure for sea food delivery, I asked my 10 friends to give me their list of fish-eating friends. Then, I sent 150 samples of sea food to all these people, they liked it and then they started ordering. First day, I got just three to four orders.
What are your plans of expansion?
There are 185 Tier I, II and III towns which face the same problem with fresh fish. We are going to increase our home delivery network while partnering with more retailers. We are also partnering with hypermarkets and gourmet stores. We have around 43 outlets in different formats, and we will take the count to 200 outlets in two years and 300 outlets by 2018.
With FDI approved in the country, what impact will it have on your business?
It will be a positive impact. We have tied up with Tesco for Shop n Shop to serve fresh imported sea food in gourmet format.
