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Rooser provides an online marketplace for fresh fish and seafood across Europe. The platform connects established seafood buyers and suppliers, offering digital tools for efficient transactions, price negotiation, and streamlined processing. It delivers a data-led trading system intended to modernize the traditional seafood industry and reduce operational friction.
Founded in 2019 by Erez Mathan, Joel Watt, and Nicolas Desormeaux, Rooser stemmed from identifying significant inefficiencies and a lack of transparency within the conventional seafood supply chain. The founders' insight was to leverage technology, creating a more efficient and connected marketplace for a historically fragmented industry.
Rooser's product served established businesses within the European seafood sector, empowering producers and purchasers with direct, transparent trading. The company envisioned a future where seafood procurement and distribution are seamless, data-driven, and accessible via a centralized digital hub. Its mission was to transform how seafood is traded for all participants.
Rooser has raised $23.0M across 1 funding round.
Rooser has raised $23.0M in total across 1 funding round.
Rooser was a technology company founded in 2019 and headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, that built a cloud-based B2B marketplace platform to modernize seafood trading.[1][2][3] It served seafood processors, suppliers, and wholesale buyers across Europe, primarily in France (95% of sales), by enabling real-time stock listing, price negotiation, logistics coordination, payments, and claims management in a single system.[1][2] The platform addressed inefficiencies in a fragmented, high-waste industry where up to 35% of seafood never reaches consumers, reducing friction through integrated workflows that replaced email, spreadsheets, and WhatsApp with secure, auditable processes supporting multiple languages and currencies.[1][2] Rooser raised $23 million in funding, including from Google and Index Ventures, employed 27 people, and generated around $5.7 million in revenue before entering liquidation.[1][3]
Rooser was founded in 2019 by seafood industry veterans addressing pain points they experienced firsthand in the supply chain.[1][2] CEO Joel Watt, a serial seafood entrepreneur, recognized the "chaos" in trading while running a factory and hacked together initial software that other processors wanted to adopt.[2] He teamed with Chief Commercial Officer Nicolas Desormeaux (18 years managing multi-million euro seafood budgets), Chief Operating Officer Erez Mathan (former COO/CRO at GoCardless, scaling it to 700 employees and $100M revenue), and Chief Technology Officer Thomas Quiroga (founder of digital agency beyondr.io).[2] Early traction came from building trust in a network across 13+ European countries, with a major expansion funded by capital injection and $23M from investors like Google and Index Ventures.[2][3] The company focused on primary processors, adding features like quality controls and supply chain financing before its liquidation.[1][2]
Rooser rode the wave of digital transformation in supply chains, targeting the €140B+ European seafood market (part of a $253B global industry in 2021) fragmented across 140,000 businesses and 35,000 products.[1][3] Timing aligned with rising demands for traceability, waste reduction, and efficiency amid sustainability pressures and post-pandemic supply disruptions, where traditional methods fueled high losses.[1][2] It influenced the ecosystem by pioneering B2B marketplaces for perishables, inspiring data-driven tools in food/agritech, though its liquidation highlights challenges like sector resistance or execution hurdles in international expansion.[1]
Rooser's ambitious platform showed promise in taming seafood trading chaos but ended in liquidation, underscoring risks in niche B2B marketplaces.[1] What's next involves asset sales via Hilco Valuation Services, potentially transferring its tech, brand, or user network to acquirers.[1] Trends like AI-driven supply chain optimization and ESG-focused foodtech will shape similar ventures, evolving influence toward consolidated platforms that achieve Rooser's vision of less waste and better margins—perhaps revived by new owners in a maturing agritech landscape.[1][2][3] This ties back to its core mission: modernizing a "giant machine" of an industry through tech.
Rooser has raised $23.0M in total across 1 funding round.
Rooser's investors include Index Ventures, 1984 Ventures, Bee Partners, Eric Rosenblum, Plug & Play Ventures, Supernode Ventures, The House Fund, David Nothacker, Dylan Field, Google Ventures, Point Nine Capital.
Rooser has raised $23.0M across 1 funding round. Most recently, it raised $23.0M Series A in April 2022.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 1, 2022 | $23M Series A | Index Ventures | 1984 Ventures, BEE Partners, Eric Rosenblum, Plug & Play Ventures, Supernode Ventures, The House Fund, David Nothacker, Dylan Field, GV, Point Nine Capital | Announced |