Vietnamese aquaculture tech startup expands markets rapidly, but fundraising remains a challenge
Global aquaculture is going through a quiet transformation, and a good chunk of that movement is coming from Vietnam. Otanics, a startup founded in 2020 as a subsidiary of Minh Phu Seafood, one of the country’s largest shrimp exporters, has been turning heads by consistently expanding its international footprint — even without the backing of major investment rounds. The main vehicle driving this growth is Tomota, a digital platform already present in 41 countries and serving more than 2,500 shrimp farms and 600 hatcheries around the world.
But there’s a detail in this story that really stands out. All of this growth happened organically, without big marketing campaigns and without a strategic investor behind the scenes. That’s exactly where the Otanics paradox lives: the technology keeps growing, adoption numbers are impressive, but fundraising remains a real and frustrating obstacle for the company.
The lingering question is: how can a platform with so much expansion in the international market still not have found the right financial partner? That’s what we’re going to dig into here. 🚀
What is Tomota and why it matters for aquaculture
Tomota isn’t just another farm management app. It was built with a very specific purpose: solving the real problems that shrimp producers face every single day. The platform offers a suite of solutions ranging from shrimp counting and measurement to environmental monitoring of ponds, along with equipment automation and full supply chain traceability.
Among the products that make up the complete Tomota package, the standout is the Tomota S3, a fast and affordable solution for counting and measuring both seeds and grow-out shrimp. The way it works is surprisingly simple: the producer places the shrimp in a specific Tomota container, records a 10-second video with a smartphone, and immediately receives data on size and quantity, with accuracy above 95 percent. This tool helps producers identify growth delays early on, allowing management adjustments before the problem gets worse.
As Vu Van Van, CEO of Otanics, explained during the 2026 edition of VietShrimp Asia and Aquaculture Vietnam, held in Ho Chi Minh City from March 18 to 20, shrimp counting and measurement are universal needs in aquaculture. They are essential for both accurate initial pond stocking and the continuous monitoring of growth, uniformity, and animal health. Tomota’s hardware and app solution directly addresses these global demands.
What makes the platform even more interesting is its origin story. Because it was born inside Minh Phu Seafood, it arrived on the market with a deep understanding of how the shrimp production chain actually works in practice. This wasn’t a startup created by software engineers who had never set foot in a pond. It was a solution built by people who know the problem from the inside, and that shows in every feature of the platform.
To reinforce that connection with real-world operations even further, Otanics directly operates 50 shrimp ponds leased from Minh Phu. This decision is strategic and quite uncommon among tech startups. According to Van, the company farms real shrimp, faces both failures and successes, and the main lesson learned is that ultimate success comes down to management. It’s about managing daily tasks as precisely as possible.
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Global expansion without the fuel of outside investment
When we’re talking about expansion into 41 countries without a robust investment round behind it, that’s curious at the very least. Most startups that reach this level of international adoption have already gone through at least one or two significant fundraising rounds. Otanics did it differently.
In the early stages, the company operated with virtually zero marketing budget. Growth came organically, with the team using LinkedIn, Facebook, and international workshops to showcase their products. According to Van, the rapid adoption is thanks to the product’s high practicality and accessible pricing.
And when we say accessible pricing, that’s no exaggeration. In Vietnam, Otanics sells the S3 at a fraction of the cost of international competitors, with prices that can be as much as 17 times lower than similar products from foreign companies. This aggressive pricing strategy has driven adoption, but it also means that revenue per unit sold is still modest, since the company hasn’t factored research and development costs into the retail price.
There’s a fun side note to this journey too. Just a few years ago, anyone who searched for Tomota on Google would get results about tomatoes. Today, a search for the platform’s name returns immediate results, which shows how the brand built digital relevance in a relatively short period of time.
The major markets currently served include India, Ecuador, and Indonesia, three of the world’s largest shrimp producers. This penetration into such significant markets, without the support of a venture capital fund, reinforces the idea that the product found a genuine fit with the industry’s needs.
Adapting to local markets and environmental monitoring
One of the smartest aspects of the Otanics strategy is its ability to adapt solutions to the specific needs of each market. While Vietnamese producers focus on metrics like pH, alkalinity, ammonia, and nitrate, the Indonesian market values different indicators. That’s why the company started developing phosphate measurement tools to help with algae management, a particularly relevant problem in that region.
Beyond that, Otanics is refining tools to measure minerals like calcium, magnesium, and potassium, responding to specific customer requests. This end-user-driven development approach is one of the reasons the platform gained traction so quickly across such diverse markets.
To build a more stable operational foundation, the company is also deploying IoT systems for large-scale operations. Currently, Otanics runs control systems for more than 1,600 ponds across two farms owned by Minh Phu. These systems monitor environmental parameters and remotely control aerators, paddle wheels, and automatic feeders.
According to Van, he has yet to see another IoT system in the shrimp industry that has been successfully installed across such a large number of ponds. And when a farm fully integrates into the Tomota ecosystem, every data point becomes accessible and producers can operate with complete confidence in the traceability of their operations.
The long-term vision: digitizing the entire shrimp value chain
Otanics’ ambition goes beyond pond management. In the long run, the company wants to provide digital solutions for the entire shrimp value chain. The platform already includes management modules for hatcheries and farms, but the next goal is connecting these stages directly to processing plants, completing the digital cycle.
As Van explained, if the entire chain operates in an integrated way on the Tomota platform, the savings in operational costs will be significant. This end-to-end digitization vision is particularly relevant at a time when major retailers and international importers are increasingly demanding traceability and transparency in their seafood supply chains.
The global aquaculture market is expected to move hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years, driven by growing demand for aquatic protein and pressure for more sustainable practices. Within this landscape, technology solutions for aquaculture farm management represent a segment growing at an accelerated pace. Tomota is positioned right at that point of convergence, which makes the absence of a strategic investor even harder to understand from the outside looking in.
The fundraising paradox: real growth, difficult capital raising
Here’s where the real tension in this story lies. Otanics has real traction, a validated product, international presence, and a massive addressable market. On paper, that should be more than enough to attract any investment fund interested in agritech or aquaculture tech. But reality has been quite different.
In 2023, Otanics planned a fundraising round but ended up canceling it because the company and investors couldn’t find common ground. Since late 2024 and throughout 2025, the company has talked with more investors, but no deal has materialized. According to Van, the main disagreement revolves around company valuation, because Otanics refuses to be valued exclusively based on current sales.
That stance makes sense when you understand the business model. The company deliberately keeps prices well below international competitors to accelerate adoption, which naturally compresses revenue in the short term. Valuing Otanics solely on current revenue would completely ignore the value of its user base, international presence, and future monetization potential.
Van was pretty straightforward about what the company is looking for: partners who truly understand and are willing to engage deeply with the industry, rather than investors who operate purely based on numbers on paper. That statement sums up the challenge nicely. Traditional tech investors, especially those based in major financial hubs, still struggle to assess the real potential of platforms built for primary sectors in emerging markets.
On top of that, aquaculture as an investment sector still carries some stigma. Many funds perceive it as a market that’s hard to scale, with long adoption cycles and heavy dependence on local environmental and regulatory factors. For a generalist fund, justifying a bet on technology for shrimp farms in Vietnam within a diversified portfolio can be a tough internal sell. This creates a barrier that has nothing to do with product quality or adoption numbers, but rather with a perception gap between the financial market and the actual productive sector.
What lies ahead for Otanics and Tomota
Despite the difficulties in raising capital, the Otanics trajectory shows that the company isn’t sitting around waiting for a check to arrive. The platform keeps being improved, new markets keep being added, and the user base keeps growing. The expansion strategy remains focused on delivering real value to producers, which creates a virtuous cycle of adoption and word-of-mouth recommendations.
Strategic partnerships with producer cooperatives and major seafood trading companies could open an alternative path to capitalization, without necessarily relying on a traditional venture capital fund. In countries like Brazil, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, where governments and development agencies are actively investing in digitizing the animal protein supply chain, Tomota could benefit from public programs that incentivize tech adoption in the field.
Full integration of the production chain — connecting hatcheries, farms, and processing plants into a single digital ecosystem — also represents a huge value-creation opportunity. If Otanics can execute on that vision, the monetization potential through data, premium services, and integrations with international buyers multiplies dramatically.
At the end of the day, the story of Otanics and Tomota is a very honest portrait of how the global innovation ecosystem still has significant gaps when it comes to funding solutions that solve real problems for communities that make their living from the land and the sea. The product exists, it works, and it scales. The market is massive and growing. What’s missing is a more efficient bridge between those who have the capital and those who have the solution. And when that bridge gets built, global aquaculture is going to feel the impact in a very tangible way. 🌊
