Scottish start-up nets £17m to streamline trading in fish

A Scottish start-up aiming to reduce the world’s seafood waste has bagged more than £17m from top investors. 

Rooser, which has built an online platform for traders of fish, scooped the funding from firms including Index Ventures, Google Ventures and Point Nine Capital. 

The business was co-founded in 2019 by Joel Watt, who remortgaged his parents’ house to raise the money with his cousin. 

Watt said: ‘In the long run, what we’re building should help us to understand and manage global fish stocks more responsibly, to see where our seafood comes from and to ensure the best-quality produce ends up on plates.’ 

Currently, Rooser claims, for every two fish that end up on plates, one goes to waste. 

There are many players in the supply chain – fisheries, primary processors, wholesalers and buyers. All rely on a blizzard of emails and messages. 

Through Rooser, however, fish suppliers can manage stocks, upload different fish to their online store and also access the wider online marketplace. 

Georgia Stevenson, at Index, said: ‘Rooser promises to make the whole experience simpler.’