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(Bloomberg) -- EFishery Pte, one of Indonesia’s most prominent startups, may have inflated its revenue and profit over several years, according to an internal investigation triggered by a whistleblower’s claim about the company’s accounting.
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A preliminary, ongoing probe into the agritech startup, backed by investors including SoftBank Group Corp. and Temasek Holdings Pte, estimates that management inflated revenue by almost $600 million in the nine months through September last year, according to a 52-page draft report circulated among investors and reviewed by Bloomberg News. That would mean more than 75% of the reported figures were fake, the report said.
EFishery, which deploys feeders to fish and shrimp farmers in Indonesia, was a darling of the nation’s startup scene and scored a valuation of $1.4 billion when G42, an AI firm controlled by United Arab Emirates royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, backed its latest funding round. It has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to modernize the country’s fish industry, providing farmers with smart feeding devices as well as feed, and then buying their produce to sell into the broader market.
Investors were initially enticed by its profitability at a time when layoffs, CEO resignations and plummeting valuations in the tech sector dominated headlines. It presented a $16 million profit for the first nine months of 2024 to investors, but the investigation commissioned by the board alleges the firm actually generated a $35.4 million loss.
Revenue for the period was estimated at $157 million, rather than the $752 million investors were told, according to the report. Management also inflated revenue and profit numbers for several previous years, the report said.
The report was initiated after a whistleblower approached a board member with allegations that the accounts weren’t accurate, according to people familiar with the matter. The board then commissioned a formal investigation in December, and dismissed co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Gibran Huzaifah after the accounting inconsistencies were discovered, the people said.
“We are fully aware of the gravity of the market speculation and we take this matter with the utmost seriousness,” eFishery said in an emailed statement. “We remain dedicated to upholding the highest standards of corporate governance and ethics in all of eFishery’s operations.”