eFishery

Gibran Huzaifah was staring at an Excel spreadsheet on his laptop. eFishery, the Indonesian fish-feeder startup he had built to about 100 employees, was three months from running out of cash. Slowly, he began plugging fake numbers into the financial report. Within an hour he had hit send to show his investors. That is his own account of the moment, as Bloomberg told it in April 2025.

"I think I just did it to survive," he told Bloomberg.

Gibran had farmed catfish while studying biology in Bandung; he built his first prototype of a data-driven fish feeder in 2012 and founded eFishery in 2013. In July 2023 a $200 million Series D led by Abu Dhabi's 42XFund made it, the company said, the first aquaculture startup to pass a $1 billion valuation; Bloomberg later put the figure at $1.4 billion. Investors put around $315 million into its preferred shares over five rounds.

A whistleblower went to a board member, and on December 16, 2024, eFishery confirmed that Gibran and co-founder Chrisna Aditya had been suspended. A draft report by FTI Consulting, reviewed by Bloomberg in January 2025, estimated that revenue for the nine months through September 2024 had been inflated by almost $600 million: $752 million reported, about $157 million actual. The report put a claimed $16 million profit at a loss of $35.4 million. The company had claimed more than 400,000 feeders in operation. Investigators' estimate came down to 6,300, of which 600 were sending back data.

In February 2025 eFishery cut more than 1,000 jobs, about 90% of its workforce. Under FTI's most optimistic scenario, DealStreetAsia reported, investors could recoup up to $42.7 million from liquidating the Indonesian assets, just under 10 cents for every dollar invested. "We were all surprised and disappointed with the uncovering of the fraud that seems to have happened at eFishery," Temasek's chief investment officer said that July.

Police detained Gibran and two former executives on July 31, 2025. Prosecutors accused the three of causing the company losses of more than 69 billion rupiah. On April 29, 2026, the Bandung District Court convicted him of embezzlement in office and money laundering and sentenced him to nine years; he said afterward that the verdict did not match what had been argued at trial.

"Visibly shaken and in tears, Gibran and his family present at the court hugged each other after the verdict was announced," Bloomberg reported. In July an appeals court cut the term to six years and ordered his Bandung house seized.

That month Malaysia's prime minister told parliament that the state pension fund KWAP had lost up to RM194.35 million on its stake. "He hit the send button to show his investors, certain he'd get caught," Bloomberg wrote of that first spreadsheet. "Only he didn't…."

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