On 31 July 2025, Indonesian police detained Gibran Huzaifah, the former chief executive of eFishery, along with two former executives. The man once named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia was now at the centre of a financial reporting scandal. Police said the first portion they could prove, in a separate matter, was Rp15 billion.
How a catfish farmer's idea reached a US$1 billion valuation, and then collapsed, is what the public record shows. It is a story with an unfinished ending, and it is worth being careful with the facts.
Its first product was an internet-connected feeding machine that dispenses feed to fish in medium and large ponds.
Gibran studied at the Faculty of Life Sciences and Technology at Institut Teknologi Bandung, class of 2007. As a student he developed a strong interest in fish farming. After graduating he ran a business called AvanyaG Corp, then, from 2011 to 2013, a catfish farming venture called Dorri Foods Indonesia. That is where he learned the industry from the pond up.
On 8 October 2013, with Muhammad Ihsan Akhirulsyah and Chrisna Aditya, he co-founded the company that became eFishery. Its first product was an internet-connected feeding machine that dispenses feed to fish in medium and large ponds. In 2015 it received a Rp1.5 billion grant from Bank Mandiri to develop it. The company added software for monitoring shrimp and fish farms.
Recognition followed. Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2017, a stage at TED, programmes at Endeavor and Unreasonable, and executive courses at Harvard in 2019 and Stanford in 2023. In January 2022 came a Series C backed by SoftBank, Temasek and Sequoia India, and in 2023 a US$200 million Series D at a US$1 billion valuation.
Then came the reversal. In late 2024 an audit alleged fraud going back to 2018. It reportedly found two sets of financial statements, one for auditors, shareholders and banks, and one showing the real condition. A reported profit of Rp261 billion masked, it said, an actual loss of Rp578 billion, and the company allegedly claimed 400,000 feeders when about 24,000 existed. Gibran and Chrisna Aditya were removed from their roles, and the company laid off about 100 staff in January 2025 and about 300 in February.
These are allegations, and the case is ongoing; Gibran has been detained but the details of the police case have not all been made public. Reports of a later sentence come only from one aggregator and are not confirmed here.
What the record supports is narrow but stark. A founder with real expertise in the thing he sold, a farm feeder that actually existed, stood on numbers that were reportedly not true. For a founder, the lesson is plain: the audit eventually arrives, and the thing it measures is not the pitch but the pond.