This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 5, 2021 - April 11, 2021

The freshness of seafood is paramount to most diehard seafood eaters. However, most in the Klang Valley are at the mercy of morning market fishmongers for their favourite fish, shellfish and invertebrates. Busy city dwellers, on the other hand, rely mostly on what they can get from supermarkets.

On-demand local fresh seafood supplies were almost unheard of when David Lei and his two co-founders, Joe Heng and Hee Kah Hau, seafood enthusiasts themselves, decided to seize the opportunity and start Fish For It — offering consumers a chance to buy local wild catches a day ahead.

“Going to the supermarket or the wet market is not good enough for us seafood lovers. I feel like the selection [in supermarkets] isn’t enough, neither is the selection of local fish available at wet markets because most of their catch comes from Indonesia, Thailand or Vietnam. 

“On many occasions, the fishes are disguised as local catches when in fact, they are not. They go for a much cheaper price, but in terms of quality, they are not as good as our own seafood, which is exported most of the time,” says Lei. 

Heng is involved in a family business of supplying locally caught fish wholesale. Leveraging on the total experience of the three partners — 50 years in all — not to mention their network, they felt the scope of this business could be widened to include retail consumers as well as restaurants and hotels. 

Lei, who was running an engineering company, decided to put his business on hold and throw in his lot with Fish For It in 2018. 

“We’ve known each other for a long time. I came up with this idea and wondered if I should try it, because just like agricultural produce, most people want fresh seafood. I saw a potential in it and told them the idea. They loved it and so we decided to kick-start the website,” he says. 

Their most unique proposition is the next-day delivery of local wild-caught seafood from the Straits of Malacca that is cleaned, scaled and gutted, and then vacuum-packed and flash-frozen so that the catch retains its freshness before being delivered to their customers’ doorsteps. 

“Sungai Besar is our landing base. We decided to stick mainly to local seafood because I want to encourage our own fishermen. We have about 10 boats and about three dozen fishermen who go out to the open sea every day.

“Be it vegetables, fish or fruits, I feel that as Malaysians, we should support our own produce first instead of buying foreign fishes like salmon and tuna,” he says. 

As the fish is caught much closer to our shores and not subjected to any treatment to retain freshness for long journeys, its nutrients aren’t compromised, says Lei. 

“As much as I love to visit wet markets to get my supply of fish and other seafood, it is not that easy for most working people. With Fish For It, we want to bring the same convenience to everybody, which is being able to get seafood with a few clicks on your computer or phone.

“If you buy our local fishes, I believe that most of the vendors are like us. We do not use antibiotics and chemicals in our seafood produce to sustain their freshness. It’s healthier and eating local produce means we can reduce our carbon footprint,” he says. 

Malaysians are among the largest consumers of seafood in the world, according to a study conducted by Infofish — a fishery products expert. The study stated that Malaysians ate an average of 56.5kg of fish a year surpassing even the consumption of the Japanese. 

Over 30 types of whole local seafood and pre-cut steaks of fish — between Peninsular and East Malaysia — are available to consumers. 

While the partners clearly want to champion local selections, they understand that variety is important to sustain business. Hence, they also offer locally farmed seafood as well as some foreign varieties such as cods, scallops, oysters and clams. 

The prices vary according to the different types of fish, some under RM10 for 200g and some more than RM100 for 850g. 

Apart from the fresh catch, they offer pre-made items such as fish cakes, Ipoh hor fun, egg noodles, cheese tofu and prawn pastes, as well as steamboat packages that start from RM170, which is enough for three to four people. 

“I started selling food items for steamboat because it’s the easiest way to cook something and because I’m not a very good cook myself. So, I thought of just putting it out there and seeing how it goes, and we saw a demand,” says Lei. 

“Besides having our local produce recognised, we really wanted to show that our seafood is just as good as imported seafood. A lot of what we find in the markets here are from Vietnam and Indonesia. For example, ikan merah and ikan kembong are mostly from Vietnam, tenggiri is from Thailand, and from Indonesia, we get fishes like ikan merah and senangin.

“That’s why sometimes at the wet market, if you see a huge contrast in prices, that’s usually imported seafood. The local ones are more expensive, [especially] if the fish is a fresh catch. If the stock is from a week ago, then prices will be much lower. 

“At Fish For It, when you place your order, we will pick the seafood you ordered from the morning haul and clean them and pack them to be delivered the next day. Everything is done within 24 to 48 hours. Whenever the fishes are brought back to the dock, nothing stays behind at the door. Everything is cleaned and cleared out every day,” says Lei. 

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Fish For It saw a 200% to 300% increase in household orders, as physical distancing and long queues prevented people from doing their shopping. 

But its business was severely impacted by the mandatory closures of hotels and restaurants in the early days of the pandemic. 

Going forward, the partners are working on plans to export to China where there is an exponential demand for seafood. While the country farms fish and prawns for domestic consumption and imports extensively, the shortage is still palpable, says Lei. “The demand is so high in China that they do not have enough to cover the seafood intake of their own population.”

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