With galloping revenue growth, Toronto-based aquaculture software maker Wittaya Aqua is planning to open its first international office in Singapore this spring and is working on a $3 million raise.

The company, which has an employee based at the Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship in Dartmouth, makes software that helps businesses throughout the aquaculture supply chain increase efficiency. After beginning in 2017, Wittaya launched its product in November 2020 and now has customers in 16 countries.

The company’s monthly recurring revenue is increasing at about 10 to 15 percent each month with exceptionally strong growth in Asia. Though North Americans tend to think of aquaculture as coastal salmon farms, the global industry is dominated by shellfish farms in Asia, and Wittaya has made strides in helping these operations to modernize.

“There’s been a big shift in the past few years where companies are looking for precision, online data analytics,” said Co-Founder and CEO Evan Hall in an interview Tuesday. “They’re behind ground-based farms. For some of our customers, we may be the first data analytics software they use.”

In 2017, Hall started the company with Dominique Bureau, a Guelph University professor who’s been studying aquaculture nutrients for more than two decades. They made their income in the early years by consulting as they built a team and developed software that could analyze the feed being used and improve its use. These are important metrics as feed is the largest operational item of an aquaculture operation’s income statement.

Even large aquaculture operations have limited data, so the Wittaya Aqua solutions uses the customer’s internal data as well as Wittaya data to help the farmer understand what feed is best, how often and how it should be used. The solution can also work in tandem with other sensor-based solutions.

Having raised $300,000 from friends and family, the company has produced revenues since 2017 totalling $1.3 million to $1.4 million. Its MRR increased 485 percent throughout calendar 2021 and the solution can now be used for nine to 10 species, Hall said.

“How were we able to do this?” asked Hall. “It’s because our team has such deep domain expertise in aquaculture.”

The company’s growth has included some time in Eastern Canada, including a stint on Prince Edward Island as well as the Start-Up Yard at COVE. It is now going through the Creative Destruction Lab-Oceans cohort, which is based in Halifax. The nine-member team includes a part-time employee in New Brunswick and full-time staff in Dartmouth.

More than half the company’s business is now in Asia, so it will open an office in April or May in Singapore, the island state that Hall refers to as his second home. As well as being home to most of its clients, the Pacific Rim is also where Hall has done most of his fundraising. He is now working on a $3 million raise, and has 60 percent of that figure in firm commitments.

The company is also working on new products, including software that can work with sustainability analytics.