Indonesian aquatech startup eFishery is reportedly leaderless as Adhy Wibisono has reportedly stepped down from his role as interim CEO, DealStreetAsia has learnt.
Sources familiar with the matter confirmed that Wibisono, who was appointed to the post following approval from the company’s investors in mid-December 2024, stepped down just six weeks into the role.
Wibisono previously served as group CFO at the Indonesian real estate platform NWP Property, a portfolio company of Warburg Pincus, where he worked for over three years, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has also had stints at fintech firm GoPay (now GoTo Financial) and healthcare firm Combiphar as a CFO.
eFishery investors had also approved the appointment of Albertus Indra Sasmitra as interim CFO. Sasmitra was a director at Northstar Group since July 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has also had stints at GoTo Group and Trimegah Sekuritas Indonesia.
eFishery’s former chief financial officer (CFO), Dhianendra Laksmana, had resigned from the company in April 2024, citing personal reasons.
On December 15, DealStreetAsia was the first to report that Indonesian unicorn eFishery’s board suspended its co-founders Gibran Huzaifah and Chrisna Aditya following an investigation into alleged financial irregularities at the company.
Yesterday, DealStreetAsia released an exclusive report detailing the preliminary findings from a forensic audit on alleged financial fraud by eFishery’s founders. The report revealed that the company had inflated its revenue for the first nine months of 2024 by nearly fivefold and manipulated its bottom line to appear profitable despite posting massive losses.
The management had been maintaining two sets of accounting records since at least 2018, one for select company leadership and another for external use.
The internal accounting reveals that the company generated 2.6 trillion rupiah (approx. $161 million) in revenue between January and September 2024, while the external record overstated this figure by 4.8 times, reporting 12.3 trillion rupiah ($750 million).
In the same period, based on inflated revenue, the external accounting for the first nine months reports a pre-tax profit of 261 billion rupiah ($16 million), in sharp contrast to internal records, which show a loss of 578 billion rupiah ($35 million).
The preliminary findings concluded that since the start of eFishery’s business in Indonesia until the end of November last year, the company had retained losses of approximately $152 million.
