It wasn’t until Monica Jain was in her 20s that she fell in love with the sea, but it’s not her fault. A St. Louis, Missouri native, Jain studied biology at Stanford, thinking she would go to medical school. As a senior in need of extra credits, she took a scuba diving class, and made her first-ever dive in Monterey Bay near Lovers Point. “I was like, ‘Stop the press! There’s a whole world under here and no one told me!’” she says. “I was so upset.”
Jain quickly changed focus, and spent a year studying marine biology in Pacific Grove at Hopkins Marine Station, which is affiliated with Stanford. She bounced around a bit after that, working marine biology jobs in Australia and Florida, and then came to a decision: She wasn’t going to pursue a PhD in marine biology after all, but instead go to business school.
“When you come from an Indian family, there is no choice but to go to graduate school,” she says. “I had to pick a graduate school, so I was like, business school then!”
Six years after graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1990, and then working in venture capital and consulting, Jain founded Carmel Valley-based Manta Consulting, a business consulting firm specializing in sustainable resource use.
In 2012, she began laying the groundwork for Fish 2.0, a business competition – and nonprofit arm of Manta – for sustainable seafood companies, wherein they could refine their vision with the help of consultants. The competition’s finalists made their pitches, in front of numerous investors, at Stanford in November 2013. The second competition’s finals was last November, and Jain says that because Fish 2.0 has been a huge success, there will be contests in both 2017 and 2018.
Jain stopped by the Weekly to talk about Fish 2.0, and what lies ahead for the sustainable seafood industry.
Weekly: How did Fish 2.0 come about?
Jain: Fish 2.0 is something I always wanted to do, but the timing wasn’t there. I would tell people, ‘I want to do something with finance and fisheries,’ and people would just give me this blank look. Like, why?
So what changed four years ago?
In California, the impact investing movement has been growing, and especially the impact investing movement concerned with food systems, and local foods, and farm to table. I said, “Well, why isn’t seafood part of that?” And people [said], “We don’t know anything about seafood, and how to find seafood businesses, and the ones we see aren’t quite ready for investors.” So I said, “Well, let’s solve that.”
What are some successes that have come from Fish 2.0?
After this last competition, many millions of dollars have moved into the businesses that participated and pitched at the finals. The most exciting thing for me is that a lot of the businesses that come through to the finals start to make connections between themselves.
What are the challenges in making people care more about sustainable seafood?
A lot of people say what’s really important is making sustainable seafood more accessible for consumers. Businesses like Real Good Fish – (a local company based in Moss Landing) – are buying fish from fishermen, and you can pick it up every week. That’s very accessible for the consumer. Otherwise, how do you get that fish? You have to drive down to Wharf 2, and if you’re lucky you’ll find it. We’re starting to see several other community-supported fisheries, like Real Good Fish, in other places in the U.S. We’re also seeing some businesses making these frozen, sustainable seafood filets with a sauce and instructions that people can buy in the supermarket. They’re easy to prepare, they’re tasty, they’re fresh and they come with a story of the person that fished it. Those kinds of things are going to take off.
Why should people invest in sustainable seafood businesses?
Whatever your plate is made up of, you should be thinking about that in terms of investment.
What’s on the horizon with traceability?
[It’s] coming. How [a fish] was captured and where, and is the fish the one they say it is. People are working on different technologies for both of them. It’s a billion-dollar industry. We’ll see it soon.