The extra they talked, the extra Somasundaram acquired within the scope for cellular tech to make a dent in aquaculture. Farmers on this area have been extra affluent than the common farmer in different areas of agriculture. Shrimp farming entails an expenditure of ₹10 lakh per acre, which quantities to an funding of ₹1 crore for 2 half-yearly hauls from a five-acre farm. But, the adoption of expertise was so low in India that aquaculture was far much less productive than in different nations.
After that practice journey, Somasundaram put collectively a staff, with a mixture of aquaculture and cellular tech experience, to launch his new startup Aquaconnect in 2017. It started with a easy FarmMojo app to supply advisories to farmers based mostly on inputs of farm knowledge, however quickly bumped into a difficulty.
“The farmers know the way to use cellular apps, however they’re lazy or reluctant in the case of inputting knowledge. We struggled within the preliminary months as utilization was very restricted even when our app was downloaded,” explains Somasundaram.
Then the aqua app maker got here up with a companies hack.
Testing the waters
One of many ache factors for a shrimp farmer is getting pond water examined periodically. Testing the water ensures wholesome progress of the shrimp and stopping ailments with interventions. But it surely entails taking the water to a city with a lab and accumulating outcomes.
So Aquaconnect created a Swiggy-like service the place a supply individual collects water samples from farms, takes them to accomplice labs, and enters take a look at particulars within the FarmMojo app.
Right here was one thing helpful for the aqua farmers that additionally created a bodily level of contact between them and the startup. “The farmers get the water high quality outcomes immediately and likewise our advisory companies based mostly on the information,” says Somasundaram.
There are numerous advisory modules for water therapy, feeding and extra, based mostly on over 20 parameters within the water high quality take a look at. For instance, if the aquafeed is deciding on the pond backside as a substitute of being consumed, it produces an irregular degree of ammonia which may kill the shrimp.
The advisory service is in flip linked up with aquaculture enter corporations to create a market the place Aquaconnect is ready to supply higher costs and extra selection than native distributors due to aggregation of demand.
The startup later developed right into a full stack mannequin with each upstream and downstream market linkages, from shrimp hatcheries to exporters.
The app knowledge can assist with traceability. Shrimp farmers, who export 95% of their produce, are effectively conscious that they need to not use antibiotics to stimulate progress, however generally these components get carried over from hatcheries or what’s fed to larvae.
Arul Raj, a 35-year-old farmer close to Chidambaram on the Tamil Nadu coast, has been utilizing Aquaconnect for a yr. He had initially leased 5 acres of land to farm Indian carp species, like rohu, however switched to shrimp as a result of it’s extra worthwhile. But it surely additionally raised the danger of larger losses if something went mistaken.
He used to painstakingly word every thing down in a pocket book, from feeding particulars to check outcomes. “Now with Aquaconnect, knowledge is fed into the app which makes it simple to trace anytime. Aquaconnect workers visits the farm as soon as per week, will get water testing finished, suggests what medicines so as to add, and so forth. Every part has turn out to be extra common,” says Raj.
Decreasing wastage
For Somasundaram, that is simply the fundamental degree the place expertise could make an impression on aquaculture in India. He was a part of the Hatch aquaculture startup accelerator programme in Norway, which later joined Omnivore in offering $1.1 million seed funding to Aquaconnect.
At Hatch, Somasundaram got here throughout a number of improvements, proper from aquafeed to fish processing. Iceland processes 80% of each cod caught, he factors out, because the bones and pores and skin go into value-added merchandise like gels and even clothes. There are 120 startups engaged on full utilization of the fish within the Iceland Ocean Cluster.
In distinction, after processing shrimp meat for export in India, 35-45% of the shrimp goes waste because the shells and heads are discarded. Thailand even imports uncooked shrimp from India for its aqua processing trade. Somasundaram hopes that India strikes up the worth chain for higher returns to farmers as a substitute of simply treating shrimp as a commodity.
Sumit Chakraberty is a Consulting Editor with Mint. Write to him at chakraberty@gmail.com
The post Taking a leaf from the Swiggy playbook to help aqua farmers appeared first on NorJoe.
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