Heaptalk, Jakarta — Indonesia’s aquaculture technology (aquatech) startup, eFishery, plans to expand its business to the Indian market by introducing its automatic fish feeding system, eFeeder, which is targeted to start operating in Q1 2024.
According to the Co-Founder and CEO of eFishery, Gibran Huzaifah, this measure is carried out this market is dominated by small-scale cultivators, indicating a tremendous opportunity. According to him, India has a market size of approximately US$9 – US$10 billion, with shrimp production more significant than the archipelago.
In his further statement, India’s shrimp production growth reached 30% per year compared to Indonesia, which was only 13% annually. The development of the fisheries market in India is also centered on one province, reaching 85%.
“In a commercial pilot, we have been doing this for the last 12 months, from September 2022 to September 2023. We will roll out commercially at the beginning of next year.” Gibran added.
Following its 10th anniversary, this unicorn startup also continues to strengthen its business strategy by supporting the downstream sector. The team will expand its business in this plan by directly distributing shrimp and fish harvested products from cultivator partners to end consumers in several modern and traditional supermarkets. The products distributed will be under eFishery’s new brand, which is still in the licensing process.
Since its establishment in 2013, this company is claimed to have disrupted traditional fish and shrimp farming methods through an integrated aquaculture system provision in accessing the availability of fish feed, funding, and markets for fish and shrimp cultivators in the country.
From an economic perspective, this startup has contributed almost 3% of Indonesia’s fisheries sector’s total GDP. By providing an inclusive digital economy for Indonesia’s fish cultivators, eFishery noted fish and shrimp sales transactions of up to US$509 million (around Rp8 trillion) and recorded fish and shrimp feed sales transactions worth US$254 million, or approximately Rp4 trillion over a decade.
As a part of commemorating its anniversary for a decade, this fisheries startup collaborates with the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs to launch a Multi-Party Cooperative Growing Together with Cultivators. This cooperative adopts technology integrated with the eFishery digital ecosystem to simplify the downstream process for affiliated cultivators.
By establishing this cooperative, Gibran hopes to increase Indonesian fish farmers’ business scale and accelerate the Kabayan program’s growth. As is known, this program has around 30,000 cultivators. Meanwhile, the CEO Gibran recorded the cultivators’ partners have attained about 200,000 people in the eFishery ecosystem.
