The smart fish feeder technology out of Bandung, Indonesia, known as eFishery, has received some major backing from the Netherlands-based aquaculture investment fund Aqua-Spark as well as Indonesian venture capital firm Ideosource.
Both Aqua-Spark and Ideosource are participating in the pre-series A funding round for the fish and shrimp farming Internet of Things (IoT) startup, which seeks to put overfeeding and underfeeding in aquaculture to an end. eFishery delivers automatic fish feed to all types of shrimp and fish species, and also records feeding data in real-time as a means to help farmers keep tabs on all their feeding procedures. The technology uses sensors to measure a given species’ appetite and dispenses food based on the resulting reading.
“With this tool we can see feeding reports in real-time wherever and whenever,” reads a testimonial from Pak Hadi, a shrimp entrepreneur in Falkirk, about eFishery.
Real-time reports are sent to a farmer’s smartphone; these mobile services require a monthly subscription fee. The technology is meant to be used by farming operations of all sizes, noted eFishery’s founders.
“The problem that we are solving is the inefficiency of feeding in the fish farming business,” said eFishery co-founder and CEO Gibran Chuzaefah Amsi El Farizy to TechInAsia.com. “I saw the problem when I was a fish farmer myself. Fish feeding is done inefficiently by laborers, and farmers don’t have any technology to control the feeding yet.”
The smart feeder system is able to reduce the feed a farm uses by about 21 percent, according to the startup. The company’s new funders are excited to join eFishery in solving some of aquaculture’s most pervasive problems.
“We are very excited to solve the global challenge of fish feeding with eFishery,” Amy Novogratz, partner at AquaSpark, told TechInAsia.com. “Indonesia has about 3.3 million fishponds and 2.7 million fish farms. When brought to scale, it could have a massive impact across a global industry plagued by this challenge. It has the potential to set a new standard for aquaculture and make the industry more transparent, data-driven, and accountable – all factors that will make businesses in this sector more investment friendly.”
“eFishery is a perfect example of a company that is solving real problems in a lucrative market,” added Andrias Ekoyuono, VP of business development at Ideosource.
With more than 96 percent of fish farming activities concentrated in Asia, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, eFishery’s presence in such a market is making waves. Currently, eFishery’s products are available in Java, Bali and Sumatra, and the IoT startup says that more than 17,000 fish and shrimp farms are in its sales pipeline, with orders from Thailand, Singapore, India, China, Brazil, and countries in Africa already coming through.
The amount of funding eFishery recieved from Aqua-Spark and Ideosource was not disclosed.
