Shrimp and fish farming are popular livelihood activities for lakhs of farmers in the coastal as well as rural regions of India, where traditional farming practices prevent them in attaining production efficiency and diseases prediction. But due to lack of technology, these fish and shrimp farmers face many problems.
To help aqua farmers, Chennai based startup ‘Aquaconnect’ is promoting sustainable aquaculture (raising fish and shrimp) through technology intervention. For this, the startup is focused on using Artificial Intelligence (AI), IoT & satellite remote sensing to boost aquaculture output and make India the world’s aquaculture hub.
IITK alumnus Rajamanohar Somasundaram (Co-Founder and CEO), Shanmuga Sudararaj and Sanjai Kumar started the startup in 2017 to provide data-driven farm advisory solutions & market place solutions to shrimp as well as fish farmers.
Revealing as to how everything started Somasundaram said that “We felt a need for automating farm management, disease prediction through data sciences. Aquaconnect helps in improving the aquaculture industry through an ecosystem-based approach by first digitalizing data produced & consumed along the entire value chain all through the lifecycle of the aquatic animals for analytics-driven data-informed decisions. It also improves farmers’ livelihoods through enhanced access to knowledge, input, finance & market leveraging players on the value chain”.
He said, “We made FarmMOJO, an AI-driven advisory solution that helps farmers enhance productivity, predict disease & ultimately get higher farm income (up to 5 to 10%). Our AI advisor records production data such as water quality parameters, feed inputs, health status & biomass conversion”.
He further told that “Our AI-driven approach continuously checks farm operations and favors real-time analysis of culture. It helps farmers in the daily management of culture growth like optimize feeding, disease prediction & management & advice farmers from time to time. FarmMOJO aids rural farmers & coastal communities by reducing the dependency on technicians in daily culture operations”.
Their target consumers are aquaculture farmers in India and SEA nations. It has a network of about 4200 plus farmers in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.
Somasundaram said, “Now, 1350 plus farms have been made smart farms with the FarmMOJO implementation. It offers full AI assistance to farmers throughout the culture, right from stocking to harvest”. He told that through their data intelligence, they connected farmers directly to the market place & helped them sell 1000MT plus shrimp to the importers.
FarmMOJO facilitates traceability from the point of production till the point of consumption. In addition, FarmMOJO is location-aware, context-aware and it can present relevant products at the right time & right intervention.
The CEO said that “FarmMOJO effectively connects farmers with the upstreams (hatcheries, feed & healthcare producers) as well as downstream (processors, certifying bodies, Banking, Financial Services, & Insurers) of the aquaculture supply chain.”
Aquaculture in India has evolved as a viable commercial farming practice & has been showing a notable annual growth rate of 10 to 15% every year. Somasundaram added that “India’s seafood exports valued at around US$ 7 billion in the year 2018. India stands first on shrimp production and it contributes 70% of Indian aquaculture export value. It ranks second in aquaculture production & third in marine fisheries”. He said that though it is a multibillion-dollar industry, it still lacks the technology adoption & efficiency it is expected to have.
With FarmMOJO data, the startup connects cultivators with formal financial institutions to provide financial aid and crop insurance. Processors and certifying bodies can leverage this data for sustainable procurement & certification.
To know more about the start-up visit, aquaconnect.blue/
