Omnivore Invests in $1.1 Mn Seed Round of Aquaculture Startup Aquaconnect

Chennai-based Aquaconnect has raised a seed round of $1.1 Mn\r\nfrom agritech focussed VC Omnivore, and company’s existing investor HATCH. As a\r\npart of this investment, Omnivore’s Chennai office lead Reihem Roy will be\r\njoining Aquaconnect’s board to support the company’s growth strategy.

Aquaconnect has built a big data and artificial intelligence (AI)\r\nenabled mobile application — FarmMOJO —\r\nto advise farmers on their pond operations based on constant monitoring of the\r\npond and other data capture by IoT platforms. 

With this new funding, the company plans to introduce\r\nimage recognition feature in the FarmMOJO app in order to speed up the data\r\ninput process for the farmers.

Aquaconnect’s cofounder\r\nRajmanohar Somasundaram told Inc42 that these fresh funds\r\nwill be used in developing an image recognition feature in FarmMOJO app. “This\r\nnew feature will allow farmers to write down the pond’s stats on a paper and\r\nupload them on the app by just taking a picture of that sheet.”

Further, the company also plans to invest in setting up 10\r\nAquaconnect stores around the shrimp farm regions of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and\r\nAndhra Pradesh. These stores will serve both as a marketplace for farm-related\r\nproducts such as seeds, probiotics etc, along with becoming a customer\r\ntouchpoints for the farmers.

 “We aim to reach 15K\r\nshrimp and fish farmers across India and Indonesia by December 2020. In\r\nIndonesia, we are initially targeting Sulawesi and Surabaya regions in Java,”\r\nhe added. 

Shanmugha Sundara Raj, Sanjai Kumar and Somasundaram have\r\nfounded Aquaconnect in 2017. The company had earlier raised pre-seed funding\r\nfrom HATCH accelerator in 2018. 

FarmMOJO claims to help shrimp farmers in the daily\r\nmanagement of their culture growth, which determines the quality of the final\r\nproduct. This includes optimisation of feeding, disease prediction and control,\r\nand water management.

For instance, it is important to ensure effective feed usage\r\nand biomass conversation in shrimp farming. So, at any point, if FarmMOJO\r\nobserves poor feed conversion ratio (FCR), it recommends actions and relevant\r\nproducts the farmer can use to normalise the pond environment.

In the two years since inception, Aquaconnect claims to have\r\nbrought 3K farmers on board and has generated a revenue of INR 2.4 Cr in FY18.\r\nAquaconnect primarily depends on a subscription model for monetisation, where\r\nfarmers pay to use its app every month. Farmers can subscribe to a basic plan\r\nin FarmMOJO at the INR 500 per pond they manage. The subscription plan allows\r\nfarmers to record data, access FarmMOJO’s web module and connect to the\r\nmarketplace.

Commenting on the investment, managing partner of Omnivore,\r\nMark Kahn said, “The Government of India is ramping up support for the aquaculture\r\nsector, carving out a separate Ministry of Fisheries, animal husbandry, and\r\ndairying as well as launching the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY).\r\nWe believe Raj (Rajmanohar) and his team are building one of the most promising\r\nagritech startups globally.” 

Shrimp Farming In India

Shrimps, also commonly known as prawns, contribute\r\naround 70% of\r\nthe total seafood export from India, which is worth about INR 45K Cr. The\r\nInternational Market Analysis Research and Consulting (IMARC) Group has predicted that the\r\nIndian shrimp farming market would reach a volume of 1.13 Mn tonnes by 2024,\r\nundergoing a CAGR of around 9% between 2019-2024.

In 2018, India’s Central\r\nInstitute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (CIBA), had also\r\nlaunched a shrimp farmers focused mobile application, Vanami Shrimpapp. The\r\napp allows farmers\r\nto access best pond management practices, carry out input and sampling\r\ncalculations, predict disease outbreak, on-farm risk assessment along with\r\naccessing government guidelines and regulations.

Globally, Aquaconnect competes with the likes of San Francisco-based\r\nAI company Aquabyte,\r\nAustralian machine learning platform sense-t,\r\nIndonesian AI and IoT enabled company efishery, and Norwegian Seafood Innovation\r\nCluster’s AquaCloud.

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The global aquaculture market was valued at\r\n$169 Bn in 2015 and is expected to grow at 5.3% CAGR to touch $242 Bn by 2022.\r\nBesides India, Aquaconnect is also targeting the other large shrimp production\r\nmarkets such as Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. 

Source : https://inc42.com