Startup Askara Daulat Desa Develops the "Farming as a Service" Concept

Demand for agricultural commodities in Indonesia is still a constraint. This is considered an opportunity that can be solved through technology. Askara Daulat Desa tries to offer a solution with a concept Farming as a service (FaaS).

To DailySocial, CEO Village Sovereign Askara David Setionegoro claims Askara Daulat Desa is the first platform to develop the FaaS concept for agricultural ecosystems in Indonesia.

"The concept of Askara Daulat Desa FaaS is that we do the whole cultivation program, from planting planning, land clearing, planting execution, and direct delivery to clients," said David.

To find unused land that has the potential to be worked on, Askara Daulat Desa collaborates with third parties, be it the government or the private sector. To work on the land, Askara Daulat Desa collaborated with a farmer's union.

This concept is claimed to be different from other agritech platforms.

"We do not form partnerships with small farmers because the agricultural landscape in Indonesia is different from farmers in the United States. Most farmers only have small-scale land. For that we form partnerships with third parties, whether from the government to the private sector, to meet land needs sleep. Currently we are still focusing on the island of Java, "said David.

Together with other co-founders, namely Aditya Tirtatjahja (CTO), Stephen Angkiriwang (COO), and Brian Yie (Chief Legal Officer), they want to develop the upstream sector even better. Targeting the B2B market segment, Askara Daulat Desa uses a commission-based monetization strategy.

Currently they are already serving exporter clients for planting sweet potato and purple sweet potato komoditas. It is possible that in the future Askara Daulat Desa will add other commodity options, such as potatoes or shallots.

"We choose yams [..] especially for exporters who are still experiencing difficulties. So far, there are only a few suppliers in Indonesia that offer sweet potatoes and are usually centralized, for example only in Sumedang. Departing from there we finally tried to work on this potential," said David.

Askara Sovereign Village also developed specifically capture weather data and actual soil profiles. This data is included as their big data metric, because each region has different weather and soil characteristics.

"We process the big data in an algorithm, adjusted to the type of commodity to be planted. The output of this stage is a [more] precise planting plan," said David.

Expanding collaboration

This year, there are a number of targets that Askara wants to achieve, including increasing partnerships for land acquisition and digitizing all processes to make them more optimal.

Still running business bootstrap, Askara Daulat Desa also has no plans to conduct fundraising activities.

The company took part in the TINC batch 7 program which was initiated Telkomsel. Askara Daulat Desa sees that the program can open strategic partnerships with Telkomsel.

As a technology company, Askara wants to take advantage of networks and connectivity to develop IoT technology. Hope Telkomsel can help Askara Daulat Desa facilitate existing networks in various land locations.

"Telkomsel as a state-owned company, it makes it easier for us to cooperate with other state-owned companies. This program helps us in terms of technology development related to network and connectivity," said David.