eFishery Raises Series A Funds Worth 58 Billion Rupiah, Plans Expansion to Asian Countries Next Year

Startup of automatic fish feeder from Bandung, eFisheries, announced the acquisition of series A funding of $4 million (approximately 58 billion Rupiah). This new investment will be used to strengthen its expansion plans to Asian countries in 2019.

This new funding was obtained from seven new investors, including Wavemaker, 500 Startups, Unreasonable Capital, Social Capital, Northstar Group, Triputra Group, and Maloekoe Ventures. Two previous investors, Aquaspark and Ideosource also participated.

In his interview with DailySocial, Co-Founder and CEO eFisheries Gibran Huzaifah revealed his strategic plan to open new markets in the business hardware for the Asian region. There are three targeted countries, namely Thailand, Bangladesh and Vietnam.

At that time, according to Gibran, expansion in the three countries was only limited to pilot project and not yet fully commercial. With the achievement of new funding, it will commercialize the business in mid-2019.

“This funding fully for our current business expansion (hardware solutions). We want to increase the market in Indonesia and start open market new abroad,” he said met in Jakarta some time ago.

eFisheries developing Internet of Things (IoT) based solutions through Smart Feeder, which is an automatic fish feeding device. One of its functions is to provide fish fodder on a scheduled basis. Currently, the Smart Feeder has been used by fish farmers in West Java and Lampung.

In this expansion, eFishery will work with local partners in three countries. "We are looking for big players and we have got partners there. So we offer business opportunities with large corporations-his. For example, channel (distribution), can be used as channel they. Later, we will make a joint venture (JV),” explained Gibran.

In fact, requests for services do not only come from these three countries. According to Gibran, other requests also came from other Asian countries, such as Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Gibran himself said he prefers big country markets, such as India and South American countries. There the opportunity is very large considering that shrimp farming is also large.

"But we want to focus on three countries first. If later proven in those countries, this could be story make us for push in other countries and growing even further. For example, we want raise [Series B funding], it could be for region expansion with any business model,” added Gibran.

Monetize data with credit scoring

In addition to opening new markets, eFishery also focuses on the domestic market to strengthen its position in the fishery supply chain. It will utilize and monetize the data taken from the Smart Feeder for commits to more fish farmers to stakeholder related to the fishery ecosystem.

"Hardware that we deploy it takes a lot of assorted data. We want leverage and use it so you can give it value ke customer or client. For example, we want to make something like credit scoring which connects farmers with banks,” said Gibran.

So far, he has seen that many banks and insurance companies are hesitant to provide loans or insurance products to fish and shrimp farmers because of the high risk. With the data it has, eFishery can manage and analyze risks so that banks are willing to provide loans.

According to him, this can benefit both parties. Banks get a new user market and farmers also get access to funding for expansion. eFishery sees this as value chain new for being able to offer them a Smart Feeder.

"In addition, we can utilize data to buyer. The data we have can predict crop yields and when. So before the fish are sold, we offer the harvest to buyer. Both we are doing pilot project, just define the business model and roll out in which area first?”

Gibran assured that his party did not sell the data, but took the data fee from every successful loan transaction from every data linked to the bank.

Finally, Gibran added, eFishery will expand its share in the domestic market by opening new distribution channels in fishery center areas in Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Sumatra until the end of this year. The target, eFishery will be in 35 areas in Indonesia from the current seven areas.