Tanibox Combines Blockchain and IoT to Revolutionize Agriculture

Tanibox is here with the concept smart agriculture quite innovative. It combines capabilities blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide more effective farming systems. This startup development project began in 2012 when the couple Asep Bagja Priandana and Retno Ika Safitri (co-founder) designed an IoT-based personal project for urban farming in his apartment. "Tanbox" is the name of the project that was agreed upon at the time.

The private project continued, until finally both of them moved house and had a small garden as their research laboratory. Long story short, the project evolved into a technology product, they validated it by participating in the Indonesia IoT Challenge competition (winning third place). At the end of 2016, an agricultural management system called "Tania" was initiated.

Steady with its innovation, early 2017 Tanibox was established as a business unit and released Tania to the public as open source. Third quarter 2017, Tanibox registered as a legal business unit in Estonia. With an increasingly complete team, Tanibox is now debuting with three products: Tania, Terra, and Trace. In 2018, apart from releasing the Tania update, there was a breakthrough in the form of a pre-ICO (Initial Coin Offering) campaign for TaniCoin, the starting point for adoption blockchain Tanbox.

A startup journey that is quite interesting to explore. DailySocial contacted Tanibox CEO Asep Bagja to ask for some details in the innovation and establishment process. We started the conversation by discussing the two legal business units currently owned by Tanibox, in Indonesia and Estonia. Asep explained that there was a special reason and urgency regarding this matter.

"Tanibox is indeed registered in two countries. The one in Estonia is to target the European Union market and make it easier when you need to recruit talent there. Currently the team at Tanibox operates independently. remote and spread in several cities in Indonesia: Denpasar, Solo, Bandung, Bekasi and Jakarta. At the beginning of the development period, we also had the opportunity to contract foreigners and work independently remote from abroad: Estonia and Canada. Currently, we are also doing management cryptocurrencybusiness license in Estonia, because there it's legal framework for cryptocurrency already exists," explained Asep.

Concept blockchain for agriculture

Application blockchain for solving agricultural problems is arguably still very new. There are many scenarios that can be applied, one of which is the one that the Tanibox team is currently working on. Regarding implementation blockchain Asep explained that by using blockchain all transactions that occur in it will be very transparent and the data is difficult to trick.

"For example, with transparency in the system, people know if a buyer is buying commodities from farmers at a good market price or not." (fair trade), or the consumer will be able to know the story of the journey of a commodity product that he bought in the supermarket from the farmer's hand to the supermarket. If there are commodities that require certification, such as palm oil with its RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil), it will make it easier for the certifying party to determine whether the plantation really meets the requirements or not," explained Asep.

Quite convincing, but the question will always return to the condition of the agro sector in Indonesia, one of which is the issue of agricultural human resources. At Tanibox the strategy is to implement a business model, the main customers are B2B. For example, a cooperative that houses many farmers, this cooperative will be the consumers of Tanibox, and they will teach the farmers.

Asep helped correct the assumption of the current condition of agricultural human resources, gradually they are also technologically literate. In line with the conditions he saw on the field on various occasions. So that the users of Tanibox products are wider open, for example for large plantation owners or hydroponic entrepreneurs.

Tanibox product variants

The big vision that is tightly gripped is “To bring the simplest farming experience and to democratize access to modern AgTech”. Its embodiment is with the three technologies that are currently the pillars of Tanibox. First, Tania, which is an agricultural management application designed to make it easier for farmers to manage work, resources, increase knowledge and operate device activities automatically.

The developer's belief that modern agriculture should be business-oriented. More than just producing crops, farmers need to think about profit, productivity, quality and sustainability. Apart from being good farmers, they need to be reliable farm managers and business owners. Tania is expected to help farmers achieve this. Tania published as open source, under the Apache 2.0 license.

“The founders and the team at Tanibox, it's a pleasure to be in the world open source. By placing Tania as open source the community can freely try and modify, of course the support we provide is community. This means that there is no exclusive support such as customizing or teaching each user how to use it. If there are users who want to customize and need exclusive support, then they have to pay. This is a common business model in the world open source. By releasing Tania to be open source, we can also get faster traction, “said Asep.

The second product is Terra, which is a computer and mini sensors that work in real-time to capture and study the condition of the land and the surrounding environment. Apart from being used to remotely operate tools such as sprinkler showers, these IoT devices are also used to collect and transmit data. The concept is actually also adopted from the habits of the farmers. They always use information about the weather, climate and other natural conditions to find out the best time to plant crops.

Supported by computational algorithms, sensors provide information to control how much water is needed by plants, detect leaks, measure data related to rainfall, humidity, temperature, air pressure to contamination levels. Implementation in the field using two tools: Farm Computer and Sensors. Meanwhile, data access and device control can be done through the application mobile devices (planned for release to the public in the third quarter of this year).

The third, Trace, is referred to as a tracking platform. Provide information on food and agricultural products that have been verified, from the producer, origin, to ownership. Each product item will have a unique identity, allowing for tracking if required by consumers. This platform is considered to be able to enable partners to manage their business, products and supply chain more easily and transparently.

About TaniCoin

Currently, Tanibox is in the ICO process, selling TaniCoin (or TACO) with a total target of 1 billion coins. TACO is defined as "participant-oriented project" which can also serve as utility coins for building technology blockchain. This crypto coin is developed with the CryptoNight algorithm. It is targeted that the ICO process will end in December this year. It is hoped that the success of the ICO will launch The roadmap products and businesses that have been clearly planned.

"TaniCoin itself was actually designed as a utility coins, meaning that the coin will be used in the ecosystem blockchain Tanibox to make transactions, but it is possible that the owner of TaniCoin will buy and sell (trading) with cryptocurrency another after the ICO. Because we will list TaniCoin in cryptocurrency exchange which is public," Asep explained.

In the end, the Tanibox team believes that the agricultural sector is a sector that is rarely touched by the development of information technology, therefore with more and more people in the information technology industry who want to be involved, it is hoped that the agricultural sector will further advance.

"The number of human populations is increasing, it is impossible for farmers to produce food for humans if they still use the same methods as when the human population was still small," concluded Asep.