We have 3.7 million farmers
and more than 10 million fish farms all across Indonesia.
The fish trading market is a $10 billion market
already in Indonesia.
The feed market is a $5 billion market
but that's only Indonesia.
But if we see on the global scale,
the aquaculture is a hundred billion dollar market.
My dream was to operate my own fish farms,
1,000 of fish ponds.
That was my dream.
I met many farmers that operate 100 ponds,
200 ponds, even 1,000 ponds.
And when I spoke to many farmers,
I saw similar problems that the farmers face.
All farmers know that the feed cost is the biggest cost.
It's 70% to 90% of the total cost
and currently done manually by labor.
So the quality of the feed that you produce
is really depending on whether the labor
feed your fish properly.
And from that discussion,
impulsively, it's just a spontaneous idea
that I pitch to the farmer,
"Hey, what if I can build a machine
that you can feed your fish from your phone?"
And if these problems is the same with all of the farmers,
then we even have much bigger opportunity.
My name is Gibran Huzaifah.
I'm CEO and co-founder of eFishery.
As a child, I can say that I grew up pretty poor.
Both of my parents married quite early
so they didn't settle economically.
But if I remember what it feels like during my childhood,
it's all about, you know, happiness.
So that part gave me an idea
that it's not always about the wealth, the money,
but it's about the relationships that we build.
When I started my own fish farming back then in college,
there's not really an external problem
that I was trying to solve.
It's just about solving my own problems
and tried to be independent back then when I was in college.
But it got me to a realization
that the massive opportunity of the sector is really big,
and that started eFishery from that point.
Our approach is really how we can help small scale
and small older farmers to increase their productivity,
and provide efficiency on their biggest cost,
which is feeding.
So that's why we started on building this eFishery feeder.
So this is a machine to feed the fish automatically
that is connected to the cloud and connected to the sensor
that can sense the fish appetite.
So it can improve the feed efficiency
or the feed conversion ratio,
as well as on increasing the growth of the fish
so they can shorten the harvest cycles.
When they use this kind of technology
that these are radically affordable,
they only need to pay $10 per month to use this.
They will see that their farming practice has improved
because the technology is embedded in their operations.
This kind of process is even more interesting
because this technology opening new doors for us
to capture a lot of data information.
How many feed that they're using?
What's the feed rate frequency per day?
What brand of feed that they're using?
And the farmers can even capture more data information
on how many fish that they will be harvesting,
how many fish are there.
We try to use the data and build credit scoring
to connect farmers with the financial institution
so they can receive the financing
from financial institutions directly.
And we can also use the data to connect farmers
to the downstream buyers.
So all in all, it's all about increasing the profit
of the farmers by leveraging the data and technology.
Each of the farmers has received many benefit,
at least the productivity,
and their income is increased from 40% to 200%.
We saw many farmers that started, you know,
joining eFishery only on, like, two ponds
but right now, they own 20 ponds.
So the productivity and their income increased by 10 times,
only joining eFishery in one year.
It was really challenging.
It was not as easy as I thought it would be
because when we had the product, when I went to the farmers,
the farmers never really understood
why they need to use this product
because most of the farmers are very traditional
and they've been doing it for decades.
They've been feeding the fish for 20 years
and using traditional model.
So they don't really know how this help
and whether this replace labor,
and labor is very cheap in Indonesia.
But when I asked them why they want to use eFishery,
I thought it would be about the technology,
and the solutions, the benefit of the product itself,
but apparently not.
What farmers appreciate is about the community
that we need to build, about the sense of belongings
on the bigger mission that we have.
So I think that's the biggest lesson,
that building a business is not just about the numbers
and the metrics, but really about the human side
and human relationship that we need to maintain,
to build, and to scale.
So if I see eFishery contributing to that larger ecosystem,
and see eFishery play a role on, you know,
feed more people, but also creating a livelihood
and also impacting that rural communities.
So that's really what drives me,
what defines my definition of success.
So it's not about, you know, the valuation
and my own wealth, but it's really about how eFishery
can contribute to general, you know,
success of those communities.
We're currently doing a pilot outside Indonesia.
We did a pilot in Vietnam.
We are currently doing a pilot in India.
So we would like to prove the solutions
that coming from Indonesian innovators
building in Indonesia market can actually take a big role
in the global aquaculture market.
We're really excited about the future
because we're pioneering this sector.
We're technically creating this category of fish tech,
of aquaculture technology that then has a really big upside
on building the market and building the sector even further.
And aquaculture is still currently
the fastest growing food sector in the world.
So for us, the sky is the limit.