New Delhi:- Following the news of the new funding, Indonesian aquaculture startup eFisery announced today that it has raised $200 million in Series D funding. The company, which develops smart feeding systems for fisheries, said it would become the first startup in the global aquaculture industry to break the $1 billion valuation mark. The goal is to reach 1 million aquaculture ponds in Indonesia by 2025 and expand overseas.

The funding was led by Abu Dhabi-based 42XFund and included participation from Malaysia's largest public sector pension fund Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (Diperbadankan), Swiss wealth management firm responsibility, and 500 Global. Existing investors Northstar, Temasek, and Softbank also returned to the round, with Goldman Sachs acting as eFisery's exclusive financial advisor. TechCrunch last reported on the startup in January 2022 when it announced a $90 million Series C. 

EFissery cites a study by the Institute of Demographics and Statistics, University of Indonesia (LDUI), which shows that everyone contributed 1.55% to Indonesia's gross domestic product in the aquaculture sector in 2022. This is important because Indonesia has the world's second-largest fishing and aquaculture industry after China. According to the World Atlas, the country produces 5.8 million tonnes of fish each year.

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The fishery was founded in Bandung, West Java in 2013 by his CEO Gibran Huzaifah (pictured above), and currently, in 280 cities across Indonesia, he serves 70,000 fish and shrimp farmers. I'm here. In addition to an IoT automated feeding system, eFisery's platform includes a marketplace to sell fish and shrimp feed to fish farmers, a marketplace to sell fresh fish and shrimp products to his B2B consumers, and financial products for fish farmers. contained. 

Huzaifa set up a catfish farm while in school. He told TechCrunch that he learned during that time that feed management is extremely important as feed accounts for 80% of total production costs. However, many farmers still hand-feed their fish, and not everyone is fed the same amount of food, resulting in variability in fish size.

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This is a problem because buyers want to buy fish of a certain size. But underfeeding is not the only problem. Overfeeding leads to nutrient leakage and pollutes the water. Huzaifa has seen technology revolutionize areas such as commerce, financial services, and media, but "fish farming practices haven't changed much in the last 30 years." I found it very ironic that so many innovations have been developed to solve it. There is little digital innovation in essential sectors such as agriculture and aquaculture. " 

But after developing eFisery's intelligent feeding system, Huzaifah faced opposition from fish farmers. After months of persuasion, "they finally wanted to try it. Not because they believed in technology, but because they sympathized with me." I didn't use it. "I remember making an emergency call on the Internet with the farmers," Huzaifa said. "We showed them how to write emails, how to use Facebook, how to get information from YouTube, etc."

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According to Huzaifa, Indonesia's aquaculture is already very large, but only 7-9% of its total potential is reached. Among the challenges we face is fragmentation. Huzaifa explains that Indonesia has 34 provinces with different business practices, so each one needs to be localized. 

The Fish Feeding Company has been valued a lot as expected and has shocked everyone with the revenue that it generated this year.