Indonesia is the world’s second largest producer of fish. Our guest Gibran Huzaifah and his company eFishery are out to leverage technology in order to disintermediate centuries of inefficient practices and waste that have crept into the industry.
Indonesia has 3.3m fish farmers, many of whom barely scrape by. They are wedged between uneconomical fish feed pricing as their main input on one hand, and margins that disappear as they sell their fish into a labyrinth of downstream middlemen on the other hand. By implementing a group-buying scheme, eFishery can often secure 8-10% savings on the procurement of fish feed. Fish feed ultimately represents 70-90% of the fish farmer’s costs. The platform meanwhile can help the fish seller capture 25% higher product pricing by cutting out middlemen and connecting the farmer directly to restaurants and other downstream customers.
eFishery has deployed tens of thousands of its IoT-based sensors as part of its “Feeding-as-a-Service" business model. The vibration-based sensors detect the movement of the fish to pinpoint when they're hungry or full. A massive amount of data is generated from both from this process of automating fish husbandry, and in assisting the farmer to buy feed and sell fish. Much of the future roadmap for eFishery lies in credit scoring and the provisioning of loans and other financial services.
Gibran also discussed at length the manifold forms of collaboration with Gojek that affiliate GoVentures’ investment into eFishery has enabled; from powering payments across the spectrum to enabling the direct sale of fish to restaurants, hotels and other establishments by leveraging the Gojek fleet and the GoFood ecosystem. Longer term, eFishery sees broad business development opportunities in markets ranging from Vietnam to India, Bangladesh, and Thailand.
We hope you enjoy this episode of Indo Tekno!