The Aquaconnect Journey: Improving India's Inland Fish Farming With Innovative Tech

Raj comes across as a mild-mannered, unassuming guy who drops enormous truth bombs when you least expect it. Fairly early in our conversation, Raj said, “India is the largest exporter of frozen shrimp in the world and second largest aquaculture producer behind China.” Absolutely insane, right? That had me hooked onto his every word.

Rajamanohar “Raj” Somasundaram

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Rajamanohar “Raj” Somasundaram is on a mission to disrupt India’s inland fisheries sector through his startup called Aquaconnect. He considers aquaculture to be one of the most sustainable protein production value chains in the world, substantiating it with another interesting fact.

“Every 8 kg consumed by cattle or bovine animals produces about 1 kg of beef,” says Raj. “Similarly the equivalent of 1 kg of lamb requires 4 kg of animal feed, for 1 kg of chicken or poultry it takes about 2.5 kg of feed.” But for fish or shrimp, this ratio is the lowest at 1:1.2, according to Raj, “For getting 1 kilo of fish or shrimp harvest, you have to feed the fish or shrimp just 1.2 times its body weight.” It’d be safe to assume that most consumers of fish – including me – are completely unaware of these behind-the-scenes calculations and realities of sustainable fishing.

Fixing aquaculture farms’ problems

As a full-stack platform, Raj’s Aquaconnect provides end to end services to various stakeholders – including the fish farmer at the very centre of their business. And as things stand, there are some key problems that plague the aquaculture and fish farming industry.

For shrimps, it takes about 4-5 months for baby shrimps to grow up to be harvested and for fishes, it takes roughly 8 months, according to Raj. Healthcare management of the fishes and shrimps for all these months is an important aspect of aquaculture farming. “As much as 60% of the cost goes into feeding the fishes, which includes pharmaceutical products and various sorts of early-stage investment,” says Raj, highlighting how farmers need to get scientific data, which they aren’t getting right now – currently they only get biased advice from certain feed companies who want to sell their own feed to producers.?

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Another key problem is securing financing from banks, explains Raj. “Banks stay away from adding tremendous value to aquaculture farming because they are unable to come up with risk assessment and mitigation strategies, since everything is happening underwater,” he says. This prevents the aquaculture industry to come into formal capital inclusion, as middlemen supply lines of credit to farmers who don’t get paid on the same day of harvest, claims Raj. Similar challenges exist for retailers and brands who want to get into the import and export of aquaculture in a big way, which is what Aquaconnect is trying to solve holistically.

Technology for aquaculture farming

As a full-stack aquaculture pioneer, Aquaconnect’s always connected with farmers and their farms. Apart from knowing how much farmers are buying from input retailers, and how much they’re selling to buyers through their platform, Raj’s startup has developed a non-intrusive data capturing mechanism that is first-of-its-kind. He says, ”We use satellite remote sensing to know dynamic, real-time information about the pond.”?

Apart from eyes in the sky, Aquaconnect deploys boots on the ground through partners who provide certain information about the age of the shrimp or fish culture, approximate harvest time and harvest volume. “We can also validate these facts through machine learning algorithms that we have built for satellite imagery, places where we can zoom in and analyze individual ponds,” explains Raj, indicating how white streaks in the water signify an active and healthy pond. “Looking at just the colour of water from satellites in the sky, we can identify the oxygenation levels in the water of aquaculture farms. Based on the pond’s activity levels, we are able to understand various parameters related to on-ground fish farming and create a comprehensive credit risk management platform, which has never been done before,” according to Raj.

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Community support is huge for success in the aquaculture sector, which is what makes Aquaconnect unique, according to him.

“There are people who are already servicing the aquaculture industry in India, and it’s already commercialized since 75% of India’s seafood production is coming from inland fish farms,” says Raj, highlighting how globally it’s a $25 billion industry. “Our aim is to solve certain problems for the input retailers, farmers and buyers by bringing them all together on a single, tech-enabled platform. We're enabling buyers which is eventually benefiting the farmers and ultimately buyers. That’s how we are scaling up.”

Of sustainability and ambition

On the one hand, Aquaconnect is improving the way of doing business in terms of access to finance for farmers, but on the other hand, it’s also increasing supply chain efficiency, according to Raj.?

“We need to talk about not only responsible production, we also need to also talk about responsible consumption,” emphasizes Raj unequivocally, “because whatever you produce you need to responsibly consume.”?

For this, at the supply chain level, “We are ensuring reducing wastage. We are talking about recycling at the consumption side and helping improve the quality of life of the entire value chain because seafood is good and improving its operational production efficiency is one of the best ways to solve the challenges faced by modern nutrition,” says Raj.

This weaves into Raj’s original point about how shrimp and fish farming is important for not only the world’s but also India’s protein consumption needs and food security.?

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“India produces close to 14 million metric tonnes of seafood every year through inland farms, of which roughly 800,000 metric tonnes is exported (largely shrimp), so the rest of 13 million metric tonnes of fish is being consumed domestically,” reveals Raj, highlighting the scale of domestic market opportunity on offer in terms of professionalizing the value chain. Typically fish is consumed within 200 km of its production point in India, always playing second fiddle to poultry. Fish requires cold storage and supply chain interventions that poultry doesn’t need, explains Raj.

“If you’re a bachelor living alone in the city and you love seafood, but can’t cook it because you need to go to the wet market or order from brands... which have a high markup,” sighs Raj. “Smaller towns and hinterlands are still far away from consuming high-quality, on-demand fish filets and ready-to-eat shrimp in India, because the product-ization hasn’t happened yet – right packaging, right product decisions haven’t happened at scale in this country,” he says.

“And that’s essentially our ambition,” Raj indicates. “How do we enable farming to connect to domestic and international demand markets? Can we satisfy aquaculture farmed fish demand within 10 km of its harvesting? So these are big structural challenges that we’re in the process of solving currently, with the right amount of capital and innovative technology intervention,” he says.

Next time you bite into a shrimp cocktail at home or a restaurant, definitely compliment the chef and think if Aquaconnect and Raj’s behind-the-scenes effort had any part to play in enabling your meal. Bon appetit!

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