Nesianetwork.id - Gibran Huzaifah, CEO of eFishery shares with Nasdaq Listings Host, Kristina Ayanian, how the company is disrupting the traditional fish farming industry by building a sustainable aquaculture ecosystem using AI technology and innovations.
foreign from nasdaq's Market site I'm your host Christina ayanian and joining me today is CEO and founder of e fishery Gibran josefa Gibran thank you so much for joining us I'm so excited for our conversation today you're actually the first Indonesian company on the show Welcome.
very exciting for me as well now let's start off talking about e fishery what made you so interested in the aquaculture space yeah so before I started officially I started officially 10 years ago in 2013 and exactly like a few years before I started official actually was a fish farmer myself so and I started my own fish farming business business back then when I was in college so in my second year in college.
I started opening up small catfish Pond from one point to when I was graduated in 2012 I operate around 76 months and it was the time when I realized the opportunity of the sector because if we think about the aquaculture probably this is the only remaining major protein food source that is that is still have a big upside on that because if you if we eat the food in our plate every uh protein food source is already fully formed like our beef is fully farmed the chicken is already fully Farm even all of the uh uh other protein it's all fully fun but fish is probably the only remaining major protein Source there is still well captured from the from the ocean uh but if Humanity over shows us anything we will move from Hunter to Farmer so there will only be upset in aquaculture sector and that's when I realized okay.
I would like to fully uh uh dedicate my my entrepreneurship journey in aquaculture but on the other thing we also see that aquaculture is already the fastest growing food sector globally and Indonesia is the second largest aquaculture producers so everything fits on the uh on the list and decided to then started on building a tech company on top of it because Tech can grow the the sector even faster that's incredible like you mentioned Indonesia is the second largest fish economy in the world your um the fishing industry in Indonesia produces 1.55 of Indonesia's GDP that's incredible when you put that to scale why did you decide to incorporate technology in the aquaculture sector it's a very unusual mix definitely it's quite unusual.
but uh back then in 2013 we saw many grows and emerging companies try to replicate the model uh and the consumer technology from the U.S China and India and try to build the the big consumer Tech economy in Indonesia and I I was so inspired by then uh by by how the technology can help other sectors particularly on the consumer part of it and and some part Financial sectors to then Foster because it it solves fundamental problems and also it gives access to everyone to get to contents to values and services and I I see that being a fish farmer myself I know that the basic problems of the of the farming practice from the daily feeding solutions to selling the feed uh to selling the fish buying the feed with as a small scale Farmers.
where 97 of the farmers are Indonesia small scale then the technology has an opportunity to solve it and to solve it in such a big massive scale uh that can solve those phenomenal problems and alleviate many farmers livelihood that's amazing so how does e fisheria actually solve those problems when we started solving One problems at a time in 2013 when we started we focus on solving the operational problems of farming which is on the feeding because the feed cost is 70 to 90 of the total cost and currently done manually by labor sometimes the labor forget to feed the fish and sometimes they overfeeding sometimes they steal the fit and sell it to the other forms and there's no good way to really monitoring it so we had the idea on creating a machine that can fit the fish automatically it is connected to the sensor that can sense the appetite of the fish and sends the data to the cloud and connect it to the app as well.
and we were the first that implementing the uh the app and educating the farmers to use the app and after we have that uh model we created a business model that we call feeding as a service so instead of them buying a technology for an expensive uh uh amount they just need to buy uh to pay around 10 to 20 per month to use this technology and that's what what created a massive density and adoption on the farmer's level and we deployed uh uh many units and and we we're now connected to hundreds of thousands of of funds and around three to four years ago we started leveraging the data that captures by by our iot to solve more problems.
so we solve feed Problems by aggregating and created a feed Marketplace and create an on-demand feed distribution solution so the farmers can get a cheaper fee we also created we launched what we call more like a bnpl model for uh fish Farmers using our data create creative scoring and work with financial institutions so they can get access on on financing uh formal financial services and lastly uh to connect to the market by having the data we're able to predict how many fish that they will be harvested and find B2B buyers from the restaurants small food vendors to even export buyers and Global retailers to be able to buy the fish from our farmers and then we can buy from the Farmers on the on the higher price so we're now solving many problems from the farming practice from the feed distribution and the financing.
and also to the off Tech part and integrated to a whole ecosystem that that put the farmers and the sustainability as the center of it that's amazing so you took your needs and your problems as a fish farmer and now you know really evolved that into a solution and came up with a solution and now you're sharing that with the broader ecosystem it's really incredible yep how does the technology actually work what what sensors do you have in in the pond so I think the machine itself is very simple.
I mean the the the principle for us on Building Technology is that because we're working with small-scale Farmers the technology needs to be radically affordable uh so we we try to use it and build a technology that can be durable enough but also everyone can afford it so uh the it looks like a small tank that we put in the side of the Pawn on the middle of the pond that is connected to the sensor that using uh two type of uh of sensors one is vibration based sensor that's sensing the movement of the fish when they're hungry they tend to be more aggressive and they're full they tend to be calmer just like ourselves in a way uh and also acoustic based sensored by sensing in the uh the sound that is emitted when the fish is is hungry uh like a yum yum Chop Chop sun and the fish is hungry so that's when we figure out when to stop the feeding and then we automate it and create a feeding program that automated uh.
automatically uh be able to uh feed the fish uh by the most Optimum way then we capture the data send the data to the cloud provide recommendation to the app and the farmers use uh the app as a data acquisition tools it's more like a logbook for them to when their fish dead they put it on the app and they harvest the fish they put it on the app and with all of those different data sets where we then created like value chain surfaces like feed distribution and Marketplace uh credit scoring as I mentioned earlier and also the off take and harvest prediction technology on top of it wow the company does so much and aquaculture is such a rapidly evolving sector everything driven from technological advancements to Consumer.
demands how does efficiary stay ahead of that curve our principles is that we in any food sector particularly on in aquaculture we need to put uh farmers at the center of it because because they're they're the one they're producing the uh the fish they're the one they're producing the protein without them without increasing their livelihood without increasing their income then we wouldn't be able to do anything so assuring that we need to stay ahead of the whole Industries to ensure that we solve Farmers problems and and we solve more problems uh uh over time uh by using a technology in the data so that's first and the second we we really took many inspiration from many other sectors.
because technology evolving fast uh but the thing about technology is that they they can be replicated you can get the essence of that technology and get uh get it done and build it for the version of the sector and then create that impacts so uh for example we with all of the AI development uh right now we also created some sort of like the uh the co communication platform when the farmers can talk and ask through the app but on the behind of it we we put an AI so we use the technology.
development context in a context of our solving Farmers problems and that's how we will stay ahead of any competition you're evolving as technology and as the world is really rapidly evolving and it's no wonder why you raised a series D 200 million dollar funding recently congratulations on that and we are so excited to celebrate on the tower as well you're actually the first fish tech company to surpass the one billion dollar valuation globally that's incredible congratulations you've built it from ground up you must be so proud of yourself what's next for E fishery thanks a lot thanks a lot I think that's definitely a teams I work on on doing uh doing that and I think it proves many points that when we started focus on local problems that very Indonesian problems where we still be able to be like a global leader on doing that and try to get uh the inspiration for many tech companies.
so next we started as a very humble beginning I was a fish for myself and we started only solving Farmers problems only in Indonesia but with all of the resources that we have the the talents that we have and the capital and the support from many uh investors that we have right now we can be even more ambitious to extend our impact so our idea is to to be a regional and global company so right now we're we over the past 10 years we only focus Indonesia right now we're expanding to India and focus on building our technology and replicating our technology to impact more farmers in India but also and most importantly so we we try to create a global supply chain model when we started from the Upstream we would like to gradually go to more Downstream uh and one of the things that we're doing right now our focus is to get the product from the farmers and get it to the global export Market including to the US market so we will have our own bran.
to the uh some of the retailer companies in the US that that is coming from our our farmers and not just that we we're also bringing our technology and the data to the consumers so the consumers when they're buying the shrimp or the fish from from us from our brand they can see in the QR code where the fish and stream is coming from and whether it's on on which Pond and which farmers and and how they can deliver also help farmers to grow by buying it and also to verify whether the the fish and the shrimp is coming from a quality farms uh and and they can see whether it's actually antibiotic free or it's just a claim uh so verifiable data using technology would be able to uh give uh an assurance and confidence for the consumers about the product and it helps consumers to get a better product and also Farmers to get a better price so it's all win-win for everyone and we would like to grow the industry even further that's incredible we wish you much continued success thank you so much for joining us and sharing your story and we look forward to continue following thank you thank you foreign.
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