TL;DR
What is HasiruAqua?
Hasiruaqua cultivates safe, hygienic fish for consumers by partnering with farmers. We use real-time pond-health monitoring and testing to ensure highest quality of fish. We incorporated in 2019 when we received a fellowship from IIT-Kanpur.
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What is the problem HasiruAqua is trying to solve?
Bangalore consumes ~14,000 tonnes of fish annually as compared to 5,300 tonnes of chicken.
The poultry industry had similar problems in the 80s but was able to overcome it by using contract farming, scientific methods and technology. Vertical integration is now a standard practise in the poultry industry. Ther is an urgent need for such practices in the aquaculture or fish farming industry.
How do you solve the problem?
HasiruAqua partners with farmers and cultivates fish with the help of modern day technology. With just 1000 farms, we will be able to supply 30% of Bangalore's daily demand for inland fish.
There's 3 parts to the solution- developing technology, onboarding farmers and selling produce to consumers.
Technology for aquaculture is still at its infancy. Hasiruaqua is developing IoT devices, web & mobile applications and a robust technology stack that will mitigate the risk of fish cultivation.
By organising a community of farmers with whom we have iterated our product and service offering we are able to easily acquire farm partners that cultivate fish.
The marketplace will enable the final leg of the solution. It will enable vendors, farmers, distributors, exporters, brands and even consumers to trade with each other.
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Have you started already?
We started our first farm last year to test the service and develop our technology. It now has a yield of about 800 Kgs which we are sampling with distributors, exporters and a few chefs. We have also onboarded 5 new farms as of June and have 130 farmers from two districts on a wait-list.
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Why are you doing this now?
Smartphone and 4G penetration is finally reaching a critical mass in rural India. This makes it viable to use IoT and convert farms into smart farms.
Added to this, the government is offering 80-90% subsidy for construction of micro ponds called KrishiHonda in every farm. Their objective is to help farmers mitigate drought and help with ground water rejuvenation, but also encourage aquaculture practises. Unfortunately the farmer does not have any understanding of fish or cultivation practises. 9/10 farmers we spoke to had tried to cultivate fish but had lost their entire crop and did not understand the reason for failure.
Globally speaking, aquaculture supply is just 3-5 years away from overtaking traditional fishing. While mature markets are rapidly moving to farmed fish, the global south is still relying on traditional fishing practices with no regard to ecology etc.
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Who are your competitors?
Since we are a vertically integrated solution, we compete with different companies at different levels of the supply-chain. Currently we buy fish fingerlings and feed from various vendors. As we are closer to having 50 farms we will have in-house hatcheries and feed production that will supply fingerlings and feed to our partner farms.
In the technology space there are companies like fishx.ai, Eruvaka and a few more that are building monitoring systems and automation technology to help farmers near the Himalayas and in Andhra Pradesh respectively. Eruvaka raised a series B round last year and was recently acquired by Nutreco, a dutch company for an undisclosed amount.
But the fact remains- they do not provide a full-stack fish-farming service.
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Who's involved?
HasiruAqua was started by a farmer, a designer and a hardware engineer. They incorporated when they received a fellowship from IIT-Kanpur.
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Why should you invest?
HasiruAqua is on track to onboard a 1000 farms in the next two years. We aim to go global in 4 years.
The poultry industry took almost 25-30 years to achieve this. With our proprietary technology and community approach, we will achieve this in 8-10 years at a fraction of the cost.
Our service offering directly impacts the lives of farmers and consumers. It helps farmers earn an additional revenue of about Rs. 100,000/- annually.
We provides consumers with a superior product that is safe, healthy, nutritious and tasty.
Fish cultivated in monitored, clean, hygienic environments are highly beneficial to food and pharmaceuticals industry.