EFishery Plans to Expand to India Starting in Early 2024

EFishery Co-Founder and CEO Gibran Huzaifah (right) at eFishery's 10th Anniversary in Sabuga, Bandung. Photo: Theresia Agatha/VOI

JAKARTA - An aquaculture technology company from Indonesia, eFishery plans to expand its wings to India to introduce automatic animal feeding technology. According to the plan, eFishery will start expanding to this country in the first quarter of 2024.

"In terms of a commercial pilot, we have been doing it for the last 12 months from September last year to this September. We will roll out commercially at the beginning of next year," said eFishery Co-Founder and CEO Gibran Huzaifah at the eFishery 10th Anniversary press conference in Sabuga, Bandung, Wednesday, October 11.

Gibran said that India was chosen because it has a large impact and market opportunity, and has a similar market to Indonesia, namely small-scale cultivators.

"India has an open market. In terms of market size, it is also similar to Indonesia, more or less the total is 9-10 billion US dollars. The shrimp market is bigger than Indonesia, their shrimp growth is 30 percent every year, Indonesia's is only 13 percent every year," he said.

He added that there is something interesting about India, namely that the growth of the fisheries market is concentrated in just one province which has an area the size of Java Island with 85 percent of production coming from that province.

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, shrimp farmers are spread across many islands, such as in Aceh, Nusa Tenggara and Maluku. Thus, the production costs of shrimp cultivation in India are much more competitive compared to Indonesia.

"For eFishery, which is all about density, if there can be more farmers in one place, it's better for this kind of technology to be able to scale. So, we see the potential for the impact to be greater," said Gibran.

Even so, the productivity of cultivators and fish farmers in India is only one-fifth of that of Indonesian farmers. So, if eFishery can bring its technology to India and double productivity, the impact on the fisheries sector will be even greater.

"So, if we calculate that one Indian community eats just one plate of fish per month, times 2 billion people (the total population of India). So, we see the potential impact and opportunity. What we have built in Indonesia can have a wide impact," he concluded.