Aquaculture is a $17bn industry in India, growing at about 25% CAGR. In addition, India is the largest exporter of frozen shrimp and the world. With a feed conversion ratio (FCR) as low as 1.2, it is also among the most sustainable protein production systems that we currently know of.

“The shrimp farmers have a lot of AI,” says Rajamanohar Somasundaram during a chat with INDIAai’s Jibu Elias. The comment is hard to fathom, given how unorganised the sector is. Anyone with the slightest knowledge about aquaculture will know that these farmers maintain a daily ledger to record their farm data. This pen-and-paper system of maintaining records crushes even the remotest possibility of having any AI at play. “It is their ancestral intelligence,” jokes Raj, co-founder of Aquaconnect, alluding to the incumbent unscientific practices that have been acting as a roadblock to innovation. “But I have learnt from my experience that we need to complement our artificial intelligence with the farmers’ ancestral intelligence.”

Aquaconnect is a full-stack aquaculture technology venture that aims to improve shrimp and fish farm productivity and market linkage through artificial intelligence and satellite remote sensing technology interventions. Co-founded in 2017 by Rajamanohar Somasundaram, Sanjai Kumar and Shanmugha Sundara Raj, Aquaconnect is helping over 20000+ shrimp and fish farmers in India to manage their culture operations effectively.

Most of aquaculture in India is concentrated in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Orissa, Gujrat and Andhra Pradesh. Aquaculture has evolved over the last three decades from traditional backyard activity to commercially intensive farming. This is one of the sunrise sectors and the government, too, is recognising its importance: an independent Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying has been carved out, the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) has been floated, Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund (FIDF) has been established as well. However, there are significant stakeholder challenges across the ecosystem which Aquaconnect seeks to solve with appropriate data intervention.

Here’s how the industry functions. The farmers procure the baby shrimp from hatcheries and then grow it in their own pond for four to five months. Once the shrimps gain the right weight, the middlemen will take the produce to the buyer. However, there’s a caveat: it is very critical to upkeep certain parameters when growing the produce, such as water quality, feeding efficiency, growth efficiency and health. In addition, the farmers also need working capital. But since the culture is underwater, unlike agricultural produce, it becomes difficult for banks to assess the risk mitigation for this sector, so they have been staying away. “We are trying to do a hybrid model wherein you have an app on the ground and eyes in the sky,” explains Rajamanohar.

“The first part is data collection. Once you have this data, this can help farmers get better inputs, better financial services, and better market linkage solutions. So on the whole, we are bringing transparency and traceability to this industry.”

Automation has got a great opportunity here to simply turn the data into insights. With their ML algorithm, Aquaconnect is able to optimise the feeding, predict the diseases and improve the growth of the animal by giving constant inputs. “We have created a pond diary, an open-ended diary platform, wherein the farmers can write anything about their farm in any multimedia format. So our focus is to decipher what is written here. That is when we are using ML to decipher and provide input advisory based on what he has given us. And we shall be having manual remote intervention in the form of an integrated chatbot. So that is how we aim to provide advisory at a mass scale.”

Speaking further on the need for remote sensing analysis, Rajamanohar explains, “Partial information we can get from the farmer but since it is all self-fed info, we also need automated validation. Insurance companies and banks need a holistic fact check. There are certain cues that we can get about the farm from aerial views. Like how far is it from the shore, is it a permitted region for aquaculture – such type of historical information. We also offer portfolio management: how long the farm has been running, date of culture, harvesting etc.”

A very essential consideration in a food production system, from both the cost and ecological perspectives, is maintaining the feed efficiency. FCR can simply be understood as the ratio of the feed going into the water to the amount turning to animal protein. For shrimp farming, the ideal FCR is 1.2. If it goes even a little bit higher to 2, which it often does, there are two-fold implications. First, it harms the revenue prospects of the farmers because 60% of the culture cost goes into feeding the animal. “If 6L is spent on one culture, 4L goes into feed. Rs. 50,000 can be saved if an efficient FCR is maintained,” says Raj. Secondly, any extra feed settles at the pond bottom and adds to the ammonia concentration, which needs to be treated with oxygenation tablets and so on. Ultimately, this water becomes contaminated and unfit for being disposed off into a canal.

“So that’s where aquaconnect plays a very important role in creating a network, providing technology solutions, providing risk mitigation solutions and monitoring solutions,” says the co-founder.

Image from Hippopx