Omnivore Invests In $1.1 Mn Seed Round Of Aquaculture Startup Aquaconnect

#News(Startup) [ via IoTGroup ]

Aquaconnect has built a big data and artificial intelligence (AI) enabled mobile application — FarmMOJO — to advise farmers on their pond operations based on constant monitoring of the pond and other data capture by IoT platforms.
With this new funding, the company plans to introduce image recognition feature in the FarmMOJO app in order to speed up the data input process for the farmers.
Aquaconnect’s cofounder Rajmanohar Somasundaram told Inc42 that these fresh funds will be used in developing an image recognition feature in FarmMOJO app.
Further, the company also plans to invest in setting up 10 Aquaconnect stores around the shrimp farm regions of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.
“We aim to reach 15K shrimp and fish farmers across India and Indonesia by December 2020.
FarmMOJO claims to help shrimp farmers in the daily management of their culture growth, which determines the quality of the final product.
So, at any point, if FarmMOJO observes poor feed conversion ratio (FCR), it recommends actions and relevant products the farmer can use to normalise the pond environment.
In the two years since inception, Aquaconnect claims to have brought 3K farmers on board and has generated a revenue of INR 2.4 Cr in FY18.
Aquaconnect primarily depends on a subscription model for monetisation, where farmers pay to use its app every month.
Farmers can subscribe to a basic plan in FarmMOJO at the INR 500 per pond they manage.
Shrimps, also commonly known as prawns, contribute around 70% of the total seafood export from India, which is worth about INR 45K Cr. The International Market Analysis Research and Consulting (IMARC) Group has predicted that the Indian shrimp farming market would reach a volume of 1.13 Mn tonnes by 2024, undergoing a CAGR of around 9% between 2019-2024.
In 2018, India’s Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (CIBA), had also launched a shrimp farmers focused mobile application, Vanami Shrimpapp.

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