Our pitch:
Billions of people worldwide depend on fisheries and aquaculture for food, which provides NATURE’S SUPER FOOD with essential nutrients. Population growth is accompanied by increasing demand for fish and other seafood, as the food and nutritional needs are not likely to be satisfied by agricultural development alone. The challenges faced by coastal communities who are mainly dependent on wild fishing is climatic change due to global warming such as ocean acidification, increase in sea-level etc. with a decrease in fish biomass, changes in fish spawning etc. The estimates have shown that there is 31.4% fish stock as overfished-“fished at biologically unsustainable level.
Hence aquaculture is the fastest growing food-producing sector in the world to make up for the shortfall in wild fisheries, and its socio-economic role in providing livelihood opportunities and economic security, particularly for the less-developed regions of the world. Some 200 million people and their dependants worldwide, especially in coastal areas live by fishing and aquaculture. The success of aqua farming is measured by its rate of return on investment which depends on capital investment, market price, production cost, and increase yield.
The existing problems are pollution, habitat degradation, harmful practices, indiscriminate use of antibiotics and chemicals, due to which aquaculture sector is under stress. Apart from these the major problems faced by the industry are availability of necessary uninterrupted power, lack of integration of dissolved oxygen sensors etc, which leads to unnecessary operational time of aeration systems leading to detrimental effects on the crop produce. The unskilled farmers choose increased use of antibiotics and chemicals to compensate for the low quality and /or oxygen content of water bodies used for the crop production.
Power plays a vital role in the aquaculture, especially for changing the water every week after 60 days, for oxygenation and better harvest. As 40% of the production cost of aquaculture especially shrimp culture is due to energy consumption, we are providing cost effective, easily affordable, available Nano Energy Efficient Motors (NEEM) based energy saving aeration systems which reduces the power consumption by almost 40%.
The temperature, salinity and pressure hold differing amounts of oxygen and other gases. The dissolved oxygen (DO) and aeration is an important factor for the success of the aquaculture. DO of about 5 mg/litre is found to be optimum for the shrimp growth, between 1-4 mg/l the shrimps exhibit poor growth and less than 1 mg/l they die. Similarly water super saturated with oxygen causes GAS BUBBLE disease. Hence the quality of water bodies i.e., dissolved oxygen (DO), Ph, total organic carbon (TOC) in water ecosystem plays an important role in harvest which can be detected by integrated detection systems and monitored by cloud based software.
The dimensions of the Challenge our solution addresses:
Where our solution team is headquartered or located:
Hyderabad, Telangana, IndiaWhat makes our solution innovative:
Integration of Real time monitoring sensors for DO, temp, pH, TOC, IOT with Nano Energy Efficient Motors (NEEM) for aeration machines with water purification systems makes aquafarming more sustainable and profitable.
Reducing power requirement by 60% as an overall solution.
Pond-On system provides more control on the ecosystem of the pond with the help of real time monitoring systems.
Substantial reduction of usage of antibiotics and chemicals making the harvest more chemical free almost near to organic farming.
More carbon
credits can be achieved because reduced power consumption thus creating another
revenue source for the aquafarmer.
How technology is integral to our solution:
NEEM -Nanotechnology based Energy Efficient Motors(NEEM) decreases dependency on power grid making aquafarming more sustainable and viable to be operated on alternative energy resources like solar, wind, etc. and thus also provide more livelihood opportunities.
Dissolved oxygen Monitoring-Real time monitoring of the Dissolved Oxygen (DO) and other parameters and integration with aeration machines decrease the running time of aeration mechanisms and also avoid the possibility of Gas bubble disease (which is due to over aeration) and minimize the possibility of low yield and quality because low oxygen.
Pond-On Remote system helps in easy real time monitoring.
Our solution goals over the next 12 months:
In India around 1.2 million hectares of aquaframing is under practice. Industry is growing at a rate of 17% growth. The state of Andhra Pradesh contributes 60 % of the total brackish water shrimp production in the eastern side of the country. Today more than hundred thousand farmers are engaged in shrimp aquaculture, while another 25,000 are practicing freshwater shrimp aquaculture.
We plan to achieve 5% of market share by establishing dedicated manufacturing and service support in addition to the existing assembly establishment owned by Akshara Ecotech.
Our vision over the next three to five years to grow and scale our solution to affect the lives of more people:
We plan to capture atleast 40% of the market in the coming 5 years.
Our vision is to reach all small scale, medium scale, marginalized aquafarmers of low and middle income countries all over the globe.
Planning to develop pond ammonia, H2S scrubbing systems, aqua feaces and unwanted feed removal systems, to conserve water which is going to be a major challenge in the coming decade.
We have already partnered with India’s premier Non-Profit Organization Ratan TATA trust by sharing some royalty on the sales and would like to replicate the same model for other countries by finding franchise partners.
The key characteristics of the populations who will benefit from our solution in the next 12 months:
The regions where we will be operating in the next 12 months:
How we will reach and retain our customers or beneficiaries:
Through various sales teams, NGOs bringing awareness in aquaculture communities.
Constant upgradation of the technology and providing free apps to monitor the pond ecosystem.
Sharing the data with the regulatory bodies and other aqua feed companies to expand their business.
Enabling the customers (users, companies) to get benefited by the carbon credits.
How many people we are currently serving with our solution:
500 aquaculture farmers
How many people we will be serving with our solution in the 12 months and the next 3 years:
8000 aqua farmers in the next 12 months and 50,000 in the next 3 years.
How our solution team is organized:
For-ProfitHow many people work on our solution team:
20+How many years we have been working on our solution:
1-2 yearsThe skills our solution team has that will enable us to attract the different resources needed to succeed and make an impact:
The team constitutes of people with necessary skills to address the technical and business development needs.
Also various National Scientific Organizations like CIBA, CIFA, CIFE, CIPETetc are providing the required scientific support for further research and evaluation.
Our revenue model:
Direct sale of the aerators costing around 500 to 600 dollars, out of which 20% profit is made.
Service of the DO monitoring system with subscription fee of 10 dollars per annum in each aerator sale.
Service of the OEM component sales like motors, paddles, floats, sensors, etc.
Carbon credits on each kilowatt of energy saved.
Why we are applying to Solve:
Our mission is to provide a sustainable solution for aquafarming globally. MIT-SOLVE is a global platform where we can collaborate and work together with various socially conscious organizations and partners and establish in the market.
We are seeking the help from SOLVE MIT for: funding by connecting to various funding agencies, collaborate with renowned scientists across the world to improve the technology and meet the regional requirements, and thus create awareness of the concept world-wide.
The key barriers for our solution:
Establishing energy saving motors facility is
critical and requires good funding.
Creating awareness and educating the farmers about
the technology for remote monitoring and maintaining will be a challenge
especially in countries like India, Bangladesh, south Asian countries.
Integration of energy efficient motors for pond
ecosystem monitoring and data sharing through cloud software in local languages
and making this entire system, adaptable, affordable and sustainable is a
challenge which requires multi-disciplinary sciences in one platform. Hence,
connecting and collaborating with various research institutes and industries to
develop further to include various features in one platform is necessary.
The types of connections and partnerships we would be most interested in if we became Solvers:
Solution Team
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Prem Chakravarthy Damuluri Managing Director, Eesavyasa Technologies Pvt Ktd
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Dr Sreeman Mamidyala Atharwa Integrated Life sciences Pvt.Ltd
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RP
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SR
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RS
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Our tagline:
An innovative, integrated, cost effective, easy to operate solution to maintain a healthy ecosystem of water bodies for sustainable aquafarming.