Banoo

Now, more than ever, fish and fish products are essential in the fight against hunger and poverty. Although capture fisheries still dominate, its unsustainable and environmentally-damaging practice threatens both the life below water and future fish supply. This is why its production only increased 8% while aquaculture production has skyrocketed by 25% from 2008-2017, and why FAO has determined through its SOFIA 2020 program to prioritise aquaculture advancement. Banoo aims to help this mission by providing affordable and accessible technology that can increase aquaculture productivity. By integrating automated microbubble generator and mobile apps, Banoo creates a reliable system to not only monitor, but also give action to the pond's condition while also providing data analytics for better pond management. Powered by solar panel, Banoo can be installed anywhere, even rural areas with no access to electricity. With Banoo's circular technology, aquaculture can be the future of sustainable independent food systems.

Indonesia is an archipelago country that has a huge market potential in aquaculture sector, with 17 million hectares of land potential for aquaculture use. Yet, only 1.2 million hectares have been utilized, which means only 7%.

Meanwhile, almost 2 million households in Indonesia rely their livelihood on fresh water aquaculture sector and 4 million children depending on the income of their parents who work as fish farmers. And that doesn't even include brackish and saltwater aquaculture.

Sadly, Indonesian fish farmers only earn $250 per month on average.
The cause of such low profitability is bad water quality that affects fish health, growth, and survival rate. More than that, because unhealthy fishes eat less, the fish feed becomes uneaten and creates excessive fish feed in the waterbed. Not only increasing the fish feed conversion which means lost investment for fish farmers, excessive fish feed will also create harmful water waste.

This issue exists because there's no technology implementation that can maintain and monitor water quality. Furthermore, most fish farmer's ponds are located in remote or rural area that has limited electricity access, so they’ll never be able to use technology to increase their yield if they rely on the infrastructure.

Banoo combines technology with simplicity. The problem we are trying to solve is actually very simple: water quality. Our solution is no rocket science, either: improve the water quality by increasing the dissolved oxygen level. Yet, the solution to this problem creates a domino effect which improves every aspect of aquaculture and even other aspects surrounding it. Banoo reconstructs the whole aquaculture ecosystem by integrating a series of technologies into a circular system.

First, our microbubble generator (MBG) bursts little bubbles in deep water, where the oxygen level is lowest because of the lack of exposure to sunlight. This is different from existing aerator systems that can only be installed close to the water surface. During night time, the oxygen level in deep water is critical and those aerators provide little help because fishes tend to stay in deep water until the sun rises.

Banoo targets small-scale fish farmers since 80% of aquaculture sector is run by them and they burden some major problems: limitation to technology and market. Since they are scattered mostly in rural areas, it is difficult to be tapped directly. Thus, we divide our approach into three phases. In our first phase, we want to help them regarding technology barrier. We plan to distribute our product while simultaneously build our community through pilot projects backed up by companies' CSR programs. While approaching them, we plan to educate them about the importance of aquaculture technology and how to apply them. As our awareness rises and community base grows, we plan to develop our website and mobile apps into crowdfunding platforms to connect small-scale fish farmers with people who are interested in investing into aquaculture. This helps to solve their barrier to financial access while helping us gain more traction, especially for the mobile apps. By the third phase, we will sell or rent our product directly to the farmers while utilising our mobile apps more by making it a marketplace between farmers and distributors. We will also provide in-app subscription for free maintenance and consulting services using their historical pond data.

In aquaculture, fish farmers have to create their pond large and shallow, so the oxygen could penetrate into the bottom of the pond. With BANOO, fish-farmers can make their pond smaller but deeper. Another problem in aquaculture is fish feed inefficiency. Farmers use chemical supplements to increase productivity, but it affects badly to life below water because of blooming algae. With good supply oxygen from our technology, we could give fish an appetite to decrease fish food waste that leads to nutrient run-off. Since Banoo can be powered by solar panel, we also help the effort to reduce carbon emission.

Unlike many others, we increase aquaculture productivity through improving the quality of water instead of some existing approaches such as automated fish feeding or data-driven pond management; this is because we have a mission not only to benefit the fish farmers, but also the environment. Currently, Banoo is proven to be able to reduce the amount of dissolved CO2 by 30% and increase the oxygen by 130%. The increased oxygen would then increase the pH and make the ammonia dissipate. As a result, the water waste dumped in the nearby water and sewage won't harm the biodiversity.

Some examples of the existing aquaculture advancement business in Indonesia are Jalatech, a data-driven pond management apps; Venambak, a pond partnership company focusing on intensive shrimp cultivation, and Nanobubble.id, also a form of aerator but with nanobubble technology. We realise that all of those solutions are solid, one can't go without the other. A hardware alone will only help farmers who understands the technology, a data analytics software without further treatment tools will only help well-educated farmers, and a peer-to-peer partnership channel will only help when the pond is productive enough to raise a stable profit.

As for Nanobubble.id, which can be said to be our closest competitor, it has a more complex layout that requires a huge space for their reservoirs and filtration, which can be a problem because usually fish ponds have little unused space. With Banoo, customers do not need wide space and the instalment is relatively easy.

Banoo is an integration between software and hardware : a mobile app for farmers to monitor and manage their pond and Microbubble Generator (MBG) Aerator, which is automated by IoT sensor and powered by solar panel.

Our Microbubble Generator Aerator consists of two main components; water pump and microbubble generator unit at the discharge section. When water pump is turned on, water will be sucked into the pipe through the water suction. The water will flow through the discharge and make a pressure difference, which makes the air to be sucked into the hose and enter the microbubble generator. The air will pass through the porous pipe in the microbubble generator, which produces micro-sized bubble. This bubble size could increase the number of Dissolved Oxygen in the water which is really important for fish growth.

The IoT sensor records the Dissolved Oxygen data from the pond and send it to cloud storage which can be monitored through our mobile apps. MBG will be automatically turned on when the sensor detects low DO and it will be turned off when the DO is high enough.

The combination between IoT Sensor and Microbubble Generator is really important to control the quality of the water pond and increase the fish productions that will directly increase the fish farmers’ prosperity.

There is no doubt that using Banoo, even for the rural areas with no electricity, will help increase pond's productivity because it is powered by solar panel.

We use MBG which is designed in the study that has been done by Deendarlianto et. al. (2015). The study concerning the effect of microbubble generation methods, the configuration, and a feasibility test on microbubble application on aerobic wastewater treatment. From the observed facts it can be concluded that the ratio between air and water velocity inside the microbubble generator and the turbulence force of the flow were the main parameters in the microbubble-generating mechanism. All of the MBGs were able to produce microbubbles in the range of 0–200 μm. The configuration of the tested microbubble generators gives the most effective performance of dissolved oxygen in the liquid. The feasibility test of microbubble application in aerobic wastewater treatment shows a promising result. Although still lower than expectations, it was able to reduce the COD to 354 mg/l on average. Another study that has been done by Wiratni et al. (2017) concluded that microbubble generator showed a high potential to be the affordable aerator to provide high dissolved oxygen for intensive aquaculture. The micro size bubbles produced by the MBG provided up to eight times of the system without aeration. This high DO level delivered by MBG did not differ significantly with the conventional aerator. However, MBG induced faster fish growth in terms of length and weight.

With our integrated technology, we have one main activity: increase oxygen level in deep water. A sufficient amount of oxygen in water creates a good water quality and because fishes also need oxygen to breathe, they get the direct impact of good water quality which is better metabolism. A good fish metabolism can affect two important aspects of aquaculture: productivity and sustainability.

First, fishes with good metabolism will have a high appetite and eat a lot. By the time to harvest, the fishes will be longer and heavier, which can worth more in the market. It also means faster growth for the fishes so farmers can harvest them faster, too. While farmers usually harvest every four months, with the help of Banoo, they can do it every three months with the same amount of produce. Thus, farmers can raise more annual profit from a more efficient cultivation. In the long term, aquaculture will provide them a better livelihood and food resilience.

Second, when fishes have good metabolism and eat a lot, less fish feed will be wasted to precipitate in the waterbed. After the harvest, the water waste will then contain less amount of damaging chemical substances formed by fish feed waste such as ammonia and CO2. If this cycle continues, aquaculture can reduce its contribution of water pollution, and even eliminate it in the long run.

The environmental aspect of Banoo is not only beneficial to the life below water, but also indirectly beneficial to farmers. When fishes have good appetite, they don't have to spend more money on supplements, vitamins, and extra pounds of fish feed because the fish feed conversion rate has decreased. At post-cultivation, they will also have a cleaner water waste so they don't have to spend too much time and energy to clean the pond from excess fish feed waste. Thus, with Banoo, aquaculture will be more productive and sustainable with the help of increased efficiency.

Currently, Banoo has served several local fish farmer communities and aquaculture corporations. The total fish farmers we have reached out to are 103, 54 from Varia Mina Makmur, 30 from Bokesan village, and 29 from Purworejo. Meanwhile, we have partnered with Aquafarm, an aquaculture company operating in Gadjahmungkur Reservoir, Wonosobo. 

By the next year, we aim to serve about 1000 fish farmers and partner with 5 more institutions. We are focusing on building a community around Central Java and Bali, two of the nearest region with a huge aquaculture potential. 

As explained above, our target consumer is both B2B (aquaculture companies) which Indonesia's Central Bureau of Statistics has stated to be 258* in total and B2C which is the total of 1,355,069* household fish farmers in Indonesia. These numbers are our Total Available Market for Indonesia, which we plan to fully penetrate in 5 years. In terms of geographic segmentation, our main target is the fish farmer population in countries with huge aquaculture production and potential, especially developing countries with underdeveloped rural areas such as Indonesia, India, Thailand, Vietnam, and many others which is why our product is designed as simple as possible and can be installed with or without electricity.

In 5 years, we plan to penetrate our Indonesian Servicable Obtainable Market (155 aquaculture companies and 346,734 household fish farmers) which will generate USD 4,576,582.59 and USD 149,132,146.24 of revenue to Banoo respectively.

*Data obtained from Indonesia's Central Bureau of Statistics 2017 Report

Within this year to the next, we are planning to build our community by partnering with institutions who has access and means to reach fish farmer communities: governments, NGOs, corporations, and universities. We also plan to finish our legal issues and approach manufaturing vendors to secure our technology. We have already been registered as a legal corporation, but have not been patented yet. We are currently researching potential vendors to produce our MBG, sensor, and solar panel and are approaching them to inquire about manufacturing costs to determine our product price, too.

After securing partnerships and costs, we will introduce our product by installing them for in their ponds, free of charge. While monitoring the progress and collecting the data for research, we will begin educating them on the importance of technology on aquaculture, how our technology works, and the impact of our technology towards their profitability and access to market. We do this by holding seminars, workshops, and events in collaboration with local governments.

In the next five years, we plan to make our product even more sustainable and easy to use. We plan to make a MBG with solar panel attached to the device so that we don't have to install large solar panel just for one MBG. We also plan to produce our case using upcycled plastic waste. In terms of market, we plan to have reached and established a huge market base in every region in Indonesia: Sumatera, Java, Bali, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua. 

From today until the next year, our main barriers will be the the gap between marketing urgency and the complexity of our technology development. Our product has so many elements to fit and suit with our market. For example, the pump material that we used in fresh water is completely different with the saline water. We have only researched for Tilapia fish in fresh water, yet if we see from the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries’s annual report in Indonesia, 73% fish commodity of export is dominated by species in saline water such as Shrimp, Crabs, and Skipjack. Since fish commodity in saline water has more benefit and profitable for fish farmers, the unfinished research would delay our product to get funding from the investors. Not only that, the longer we have an unpatented technology, the higher the risk of losing market share by being the first-mover.

Aside from that, we could also expect that in the next five year, our problem will be how to make approximately 1,355,069 household fish farmers in Indonesia gain access to our technology. From the east to west, we couldn’t hide the fact that it will be a big challenge to approach our market target since all of the fish farmers are spreading away separately around the islands in Indonesia. Moreover, we still have to educate them about our innovation technology since it involved smartphone and solar system which is still unfamiliar for the small scale fish farmers.

Considering our 3 major barriers which are complexion of our research and development, funding and market, we have already mapped out some solutions to overcome those barriers. For complexion of research and developement, we decide to focus on BANOO main research mission which are to develop our Microbubble Generator and mobile apps. With this focus, we could specified our priority then working on it sequentially. Then, for the funding, we will focus on gaining it through accelerator programs and competitions until next year. Especially for the market, we have figured out the solution to separate it into 3 phases that consist of phase 1; direct selling to institutional or corporation partners as a means to help us reach and raise awareness towards Banoo to local fish farmer communities, phase 2; crowdfunding and direct selling to small scale fish farmers, and phase 3; customer retention through mobile apps.

For now, we consist of 5 members that work toward our solution.

1. Azellia-CEO, whose in charge of strategic decision-making and coordinating both research and business divisions in Banoo
2. Fajar-COO, who keesp track of the development of BANOO so the team’s work stays aligned and connected with our potential investors, consumers, and vendors.
3. Ari-CTO, in charge of our product development and technical aspects.
4. Aliva-CMO, who conducts market research to ensure Banoo’s product fits our target needs
5. Hari-Lead researcher, at the helm of our aquaculture aspect: researching Banoo’s impact towards fish, pond productivity, water quality and water-waste management, and energy efficiency.

Banoo was founded by university students with different backgrounds: from fishery, instrumental electronics, management, and mechanical engineering. But there is one thing that makes us one: our accumulated worry towards economic inequality in our country. 

Fajar, who was a researcher in Center of Energy Studies in Universitas Gadjah Mada, had helped Deendarlianto, the man behind the renowned microbubble generator himself, conducted his research. Thus, he was an expert in microbubble mechanism and utilisation. This was how he came up with the idea to implement microbubble to aquaculture. So, he asked Hary, a fishery student specializing in aquaculture cultivation, on how impactful this technology can be towards pond productivity. After validating with Hary, then they asked Ari, Selly, and Aliva to join their project. Why them? 

Ari, an electronics and instrumentation student, has an amazing portfolio of assembling IoT sensors and being an technician for Bimasakti, the university's racing team, convinced the team of his industriousness. Both Selly and Aliva was recognised as The Most Outstanding Student of their department: management and fishery. Selly is an entrepreneur who is passionate about rural development, has won several marketing plan competitions, and specializes in finance. A perfect combination to be Banoo's CEO. Meanwhile, Ali

va specializes in cultivation management and also was the head of AIESEC UGM, an organisation that deals with student exchanges and international exposures. Her combined knowledge of aquaculture market, management, and leadership makes her the most fit for the role as our Chief Marketing Officer.

BANOO currently has 3 groups of partners that we are working with :
- PT. Pertamina as Indonesia’s state-owned enterprises of oil and gas industry has conducted Corporate Social Responsibilty Program (CSR) to empower small scale fish farmers’s production with innovative technology in aquaculture sector. PT. Pertamina is using BANOO as one of the main project of their CSR program.
- Thought For Food is the world’s entreprenurial innovation engine for food and agriculture that have been helped us to do pitching, find suitable investors also give us some insight from our team’s expert
- Varia Mina Makmur as the group of small-scale fish farmers that currently having Tilapia as their main aquaculture commodity is working with BANOO to help them elevate their profit and as our pilot project to do research and development.

We are a hybrid of nonprofit and for-profit enterprise. During our first phase, we do not earn profit, only earning revenue by partnering with institutions that can help gain access to fish farmers in rural areas. After we have gained traction and enough awareness among the fish farmers, we can start our second phase which is to start introducing them to our platforms. In this phase, we begin connecting them to people who are interested to invest in aquaculture, in the farmers, and in Banoo.

After they become more financially independent and stable, we expect them to have the buying power to buy our product. Thus, we begin our third phase which is to directly sell or rent our product towards fish farmers. 

As we have mentioned before, our main barrier is the complexity of our product development. Since we are producing hardware that are quite costly, we need funding to enable us to develop our product. Since we are still at our Product-Market Fit Stage and not yet ready to sell our product, it hinders our process in finding investors. Thus, we apply to Solve to gain access to funding through presenting our ideas while hoping to gain exposure to potential investors and partners from around the world. Besides, as our team consists of 5 young innovators, we are in dire need of experienced and expert mentor and advisors that can help us navigate through our acceleration. We believe Solve is the place where the best experts and practicians gather, so we are very excited for the opportunity to get to know them through this program. Lastly, we also have difficulty in tapping our target market and are still figuring out how to educate them. Thus, we are looking for people who have already done what we are planning to do and we think the best way to meet them is through participating in Solve. First, because such events are where the communities gather and second is because it can provide us with exposure to the media and potential partners.

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We would really like to partner with international institutions such as The Nature Conservancy and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). They will be a great help to us in understanding our market better through the researches they conducted and to connect us to so many local communities around the world. We would also like to connect to MIT Sea Grant that specializes in fishery and aquaculture advancement. They would also help us gain access, information, and exposure to insights about aquaculture that will widen our horizon. 

Our goal is to help anyone to gain food resilience and economic independence through aquaculture, no matter who or where they are. Refugees, who are very vulnerable to poverty, are in dire need of knowledge and innovation to help them earn money and nutritious food independently. We are certain many people out there are trying to find ways to help them. But, we think donations alone are not enough and neither is educating them on how to be an entrepreneur. They also need an enabler that helps them get a sustainable livelihood without having to rely on others in the future. Through our product and business model, they will be able to earn income and nutritious food. They don't even need to rely on infrastructure to do it, because we bring the energy to them through our solar panel system.

Women, especially in rural areas, have a huge potential to be empowered as entrepreneurs. Many of them are stay-at-home wives and are financially dependent to their families. The most relevant condition is that they need to take care of the house and the children so they are unable to get a job. With Banoo, they can earn their own income without even leaving their houses. Banoo is a technology that promotes intensification and land utilisation, so no one needs a wide space to install a pond. They can even install a pond at their backyard, as proved by our CMO, Aliva.