Chennai trio gives aqua farming a tech touch

During a train journey to Chidambaram, Rajamanohar Somasundaram became acquainted with aqua farmer, Sanjai Kumar, who introduced the former to aqua farming. They exchanged information and Rajamanohar started visiting aqua farms across the state. While researching on the topic, the IIT alumnus realised that though aqua farming is a billion dollar industry, they don’t employ technology in a bigger scale. The duo decided to start an initiative called Aqua Connect that helps aqua farmers get access to the best practices. Later, a banker-turned-entrepreneur Shanmuga Sundaram, joined the project.

“India is exporting 45,000 crore worth seafood every year and out of this, 70 per cent market is for the shrimp industry. There are around 3,000 aqua farmers in between Rameshwaram and West Bengal coast. Shrimp is being consumed in large quantities in the West and it is a great revenue for the marine industry. Like any other industry, it also has got a lot of challenges. Most of the aqua farmers were doing agriculture before and once they found there is a new livelihood opportunity, they latched on to it. But what they are not realising is if they do it scientifically, they can improve the profit margin, predict diseases in aquatic animals and follow sustainable aqua farming methods,” he says.

Challenges faced by an aqua farmer:

Water quality maintenance: It is one of the main challenging factors for farmers. It’s popularly said that once you culture the water, you culture the animal by keeping the surrounding optimal for its growth.

Quality and quantity of feeding: Almost 50 per cent of the cost goes into feeding. Often, farmers think that if they keep feeding aquatic beings they will grow soon. But it doesn’t work like that, instead the feed will pollute the water. Aquatic animals will not eat beyond a limit. The feed goes down to the pond and starts producing ammonia which is harmful. The farmer needs to find a balance for feeding and also understand the right feeding pattern.

Maintaining the health: You need to be extra careful when it comes to health of fish, shrimps, lobsters, prawns and other aquatic animals during cultivation.

It’s not easy for a farmer to keep an eye on all these parameters mentioned above. They will reach out to technicians, who charge a bomb for their services. “I realised that there could be a service that can help farmers and thus we launched a mobile application called FarmMOJO. Once you feed in the water quality parameters, feeding instructions, and animal health information, the artificial intelligence-based advisor provides advices on ways to improve all the parameters. It’s a very simple tool for the farmers to get the advice,” he remarks.