TED - The Aquaculture Revolution Is Coming | Gibran Huzaifah | TED
The speaker shares his transformative experiences during university, where financial struggles led him to experience severe hunger. This hardship inspired him to tackle hunger issues. He later discovered aquaculture's potential in a biology class, which led him to start a fish farming business. Observing inefficiencies in fish farming, he developed an automatic feeding machine, eventually founding eFishery. This company provides technology to smallholder farmers, reducing feed costs and improving productivity. By transitioning to a subscription model, eFishery became accessible to more farmers, growing from 10 to over 200,000 farmers. The platform also helps farmers bypass middlemen, increasing their income and empowering them economically. The speaker emphasizes the importance of finding a purpose and how small acts of generosity can lead to significant impacts.
Key Points:
- Financial struggles during university led to a personal experience with hunger, inspiring the speaker to address hunger issues.
- Aquaculture was identified as a sustainable solution for food production, leading to the founding of eFishery.
- eFishery developed an automatic feeding machine, reducing costs and improving efficiency for smallholder farmers.
- The company grew by adopting a subscription model, expanding from 10 to over 200,000 farmers.
- eFishery empowers farmers by bypassing middlemen, increasing their income and providing access to affordable resources.
Details:
1. 🎓 University Struggles and Finding Purpose
- The speaker faced severe financial difficulties upon entering Bandung Institute of Technology in 2007, leading to homelessness and starvation.
- The speaker experienced extreme hunger, going three days without food, which resulted in physical symptoms like dizziness and blurred vision.
- A turning point occurred when someone provided money for food, preventing a potential life-threatening situation.
- The speaker's experience of near-starvation led to a profound realization of life purpose, especially after reading about another individual's death from starvation in a resource-rich country like Indonesia.
2. 🐟 Discovering Aquaculture and Entrepreneurial Beginnings
2.1. Aquaculture as a Strategic Opportunity
2.2. Entrepreneurial Motivation from Education
3. 💡 Innovating Fish Farming with Technology
- The speaker expanded from one catfish pond in 2010 to 76 ponds by 2012, illustrating rapid growth and scalability potential in fish farming.
- Feed costs represent 70% to 90% of total expenses, indicating a critical area for cost optimization in fish farming operations.
- Manual feeding leads to inefficiencies such as forgetting to feed, theft, and overfeeding, which causes water pollution, highlighting the need for improved feeding practices.
- A universal problem among farmers was identified, suggesting a widespread opportunity for technological solutions in fish farming.
- An automated feeding machine controlled via smartphone was proposed, receiving positive feedback from farmers, indicating strong market demand.
- Indonesia's market includes over three million fish and shrimp farmers and more than 10 million ponds, presenting a significant opportunity for technological advancements in the industry.
4. 🌐 Scaling eFishery and Empowering Farmers
- Indonesian fish and shrimp farms, primarily smallholders, faced technological and financial challenges, heavily relying on middlemen.
- The founder initially created an SMS-operated automatic feeding machine using secondhand materials for $200, but it was not widely adopted due to its text-based interface.
- With increased internet access in Indonesia, the founder pivoted to an internet-connected machine, leading to the creation of eFishery.
- The new product featured sensors to detect fish appetite, stopping feeding when full, thus improving efficiency.
- A subscription model was introduced to make the technology accessible to smallholder farmers.
- The adoption of eFishery's technology resulted in more efficient feeding costs, shorter harvest cycles, and healthier fish.
- eFishery expanded from 10 farmers and 10 ponds in 2013 to over 200,000 farmers and 400,000 ponds connected to the platform.
5. 🌍 Impact and Vision for the Future
- The platform enabled smallholders to bypass middlemen, purchase affordable feed, receive formal financing, and sell produce directly to buyers, solving supply chain disadvantages.
- The model evolved into a digital cooperative, giving small-scale farmers rights and purchasing power similar to large entities.
- Expansion to India and plans for further international growth, aiming to become a fully-integrated model similar to big conglomerates.
- Success, access, and control are distributed among hundreds of thousands of farmers, not concentrated in a single family.
- Largest feed distributor and fish supplier in the country without owning any ponds, focusing on serving farmers.
- Eliminating feed waste leads to environmental, economic, and social benefits, reducing pollution, degradation, and disease.
- Data transparency and traceability in the supply chain have doubled farmers' income.
- Example of a farmer who increased his pond management sixfold and income tenfold after joining the platform, enabling his daughters to graduate from top universities.
- Generational impact with stories of farmers' families benefiting and expanding businesses significantly.
- Plans to extend the cooperative model to ownership, allowing farmers to benefit from potential stock market success.
- Potential to create thousands of fish farmer millionaires, redistributing wealth and changing perceptions of opportunities and potential.