AquaExchange, tech platform to connect farmers for shrimp and fish ecosystem, has raised $3 million in Pre-Series A funding from Endiya Partners and Accion Venture Lab, with participation from existing investors.
“The company will deploy the capital in strengthening its technology, e-commerce operations and expanding its farm automation footprint to over one lakh acres of farms by FY23 ending March 2023,” the company said in a statement.
Started in 2020 by Pavan Kosaraju in Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, AquaExchange, run by AquaExchange Agritech Pvt. Ltd, operates across the value chain to offer IT and automation solutions to the aquaculture (shrimp, fish) ecosystem.
It provides fintech enabled e-commerce platform offering high quality inputs at competitive prices directly from manufacturers; a ‘hardware-as-a-service’ model for farm automation feeds and monitoring under the brand name ‘NextAqua’ - on subscription and ‘harvest-as-a-service’ market linkage platform - that facilitates harvests at the farm-gate with transparent pricing and assured spot payments to the smallholder farmers.
AquaExchange merged with the device manufacturer NextAqua, founded by Kareem and Kiran, earlier this year.
“At AquaExchange, the key focus is on adding value to the aquaculture farming process through the use of advanced technology. Our IoT devices and automatic feeders have been installed at scale and are helping farmers with higher reliability/efficiencies in terms of aeration and feed management, while at the same time providing RoIs within the first quarter of usage. We believe that future aquaculture farmers should be equipped with the right data at the right time to ensure higher crop successes and also increase farming productivity,” said Pavan Kosaraju, Founder of AquaExchange.
The company pointed to market reports that the global shrimp and fish markets are estimated to grow to $400 billion by 2027.
“With its differentiated proprietary technology for farm automation and power management, AquaExchange will not only help bring in efficiencies across the aquaculture value chain but also generate solid data driven insights to bring in access to formal credit, that has largely remained elusive for the sector,” said Dr Ramesh Byrapaneni, Managing Director of Endiya Partners.
Endiya Partners is an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in Indian product start-ups that are globally relevant. It has backed companies across SaaS, Healthcare, Fintech, and Deeptech sectors including Darwinbox, Cure.fit, Kissht, Qapita, Sigtuple, Steradian Semiconductors, Zluri, and Sugar.fit. Founded in 2015, Endiya Partners has $100 million under management.
Meanwhile Accion Venture Lab is a global non-profit investor that, since the launch of its third-party fund in 2019, has invested in 60 early-stage startups that operate in more than 35 countries worldwide.