Building the First and the Biggest Fishtech Startup in Indonesia

According to Gibran, the agrotechnology-sector is barely mentioned when someone talks about a new startup idea. For Gibran, eFishery is not only the startup which utilizes the biggest fishery technology in Indonesia, but also the biggest fishery-based startup in the world based on the user size. “People make fintech while I make fishtech,” he jokes.

Gibran said that a famine tragedy that he once experienced has been a starting point of his current lifelong goals. It gives him a reason to pursue a higher education, which is to be an agriculture entrepreneur to alleviate hunger in Indonesia.

Gibran wants to be a self-reliant person at University. To achieve this, he did a lot of things such as selling donuts, offering his service as a private tutor, and worked as a staff of a minimarket.

The First Step: Opening My Own Fishpond

He was inspired to start his own business while attending an Aquaculture lecture. He proceeded to rent a cheap fishpond in Bojongsoang district. His first harvest weighed around 130kg. He was forced to sell his harvest at a low margin because of overstock at a local fish market and distributor.

The aftermath of that event gives him an idea of how to keep a high-profit margin from his abundant catfish harvest. He started Dorri Food Indonesia, a catfish culinary and processing business. Dorri Food Indonesia which was started as a home business now owns a handful of operating branches.

“Because of my growing downstream revenue, I was able to own 76 fishponds when I graduate,” he said.

He believes that a majority of Indonesian hold a high sense of mediocrity. This means that Indonesian feel comfortable to be ‘just enough’. This comfortable position makes us less motivated to be an extraordinary person.

His downstream business inspired him to solve the nation's fishery problem. Indonesia has a lot of ponds, but it is operated with low-level technology. The traditional way to feed the fish is inefficient because the food will lose its nutrition value when it is underwater for too long.

Uneaten food can cause additional environmental problems. On some water reservoirs, the biggest pollutant does not come from household waste or industrial waste, but rather from excessive fish food.

From Garage to Sophisticated Feeder

The first prototype of the feeder was built in his friend’s garage. The feeder can receive an instruction in a form of SMS to automatically start releasing the food. He said that it needs some trial-and-error before the invention can be commercialized.

“It is because of those things eFishery can achieve its current advance position; Our eFeeder now can be controlled from our smartphone and can also be connected to a sensor that can detect fish’s appetite,” he explains further.

A lesson that can be learned from Gibran's journey is that innovation is the only way that can solve a problem. The next lesson is that a person needs to start early and small. “Sometimes we tend to think entrepreneurship is all about complex things, the reality is that it should begin from the simplest thing and as early as possible,” he said as a closing remark.

Reporter: Athira Syifa P.S. (Postharvest Technology, 2019)
Translator: Favian Aldilla (Civil Engineering, 2019)