On October 28, DELOS, an Indonesian aquaculture-tech company announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of Seed funding led by Arise, a collaborative fund from MDI Ventures and Finch Capital, in an effort to modernise Indonesian aquaculture.
Arise was joined by MDI Ventures; Number Capital, Hendra Kwik; JAPFA Executive, Irvan Kolonas; and regional early-stage investor iSeed Asia. Its investor mix also includes Irvan Kolonas of JAPFA, one of the largest shrimp feed and seed producers in the country, and Hendra Kwik of PayFazz, one of Indonesia’s most prominent fintech firms.
DELOS, founded by CEO, Guntur Mallarangeng (bottm left), Bobby Indra Gunawan, COO (bottom right), and Alexander Farthing, CSO (top, right) in 2021, seeks to drive the growth and modernization of the Indonesian aquaculture industry, a vision that they call the “Blue Revolutionâ€.
Aldi Adrian Hartanto, Partner of Arise (top left) explains, “Classic challenges in the multi-layer value chain, low productivity, and lack of financing hinder the archipelago’s untapped shrimp industry that makes up 77% out of the overall fishery output values. DELOS tech-enabled solution has managed to immerse the tech and the ops into local farmers’ culture and infrastructure while bridging them with the incumbent stakeholders. It leads to higher feed conversion ratio, survival rate and harvest making it such a killer flywheelâ€
Global demand for seafood-based protein is growing, while wild capture fishing stocks are dwindling under immense pressure. Today, aquaculture supplies over 60% of all seafood consumed. With its 54,000 km of coastline, abundant coastal human resources, and tropical climate, Indonesia would seem to be the clear global leader for sustainable aquaculture, especially with Indonesian shrimp competing on a global scale as the world’s second most valuable aquaculture product, which is its largest seafood
export.
The Indonesian government, recognising a nascent revolution, has targeted aquaculture and shrimp production to grow by 250% over the next 3 years. However, low adoption of technology, sub-par management practices, and poor access to financing have limited the growth of Indonesian aquaculture – particularly by throttling the productivity of aquafarms. These factors have created a bottleneck within the midstream of the value chain, and are throttling the output of downstream processors to an average of 40%-60% capacity.
Less than 5% of farms are 4 times more productive than their neighboring farms (40 tonnes vs 10 tonnes/ha). This productivity gap is what is keeping a USD 2 billion industry from fulfilling its latent potential and becoming a USD 4 billion industry, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Fisheries. The value chain is ready for farm productivity to increase. DELOS’ cross disciplinary team and cutting edge technology will be vital to supporting the national agenda to drive this growth while maintaining economical, social and environmental sustainability.
DELOS seeks to leverage its experience, network, and IP, an internally researched and developed full-stack farm management system in order to increase the productive capacity and output of existing Indonesian shrimp farms by 50%-150% -creating value for farmers, increasing national export volumes, and growing Indonesia’s reputation as a world leading aquaculture nation.
DELOS’ founder mix brings a multidisciplinary team that includes aquaculture, marine biology, technology, and business backgrounds. The startup is closely partnered with Dewi Laut Aquaculture, a leading local aquaculture company, and Alune Aqua, a leading aquaculture fintech firm, to accelerate its rapid development of in-house technologies.
The company plans to use the fresh funds to reinforce and scale DELOS shrimp production software which accurately forecasts and recommends actions to improve farm profitability and productivity. Funds will also be used to develop value chain integrations and onboard new DELOS farm partners.
Arise is an early-stage venture fund in partnership with Telkom Indonesia-backed MDI Ventures, which has three unicorns under its belt, and Bank BCA-backed Finch Capital. Arise enables next-gen start-ups to scale up and build their businesses with proprietary technology in Southeast Asia. It aims to provide long-term capital, strategic go-to-market networks, and hands-on company building capabilities based
on a proven global track record and its partnership with MDI and Finch in Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, and the US, and across Europe. MDI-Finch’s Arise shares the same vision on Construction Tech, particularly in the growth rate of B2B marketplaces.
