As one of the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia is making efforts to ensure food sources for more than 278 million citizens. A number of agricultural startups have quickly leveraged technology to increase productivity, improve productivity, track crop growth, and provide payment and product trading platforms.
Recently, Indonesian President Joko Widodo officially launched the Food Real Estate Program, assigned to the Ministry of National Defense to manage, to ensure food security for the country by growing certain crops such as rice on agricultural land. wide. The program’s expected budget is more than IDR 114 trillion.
Below are some prominent representatives in the agricultural technology startup ecosystem in Indonesia.
DOKTERFRESH
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DokterFresh food solutions provide families with organic, clean and fresh food sources. Web researcher and developer Rasyid Karomi decided to start a company, providing frozen vegetables and foods at home or while customers are out.
Furthermore, the company has a free app ecosystem, focuses on sustainable infrastructure, and is currently establishing its business in multiple regions.
AGRIAKU
The company operates on AgriAku technology (combination of agriculture and technology applications) as a distribution service to farmers and several stakeholders through the application. Founded in 2021 by founder Danny Handoko and CEO Irvan Kolonas, the company’s solutions help farmers access more products and better prices through digitizing the procurement process.
To date, AgriAku has successfully raised $46 million in four funding rounds from 16 investors, including Argor Capital, Gentree Fund, Indogen Capital, TNB Aura, Innoven Capital, MDI Ventures and Alpha JWC Ventures. The company intends to use the funds raised to expand the team, offer better products, enable seamless transactions for customers and merchants, and encourage market entry.
FARMLAND ROVER
Agricultural technology company Farmland Rover, based in Medan, was founded in 2023. The company provides semi-automated and autonomous vehicles, which can perform tasks such as spraying pesticides while moving on land agriculture. The car uses solar energy, making it a sustainable and environmentally friendly solution.
Furthermore, Farmland Rover uses ArduPilot software, an open source program that supports many different types of vehicles, such as helicopters, to operate in autopilot mode.
CERITECH INDONESIA
IoT in agriculture are systems that integrate modern technology such as robots, drones, remote sensors, and computer vision.
Founded in 2019, CeriTech Indonesia uses the Internet of Things (IoT) to manage coffee harvesting operations. Realizing that the quality of coffee beans is uneven due to a lack of common standards, Mr. Aldi Raharja and his colleagues developed a cloud-based system to monitor the production process. The system will control the fermentation and drying processes, which are some very important steps for coffee, and monitor everything in real time.
According to Alibaba Cloud, CeriTech Indonesia plans to create a Roaster solution, providing quality control standards for many roasting factories. Next, the company plans to launch an e-commerce platform where farmers can sell products and deduct a 10% commission for the company. Along with that, the startup is committed to ensuring the quality of coffee beans for customers.
ELEVARM
In 2022, Ms. Lintang Kusuma Pratiwi founded Elevarm with the desire to combine the two fields of agriculture and technology, thereby promoting agricultural ecosystem productivity. The solution empowers farmers, helping them enrich their soil, achieve high productivity and sustainable development. Furthermore, the application also democratizes access to financial solutions to pay for agricultural products.
The company possesses a foundation of agricultural productivity, land monitoring and effective project management. In addition, Elevarm has an agricultural trading area where businesses can benefit from a reliable supply network within the ecosystem. Elevarm successfully raised capital in two funding rounds, most recently a non-equity support round. Investors include Endeavor Indonesia, Insignia Ventures Partners, 500 Global, Gibran Huzaifah, etc.
TOWARDS ENSURE FOOD SECURITY THROUGH TECHNOLOGY
Most startups in the field of agricultural technology in Southeast Asia have many advantages, helping people farm effectively at low cost and sustainably. However, Indonesia also faces many challenges such as supply chain fragility, lack of funding and underdeveloped infrastructure in rural areas.
Furthermore, the cost of applying technology is quite high, requiring more training in digitalization and modern farming. In addition, sustainability is an issue that needs to be mentioned when harmful fertilizers damage the soil and seep into groundwater, causing harm to humans.
However, hopefully agricultural technology startups in Indonesia can make a difference, innovate solutions, and ensure healthy crops from sustainable fuel sources such as solar energy. Furthermore, businesses need to join hands to promote technological innovations such as Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) when processing data collected by machine sensors.
