The Greater Hub’s incubated startup in agrocomplex sector

Indonesia is located in a tropical climate zone with fertile land that makes it suitable for agriculture, livestock, and fisheries. Yet, these potentials have so far not been well-managed, and as a result, these sectors produce a small harvest that does not provide sufficient welfare for farmers. These problems create many business opportunities, as found in this sector.

Realizing the existence of problems and opportunities here, many young people in Indonesia moved to pursue agro complex fields innovatively. They leverage digital technology and environmental issues to solve those problems. Some of them use Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital platforms, and biotechnology as their approach to solve these matters and create products through their business startups. 

Startups in the agro complex sector such as Sgara, Giantree, and Kebonin have strong motivation to contribute more in this field and the surrounding society. These startups are incubated by The Greater Hub (TGH), which is a startup incubator initiated by the School of Business and Management (SBM)-ITB.

Sgara is a startup focusing on aquaculture, mainly shrimps, which help shrimp farmers increase their farm efficiency through data. From on-field data acquisition to data analysis, Sgara’s solution covers all the aquaculture processes to provide actionable insight for farmers. With these insights, farmers can optimize their feed efficiency, prevent diseases, and boost production. Sgara founders comprise three passionate young people, Christopher Jason Sjarif, Arrival Dwi Sentosa, and Rizky Darmawan.

“Sgara (previously named PasarUdang) was established in 2018. It is because shrimp pond cultivation in Indonesia and ASEAN always face the same problem: unstructured data that causes diseases so that they lose 40% of the cost. Due to that problem, Sgara is here to help the shrimp farmers record all cultivation processes, starting from the warehouse, feed usage, probiotics, etc. Later on, from this data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) model is used to provide insights to technicians and shrimp farmers on the earlynprevention or detection of shrimp diseases”, said Arrival Dwi Santosa. 

Then, Giantree was established in 2019 as a highly motivated startup to solve environmental problems by using biotechnology to produce poultry feed, particularly for chickens and ducks, from organic waste, such as vegetable waste, tofu dregs, and coconut dregs. Not only solving environmental problems, but Giantree also impacts society by empowering the surrounding society. There are currently two Giantree products, namely, Pwakan ayam and Pwakan ikan, produced by using fermentation technology.  

In the farming sector, there is Kebonin. It is one of the pioneers of crowd farming in Indonesia that is established in 2020. Through the crowd farming method, it produces the best quality of aloe vera products and spices. Kebonin has the vision to become one of the leading and high-quality producers of aloe vera and spice commodities that have an economic impact by involving local communities as partners in its business circle.  

“The motivation behind kebonin comes from the fact that we are still importing commodities in the current conditions while we can easily plant them around our yard. Furthermore, our agriculture product’s long supply chain process causes impartiality to farmers and consumers. I researched the potential of this business. In the end, I came up with the idea of making it a real business.” said Bara Yohantomo, the founder of Kebonin.