Shrimp Hoard Technologies To Facilitate Loan To Farmers Through Unique Tool

Shrimp Hoard Technologies, which helps farmers manage their shrimp ponds through parameter monitoring and resource optimisation, is planning to foray into the financial support services sector to enable farmers to get loan from the banks without any issue.

Incepted in 2018, Shrimp Hoard manufactures a product that helps the aquaculture farmers to monitor aquaculture ponds, develop solar-powered floating buoys that measure different water parameters, such as oxygen levels, temperature and pH range, crucial for the growth and survival of shrimp.

The collected information is uploaded on the cloud and transmitted to individual customers through an Android app. Farmers can also remotely monitor aerators and feeders. It also aids in improving productivity by offering productivity insights and harvest forecasts.

Speaking with Opportunity India, CEO and Technology Head Sushil Paul said that many farmers face difficulty in getting loans from the banks as it was capital intensive business so they were planning to foray into the financial support service for the farmers.

“Most of the farmers need loan for this business as it is capital intensive business initially, and they face difficulty in getting their loans approved as banks require security and other data. We thought of building a tool that has all the data about the farmers such as how they are working and the total estimated amount which they will get after exporting the shrimps so that it could help banks evaluate the data and approve loans to the farmers,” Sushil said.

The company aims at emerging as a middleman which facilitates the approval of loan by making it easier for the banks to evaluate the data of the farmers through this tool. The company is in talks with fisheries department for getting the validation of the data they collect.

“We haven’t rolled out the project yet. We are working on the hardware which will collect the data. We are also in talks with fisheries department which will give validation on the data making it authentic so that banks can trust it and become interested in providing loans to the farmers on the basis of this data,” Paul told Opportunity India adding that the department has also agreed to sell our monitoring product on subsidised price.

Coimbatore-based Shrimp Hoard is currently covering the coastal areas of Gujarat and providing the products in that area.

Paul says that the company was started to provide live monitoring of the shrimp pond so that major disaster for the farmers could be avoided. “We provide hardware water monitoring solution to the farmers for their shrimp ponds so that cultivation is smooth. Most of the time farmers know the quality of water just by watching the pond but there are times when prediction don’t work and water needs to be tested. So, all the labs are in city area and it takes a day time to get the water tested and in this time period the condition of pond could change so that’s where our products come and help the farmers,” he added.

About Indian Shrimp Culture

Indian fisheries and aquaculture is an important sector of food production, providing nutritional security to the food basket, contributing to the agricultural exports and engaging about fourteen million people in different activities. Constituting about 6.3 per cent of the global fish production, the sector contributes to 1.1 per cent of the GDP and 5.15 per cent of the agricultural GDP. Paradigm shifts in terms of increasing contributions from inland sector and further from aquaculture are significations over the years.