The state of Andhra Pradesh has a unique distinction of being the highest exporter of marine products in the country especially in the frozen shrimp category.
India’s marine exports have surged phenomenally over the past 10 years or so from about USD 1 billion to over USD 7.5 billion now.
And contributing significantly to this surge in exports is the state of Andhra Pradesh.
Having said that there is a glaring absence of technology in the value chain such as automation, transparency in pricing, lack of crop management system etc.
Identifying these pain points as lucrative opportunities Mr Pavan Kosaraju started Aqua Exchange.
‘Aqua Exchange is a technology firm with a vision to use technology in order to bring in transparency and efficiencies in the aqua sector’s value chain’ said Mr Pavan speaking to Vizag Industrial Scan.
So in layman terms Aqua Exchange is a farmer friendly ecommerce platform that monitors the crop cycle 24×7 through a mobile application thereby assisting aqua farmers to feed fish/shrimp through their in-house developed tech bot i.e. Aqua Bot.
By bringing in technology the startup helps farmers sell their harvest directly to exporters at the best price, realise spot payments, book harvest etc.
‘In addition farmers can also buy feed, inputs & equipment at the best prices. We basically enable them to manage their pond from their mobile’ said Mr Pavan.
Similarly Aqua Exchange also helps exporters by providing them with better market intelligence, harvest quality checks, production planning etc.
In terms of revenues Aqua Exchange works on a range of subscription plans depending on the services offered.
This Vizag registered startup claims to have already garnered 10, 000 clients from regions like Ichapuram, Gudur, Chennai, etc and has over 2000+ farmers who’ve downloaded their app.
Validating their idea, marquee investors poured in USD 1 million into the startup making it one of the few coveted ones to raise funds and probably one of the handful ones from AP.
Below is a brief Snapshot of the Startup
Founders: Pavan Kosaraju, Hema Sundar, Kareem & Kiran
Incubated/Started (Year): Aug 2020
Industry / Space: Aqua Culture
Team Members:140 members
Funding Received: One million dollar for seed fund received in July 2022 from venture capitals – ENDIYA Partners (HYD), Accion venture labs (Washington DC)
Claim to Fame: One among the TIE global 100 companies (TGS-100)
Market of Operation: Andhra Pradesh
Revenues: 5 million dollars
Company’s culture:
Aggressive Easy Going Methodical
PTIM (Person that inspires me): Every Engineer who solves a ground level problem inspires me, because they make an effort to make everybody’s life easier.
