Chickin, an Indonesian poultry tech startup, believes its smart farming technology can help farmers improve productivity and efficiency and manage environmental factors, writes MELIYANA.
Before setting up Chickin Indonesia, founders Tubagus Syailendra Wangsadisastra and Ashab Alkahfi were farmers raising broilers in Klaten, Central Java. From this experience, they found inefficiencies in raising the birds and learned that the industry was highly fragmented with middlemen and uncontrollable supply and demand.
“We also learned that many things worry farmers, including high mortality and difficulties in farm management and marketing. So, we try to solve all these with technology,” said Mr Alkahfi.
Mr Wangsadisastra concurred and said that now is the right time for farmers to adopt smart farming technology to mitigate risks and increase profits. He believes that new data-driven technology can improve productivity and efficiency and manage environmental factors at the farm.
Solutions
Chickin offers a ‘Chickin Smart Farm’ solution that is cloud-based for effective farm management. It features dashboard monitoring, transparency of supervision, and management tools.
The startup produces and offers a hardware integrated with Internet of Things (IoT) to optimize FCR. The hardware enables adjustments of the house climate to make bird comfort, which then leads to increased productivity.
“We create the tools to ensure affordability and ease of use. From this, our big goal is to support the country’s food security,” said Mr Wangsadisastra.
“Our digital technology helps farmers reduce human error, feed waste, and energy cost. The solutions are expected to transform them from traditional to digital-based management.”
Mr Wangsadisastra explained that with IoT support, Chickin’s technology makes remote farming possible. Not to mention, the technology optimizes production efficiency, lowers mortality, and improves harvest quality.
“For instance, during the rainy or dry season, farmers do not need to control the temperature of the house manually because it is easier to manage the temperature with our automated control,” he said.
Mr Wangsadisastra claimed that with Chickin’s app, farmers can save up to 200-300g of feed per bird. “So, if there are 20,000 birds in a house, farmers can save up to six tons of feed.”
He also claimed that the integrated process of their technology can improve harvest rate by 97% and profit by 300-400%.
More than 150 farms with millions of birds have benefitted from solutions from the startup. The solutions will also be developed to support farmers in minimizing the use of antibiotics.
The hardware is integrated with IoT to optimize FCR and productivity.
Chickin offers a cloud-based software technology.
Connecting farmers and buyers
Beyond the software and hardware, Chickin provides financing for farm inputs.
The startup also created ‘Chickin Fresh’, a channel to sell quality chicken meat to customers from B2B market through data transparency (supply-demand matchmaking).
Chickin now has been trusted by more than 200 clients from the horeca sector.
Mr Alkahfi said there is a gap between chicken supply and its quality. So, the feature was created to bridge the gap, and importantly to allow farmers to sell their chickens at higher prices.
“By using the feature, farmers and customers can create a win-win business,” he said, adding that the feature helps overcome issues of supply, quality, and transparency.
By leveraging IoT, Chickin guarantees buyers of quality chicken meat that is safe and halal and is processed in facilities that have a veterinary control number from the Agriculture Ministry.
“Serving quality chicken is our priority. We always ensure that all the chicken products including carcass and its portioned cuts in the forms of fresh chilled and frozen, are the best products. And we always monitor the entire process,” said Mr Alkahfi.
The Chickin app allows easy monitoring by farmers.
Looking ahead
Looking ahead, Chickin is open to collaboration. It understands that achieving food security cannot be done alone.
“To reach untapped potential markets, we must partner with different stakeholders across the value chain to strengthen our business ecosystem,” said Mr Wangsadisastra.
Financial performance wise, the startup, which raised USD 2.5 million from three investors last December, targets to book a revenue of USD 35 million this year and has 10 million chickens raised monthly by its partner farmers.
Finally, Mr Wangsadisastra believes that smart farming technology will gain ground in Indonesia. The key is “the technology must be user-friendly and create significant efficiency. This will make it easier to convince more farmers to invest in the technology,” he said.
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Written by: Meliyana, Asian Agribiz
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