Yield, profit, and sustainability: How Bosch’s AquaEasy infuses science into traditional shrimp farming

(AquaEasy offers shrimp farmers high-performance sensors that ensure accurate, fast, and reliable monitoring. Image credit: AquaEasy)

Southeast Asia (SEA) is a major producer of seafood, with aquaculture a main source of food and livelihoods. What great leaps forward could be possible if SEA’s farms were powered by artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT)?

That is the question driving innovation at AquaEasy, shares Co-Founder Mr Ivan Tay: “Feeding the world through easy, smart, and sustainable aquaculture—that’s our goal.”

AquaEasy is a spinoff venture from the partnership between grow Innovation Hub —  Bosch’s incubation platform that helps intrapreneurs spearhead innovative startups — and EDB New Ventures. This partnership will see grow translate Bosch’s significant technological capabilities into new market solutions as they aim to launch various new corporate ventures from Singapore by 2023.

Combining the strengths of a multinational company and a startup

Shrimp farming is a risky but profitable business. The crustaceans’ survival is impacted by the smallest fluctuations in conditions such as water quality, temperature, and feed. Nevertheless, shrimp production offers some of the highest returns in the seafood industry.

With AquaEasy — which is developing first-in-the-world aquaculture solutions to improve production predictability and quality — farmers are able to maximise returns and reduce business risk.

“AquaEasy is transforming shrimp farming from an art to a science,” remarks Mr Jochen Lorenz, Director of AquaEasy and Head of grow Innovation Hub.

Using parent firm Bosch’s technologies, AquaEasy offers customers a suite of high-performance sensors that ensure accurate, fast, and reliable monitoring of water quality and feed parameters. Analytics provide real-time insights that help farmers optimise feed decisions and harvest predictions.

The result is a sizable improvement in yield, profitability, and sustainability, with AquaEasy’s customers having reported improvements of up to 30 per cent in feed conversion rates — a more efficient conversion of feed into biomass.
 

Powering corporate growth through new ventures

Before becoming a grow intrapreneur and founding AquaEasy, Mr Tay was a software engineer with Bosch’s Advance Development Team specialising in machine learning and AI. He was also a third-time entrepreneur. “I joined grow for the fun of trying something new,” recounts Mr Tay.

Mr Tay’s AquaEasy journey began in 2018, when he and his teammates pitched an early version of their business concept to grow. The pitch was successful, winning them seed funding, mentoring and support.

“We visited farms in Indonesia, and we saw how everyone was dependent on harvests to feed their families. That gave me a deeper appreciation of what AquaEasy could achieve.” shares Mr Tay: “With technologies that help produce crops more consistently and productively, we can transform the livelihood of farmers, farmhands, and their families.”

As AquaEasy’s co-founder, Mr Tay combined lessons from his past startup experiences with the advantages of Bosch’s grow platform. The advantages of corporate entrepreneurship have helped him drive AquaEasy’s growth differently.

“Corporate ventures have the best of both worlds — we run like startups but founders have all the resources they need and the ability to move fast without having to start from scratch,” he explains.

Corporate venturing momentum is growing fast in Singapore, as Bosch and other world-established companies innovate like startups to build pipelines for future growth. grow offers startups a leg-up with infrastructure, connections, access to owned and shared services within the Bosch group, as well as finance, coaching and mentorship support from pre-incubation to scaling.

grow allowed AquaEasy to experiment and pilot new ideas in a safe environment with other intrapreneurs and technology experts.

“Startups like ours usually find it difficult to venture into countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia, because of language and market differences, but Bosch’s network gave us access to colleagues in these countries who supported us with ready insights and networks,” Mr Tay explains.

AquaEasy now counts farms across Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam as happy customers. Interest in AquaEasy’s solutions is growing, with farmers in key shrimp-producing markets such as Thailand, China, India, Ecuador, and Saudi Arabia reaching out to collaborate.

An advantageous ecosystem for corporate venturing

The decision to base AquaEasy’s headquarters in Singapore was a strategic one, given Southeast Asia’s market opportunities.

EDB New Ventures was a strong partner to AquaEasy from the outset, remarks Mr Lorenz: “EDB provided us with opportunities to meet key aquaculture stakeholders that we may not have had access to. They also gave us inputs on talent recruitment and provided advisers that proved very helpful.”

With Singapore being Bosch’s SEA headquarters and Asia-Pacific (APAC) Research and Technology Center, AquaEasy was also able to leverage a strong, pre-existing network of regional partners and technological talent.

In addition, the country’s robust intellectual property protection regime, ranked top in APAC and third in the world, helps AquaEasy protect its innovations.

Aiming high for sustainable growth and impact

AquaEasy is now collaborating with a Singapore-based aquaculture player on its most ambitious project yet — to break the world record of shrimp production on a kilogram-per square- meter basis.

“We have two key goals: to provide protein for the growing population and to alleviate some of the pressure on the ocean,” shares Mr Tay.

The team aims to find ways to feed the world more sustainably in the future. “This is not only about setting a world record, but about combining purpose with business,” says Mr Lorenz: “To have a common interest from a multinational and EDB in building a new venture that creates an impact on society and the planet — this is what our collaboration is all about.”

Reach out to EDB New Ventures at new_ventures@edb.gov.sg to explore how we can support your plans to build new businesses.