ARIA Agritech Startup Ambition to Create a New Generation of Farmers in Indonesia

One of the obstacles that are currently still a challenge for agriculture is the lack of interest of young farmers to enter the agricultural sector. The large amount of land that has to be cultivated using old methods and methods also makes it difficult for most farmers to optimize their performance.

Not to mention if it turns out that there is a pest attack that must be anticipated quickly, it usually requires a large number of workers to carry out the process. As a result, many farmers experienced crop failures and large losses because it was too late to overcome them.

Seeing this problem, ARIA, which is an agritech startup, comes with a solution to increase productivity efficiency through the use of drones and IoT, while providing prevention and predictive agricultural solutions to large-scale farmers and plantations.

In addition, the motivation for developing this product is to help farmers and plantation owners get good agricultural products, while at the same time attracting more young farmers to enter the agricultural sector.

ARIA Co-Founder & CEO William Sjaichudin said that starting with drone technology, they wanted to be an agritech platform that can help farmers get quality agricultural products with the right planting process, while minimizing the use of labor in the field.

Most of the current agritech platforms in Indonesia are more focused on the supply chain. However, many of them also complain about the low quality of farmers’ harvests. With the technology and services we have, we want to overcome these problems and focus on quality control,” said William.

Focus on the B2B Segment

Aria was co-founded by Arden Lim (CPO) and Yosa Rosario (COO). Currently, ARIA is targeting two business verticals, namely B2B companies such as plantations and forestry.

Especially for B2B clients, ARIA provides SaaS technology that helps them to carry out the planting process using directly connected data, so they can carry out accurate spraying activities.

Meanwhile, for both individual farmers and farmers who have plantations, they hope to apply the best practices that have been applied to large companies such as Sampoerna, Sahabat Agro Group, Sinarmas, Triputra Group, and others who are current clients of ARIA.

“Our target this year is to be able to serve 60 to 70 percent of B2B clients and 30 percent to farmers. We hope that through programs owned by local governments and available vacant land, we can help ARIA,” said William.

Starting from technology, ARIA is quite confident that it can create jobs that attract the attention of new potential farmers in Indonesia. So that the regeneration of farmers can run well, replacing the farmers who are currently fewer in number and most of them have entered old age.

ARIA’s Business Potential

Judging from the responses of farmers in various regions who welcome their mapping technology and drone spray, ARIA sees the potential to be able to produce new young farmers and drone pilots in the future.

“For the drone pilots themselves, we currently have around 16 people and the target can be increased to 40 more by the end of the month. Our drone pilots come from each region, adjusting the demand from the units ordered,” said William

The business model adopted by ARIA is as a service company. Because buying and selling drones is difficult, their way of running a business is to provide drones at a low cost, namely service per hectare.

Thus it can be more affordable for farmers. To provide integrated services, ARIA also collaborates with Bayer in the supply of chemicals for agriculture.

“In the future, we want to be able to make our own drones. What distinguishes us from other platforms is our direct approach by providing solutions. We are an end-to-end software and hardware platform for farmers,” said William.

Currently, ARIA has secured pre-seed funding, which was organized and led by GK-Plug and Play Indonesia, East Ventures and market leaders in agriculture and logistics such as Triputra Group, Waresix, and Sahabat Group who participated in this series.