Pro-viden: aquaculture automation

Variations in water quality can generate diseases for aquaculture organisms, representing big production losses for the farmers that can go up to 100% of the production in extreme cases. These production losses in aquaculture amount to 6 billion USD each year.

This is why we created Pro-viden. It consists of a device that moves autonomously throughout the water while it performs measurements of pH, oxygen, temperature and other parameters. The farmer can see this information, remotely and at all times, through our web platform and app, and connect the farm’s infrastructure to our system to achieve a full automation and maintain the optimal conditions for the health of the organisms.

We're working to implement Pro-viden in farms all over the world to prevent these 6 billion USD in production losses, which represent over 4 million people being fed each year.

When water quality variations are not immediately detected and corrected, aquaculture organisms get stressed and their immune system weakens. This allows for bacteria, fungi and viruses in the water to infect them and create diseases. When water conditions continue to be inadequate, then they begin to die. 

These production losses in aquaculture amount to 6 billion USD each year, and for a farmer it can represent from 30% of its entire production to all of it in extreme cases, putting his livelihood, his workers' and their families' at risk.

Currently, the majority of aquaculture farmers use single or multi-parameter sensors to manually perform water quality measurements from three to six times a day. This represents a great investment in time and effort. Furthermore, in the time span between measurements, a variation in the water parameters can present itself, which can lead to diseases for the organisms. 

Lately, continuous water monitoring has introduced itself in aquaculture, so more and more farmers are transitioning to these technologies. However, current systems can only perform measurements in one spot of the water once they are installed. Making them unable to detect variations outside of their area that could place the aquaculture organisms at risk.

Pro-viden is an IoT-based automation system for aquaculture farms, which allows the farmer to prevent diseases and increase his production. 

It consists of a device that moves autonomously throughout the water while it performs measurements of pH, oxygen, temperature and other parameters, and it can even perform them at different depths. The farmer can see this information, remotely and at all times, through our web platform and app. He can see graphs, detailed reports and receive preventive alerts when a risk is detected. 

The farmer can also connect the farm’s infrastructure to our system to achieve a full automation and maintain the optimal conditions for the health of the organisms, thus, being able to monitor and control aquaculture production in real time. 

The collected data is also processed by our predictive model to provide the farmer with valuable insights into water quality trends that may become a risk in the near future.

We are focused on helping aquaculture farmers in Latin America. Initially our target are the more than 12,000 aquaculture farms in Mexico and Chile. 

Aquaculture farmers, their workers and their families are directly affected by these production losses, since they put their livelihood at risk.

By locally manufacturing our hardware, we are able to offer our system at over 50% lower prices than the continuous monitoring systems from the US- and Europe-based competition. This way, we are able to serve the large majority of small aquaculture farmers, who were not able to afford this technology.

After two years of interviewing them, visiting them and testing our prototypes with them, we launched Pro-viden to the market and got our first three clients in Mexico and an additional pilot tester. With our first client, a tilapia farmer in the south of Mexico, we were able to stop the 50% production loss he suffered before using Pro-viden. 

We continue to get feedback from our clients, getting valuable insights to improve our impact and better protect their production.

A large number of aquaculture farmers are the economic engine of their communities, providing food, jobs and income to many of their members. When they suffer big production losses, the food source for these communities is directly affected. 

According to FAO, aquaculture is probably the fastest growing food-producing sector and now accounts for 50 percent of the world's fish that is used for food. 

By using Pro-viden to protect aquaculture organisms and power aquaculture farms, we can make sure more sustainable, nutritious food is available for an ever-growing population.

The real time monitoring systems of Innovex (http://www.innovex.cl/innovex/), VARD (https://vardaquaculture.com/en/product/aqualog/) and Realtime Aquaculture (http://rtaqua.com/) are our closest competitors. Our differentiators include an autonomous movement of the device and a sensors immersion module to perform measurements at different depths. In this way, we obtain representative data of all the water, unlike the devices of our competitors, which are installed in one point and remain static. This enables our system to detect variations from one point to another and immediately alert the farmer of any risks.

IoT and water quality sensors are the base of our technology. We combine it with the functionality of an underwater ROV to perform continuous measurements of water quality all over the water body.

Additionally, our AI can process the data received and perform recommendations, like telling the farmer when is the optimal time to feed the fish, depending on the water quality level. 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315915371_ROV-based_acquisition_system_for_water_quality_measuring

https://www.fondriest.com/news/underwater-networked-drones-monitoring-water-quality.htm

https://www.indymo.nl/

Underwater ROV's have been used to monitor the quality of bodies of water for some years now. Their application has mainly focused on environmental monitoring. 

We are taking the benefits of these technologies to serve the aquaculture industry with a self-sustainable business model. 

By monitoring water quality in real time, we provide the farmer with immediate information about the environment in which the aquatic organisms grow. He's alerted whenever a sudden variation is detected and he's able to correct the situation himself, through his workers or immediately through the automation of blowers, water pumps, coolers, heaters and other actuators. This results in the creation of an optimal environment for the fish, better health for them, lower presence of diseases and, ultimately, a reduction in production losses. 

Through interviews and trials with Mexican and Chilean farmers, we've seen how they've suffered production losses due to these variations. 

Our first client was constantly experiencing the death of his tilapia and didn't even know why. Once we installed Pro-viden, we could see that the oxygen level was too high in the afternoon due to an excessive use of blowers and at night the oxygen was too low, which suffocated the tilapia and killed more than 50% of his production. By getting this valuable information to the farmer, we were able to stop these production losses from continuing and provide 24/7 protection.

We currently serve 27 aquaculture farmers and workers in the 4 farms we are present. 

In one year, we will be present in 20 farms, serving 135 people. 

In five years, we will be present in 11,000 farms, serving over 74,000 aquaculture farmers and workers.

Within the next year, we will protect the aquaculture production of 20 farms in Latin America, representing a yearly production of over 1,000 tons of nutritious food and the yearly aquatic-sourced nourishment for more than 47,000 people.

Within the next five years, we will be present in over 11,000 aquaculture farms around the world, protecting a yearly production of 550,000 tons of food and the yearly aquatic-sourced nourishment for over 26 million people.

As we started generating revenue just this year, we're still not receiving constant salaries, as we're investing every dollar into manufacturing, the software and marketing. 

Commercially, we've seen that it's hard to knock on doors and be heard when the farmers don't recognize our brand, so we still have long sales cycles.

The founders and the team are all first-time entrepreneurs, so, even though we are highly motivated and passionate, we still lack business experience.

We are raising a funding round and contacting industry experts to invest in our startup. We moved back to our parents' house to reduce costs and got loans from family to continue operations until we raise funds or become self-sustainable.

We are also partnering with industry distributors and consultants to get a faster entrance with aquaculture farms and reduce our sales cycle. Additionally, we are launching a marketing campaign, in which we show the impact we're having with our first clients and their testimonials.

We are constantly looking to speak with industry experts and with our mentor to keep learning, growing and taking better decisions.

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3 full-time founders

3 part-time employees

Our startup consists of a multidisciplinary team: Andrea Morales, Marine Biology student, she has the knowledge and experience working in aquaculture and is in charge of tests and demos; Martin Ovando, Computer Science Engineer, he has worked for many years in electronics and software development and is in charge of the technological development of Pro-viden; Alejandro Valdés, Industrial Engineer, he has international work and entrepreneurial experience and is in charge of marketing and finance. Additionally, we work with two developers, Rafael and Eli, for the development of our platform, and with Giusseppe Andrade, who is Electronic Instruments Engineer with years of experience working on IoT systems. Finally, Ricardo Icarte, our mentor, is a serial entrepreneur and has also worked in the aquaculture industry for many years.

Three factors make us successful at what we do: our team, our motivation and our way of working. We are a young, diverse and multidisciplinary team with experienced mentors and allies in all areas of business, from Marine Biology to Marketing to Hardware development. We have a real motivation to improve the aquaculture industry and the lives of everyone involved in the industry, including the final customer. Additionally, we know that in order to be successful we have to work closely with the customer, including them in every step of development.

We partnered with the thinker space HUB iLab, where we started our startup, to get free co-working space and access to their hardware workshop to manufacture our devices.

We also partnered with the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur to use their lab facilities to perform tests for free and get access to their professors and researchers.

We also partnered with our main supplier to get a discount on the electronics we source from them.

Finally, we get support from entrepreneurial actors, such as Start-Up Chile, The Summer Institute, GSV Labs and the Global Entrepreneurship Network.

The prices of our devices range from $9,000 to $2,900 USD, going from a basic one to a more robust one. In addition, the monthly subscription for our app and platform is of $100 USD, on average. The client can also choose to pay for the device in the monthly subscription. 

As first-time entrepreneurs we're currently looking for mentorship on how to get from a startup with its first clients to a self-sustainable company. 

Through the MIT's network, we seek to connect with aquaculture and water industry experts and possible investors. 

We will also use the exposure of being a Solver to boost our marketing efforts and get to more aquaculture farms. 

Finally, we will use the funding to integrate our tech team from part-time to full-time and improve our hardware differentiators.

We seek to partner with industry experts and consultants that can connect us to possible clients that can benefit from Pro-viden. 

We´re looking for investors that can leverage their network in the aquaculture and water industries to boost our growth.

Finally, we're looking for mentoring on how to monitor and evaluate our operations as we grow, since we're beginning our commercialization stage.

- Grow Oyster Reefs to monitor the impact of the reefs on water quality

- Wave2O to integrate wave-energy to power our devices installed at sea.

- Green Stream  and Marauder Robotics to share technology resources and explore collaborations on manufacturing

- Green Keeper Africa to partner in offering solutions for the detection and elimination of pollutants in water

- The FFAR to connect with public and private organizations that could become clients

- The Nature Conservacy to implement Pro-viden for the monitoring and conservation of water bodies

We use AI to analyze the data collected by our devices, so that we can detect trends in water quality and improve the recommendations we give to farmers on how they can feed and take care of the fish to improve their growth. 

By using our devices to monitor coasts, rivers, lakes and oceans, we can also detect how global warming affects these bodies of water. The Prize can help us develop an online database where we can offer the collected and analyzed data to organizations looking to improve and preserve aquatic ecosystems and those working to reduce the effects of climate change.