AquaNurch Digital Twin® : AI for Water

The 2.4 million ha of freshwater bodies available for aquaculture (overall 7 million Ha of freshwater bodies) in India are facing various degree of risks and deterioration, data and monitoring gaps, where climate change further aggravate this situation. Causing 90% of fish production in India biologically unsustainable and highly vulnerable to climate risks leading to $2-3 Billion loss in fisheries, and associated health costs.

Dead Fishes of a marginalised Fish Farmers in India

While working across different freshwater ecosystems in 7 landscapes over the last 3 years, engaging with 310 fish farmers including 50 women fish farmers, commercial fish farmers and grassroots communities, we observed that the fish farmers suffer huge losses at the tune of USD 16000/ha/year due to the fluctuating water-quality, resorting unsustainable practices to control pollution and to achieve high-growth.

The existing solutions, and practices available for the USD 45 billion fisheries market in India are ineffective to address these pain points and the economic situation of fish farmers gets further aggravated because of sub-optimal rates of fish production, often being pushed into debt-laden traps.

Water Crisis is the Climate Crisis: Nearly 2 million people died every year because of water risk

On the other hand, the water managers such as municipal corporations, restoration managers face a decision dilemma given the very high cost of real-time monitoring of water health, lack of water data and lack of waterscape level information to provide insights about deterioration and potential problems, which can prepare water manager towards better planning and in identifying the right solution.

Healthy Water, Healthy Fishes: 15 million people in India dependent on freshwater fisheries for food security

AQUANURCH DIGITAL TWIN

AquaNurch, is a plug-and-play product-service hybrid solution for creating ‘World’s Biggest Real-time Water Data & Solution Factory’ of waterscapes. where each AquaNurch installation acts as a neural node for capturing the pulse of water-ecosystems on a real-time basis, combines it with AI-models and ensemble hydrological models, to capture the systemic interconnected ecological and anthropogenic disturbances on water landscapes, provides end-to-end solution to fish farmers, and maps the pulse of critical water ecosystems - marine, freshwater, on real time scale.

AquaNurch Digital Twin System: AI for Water

AquaNurch Digital twin uses AI, ensemble model and primary high frequency data. Every units acts as a Neural Node, capturing the real-time data on water health from the depth and surface on multiple parameters, combined with environment data to detect risk every 5 minutes. We inform fish farmers, utilities and restoration managers with specific insights. Which enables Fish farmers to reduce mortality to 5% from 40%. On average of our 1200 plus fish farmers achieved 99% de-risking, none lost their entire fish stock, with reduced expenditure of 25 percent, additionally 20 percent reduction in feed cost in a hassle free system. Using same tech, 7000 Ha of water bodies has been de-risked for utilities, leading to increase operational efficiency of utilities by 35 percent ensuring supply clean water to 11 million people. Our digital twin approach using AquaNurch system and AI models, powered us to deliver water health information on any fresh water body of a targeted area from micro-to-macro scale to different users.

AquaNurch® AI-powered engine gathers and processes millions of data points on ecological stressors from farm/water bodies, fishes/biodiversity, hydrology system, climate variables and geospatial parameters using proprietary AI-models to assess current and forecast climate risks and variability enabling fish farmers and water system managers to take timely and effective measures to reduce vulnerability, catalyst resilience  and enhance sustainable production. AquaNurch not only detect climate and ecological risks, enhance adaptation of fish farmers due to climate variability; but also its Nature-based component reduces heavy metal and pollution ensuring healthy water ecosystem for healthy fisheries and sustaining biodiversity.

REDUCES FISH PRODUCTION AND RESOURCE LOSS: AquaNurch not only saved water health but also ensure reduction in loss of fish wastage due to disease and bad quality, reduce in feed and energy which further save emissions and overall expenditure.

We are AI for Good! 

1.     Scientifically Reviewed AI Models: AquaNurch AI virtual sensor is peer-reviewed and approved as innovation by a committee of global scientists from Environment, Technology and Artificial intelligence areas. 

2.     Hardware and Sensor Certification: AquaNurch hardware is based on Global and Indian standards with all required certifications for installation on water bodies. Whereas the AquaNurch software system follows highly sophisticated data security and protection under Global and Indian legal frameworks.

3.     Data Privacy and Confidentiality: AquaNurch database follow Government of India, GDPR-Europe, and other key global data policy and regulatory guidelines with multiple layer of protection and backups to ensure smooth data access for users.

AquaNurch will be tackling the pain-points of 16 million inland fishfarmers and 2.5 million hectares of water-bodies in India. 

As a hard-tech product AquaNurch® combines the power of ‘Nature-based+DeepTech’ for delivering end-to-end aquaculture solutions in emerging economies towards instituting climate resilient sustainable fisheries. Ensuring high revenue with ease to aqua farmers and healthy protein for all.

Freshwater Fish farmers managing their farms sustainable using AquaNurch solutions

A combination of hardware and software which we co-designed with fish-farmers to ensure human-centered design core, our key focus is on inland freshwater fish-farmers who face the direct burnt of water-security impacts especially water-quality and climate-change further aggravates there problems. By using AquaNurch system the fish-farmers gain 3x-5x return on their investment with increased production, optimised operations, reduced input costs and de-risked fisheries. From fish seeds, nursery ponds, growing stage, disease monitoring, harvesting and market connect we offer end-to-end complete solution. The system intuitively combines the best science-backed practices for fish-production and complements their traditional knowledge and experience, leading to further integration. AquaNurch acts as a one-stop-shop for the inland freshwater fisheries value-chain.

Presently NatureDots offers “AquaNurch System”  to inland freshwater fish farmers in India with AI powered camera for disease detection and end-to-end solution to reduce mortality and achieve optimum growth. AquaNurch for water health is offered to our Indian, and global customers including water managers and restoration managers to help design, monitor and upscale the restoration and regenerative projects on water-scapes with built-in MRV.

The team-lead Snehal, have the first-hand experience of facing the brunt of deteriorating water quality, while she was working with 10 small-scale fish-farmers in Bhopal on an aqua-based community livelihood project she witnessed how the changing water quality due to pollution, coupled with climate change and lack of information lead to loss of the entire fish-stock worth 10K USD in just 2-3 hours, and how this cumulative impact pushes them further in poverty as a debt-trap.

Since 2017 December, While working across different freshwater ecosystems in 7 landscapes over the last 4 years, engaging with 1310 fish farmers including 150 women fish farmers, commercial fish-farmers and grassroots communities, we observed that the fish farmers suffer huge losses to the tune of USD 16000/ha/year due to the fluctuating water-quality, resorting unsustainable practices to control pollution and to achieve high-growth.

The changing water health impacts are not limited to aqua-livelihoods but also leads to loss in biodiversity. Aatish (co-founder) similarly had his first-hand experience of witnessing increasing health costs and mortality due to extremely bad water-quality in a lakes in his home town.

We both co-founders are trained engineer, managers with expertise in natural and climate sciences. I (Snehal) am a Computer Science engineer with MBA and Masters in Water Resources Management  from Duke University and Aatish is an Electronic Communications engineer with MBA and Masters in Environment Management from Yale University. We have domain and subject expertise on the water and climate challenge with a systemic view due to our diverse experience across the food-water-energy nexus.

AquaNurch is an adaptive water AI model with next-gen water simulation which can scope in and out from hyperlocal to macro scale. For increasing the accuracy of AI-engine and bridge the data-inequity gap, we need more AquaNurch system deployments. This in turn will create more subset-AI products for different water-system such as fisheries, municipalities, restoration, water-resource management and dMRV.

AquaNurch water health monitoring system is being used by a government agencies in India and a government agency in the US, 2 non-profit and 1 restoration agency providing insights on 5000 ha of waterscape. 

In India we operate in two states with 1370 fish farmers (530 ha) and a govt department for 3 reservoirs managed by Municipal Corporations (5000 Ha) monitoring & restoration

In USA we are working in Washington State with State Parks and one local organization covering 2000 Ha, under real-time water health monitoring for climate resilient, salmon recovery and aquaculture 

Initiated pilots in new geographies in Nigeria, Rwanda, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Brazil covering more than 1 million Ha to de-risk in 2024

We believe that High impact & High growth is possible keeping business, people and nature at core. MIT Solve's mission resonates with us and we believe this is the time to rethink our growth. Joining MIT's cohort would allow us to gain resources and guidance in our pursuit towards the global challenge of freshwater resources management.

Achieving a 'Hockey-stick' acceleration for solving hard problems - freshwater restoration and associated livelihoods, fusing profits and impact in tandem for creating a world which is promising for people and nature, requires an understanding of business and solutions delivery, with passion and vision to drive and address challenges, bringing innovation and new thinking the MIT’s ecosystem of innovation for impact will help bolster our innovation and offering while learning from industry leaders, create more strategic network of partnerships and collaborations. We aim to create a strategic network of partnerships and collaborations, attract the best talent from Water, DeepTech and BioTech sectors, and develop market for Nature-based led technology solutions.

Finally, to boost our growth MIT’s prodium will immensely help us in attracting Funding and investment with renewed visibility.

Thus, incorporating shared learning and reinventing growth together, for people, for nature and for business

AquaNurch units acts as a Neural Node, capturing the pulse of water ecosystems from the depth and surface of water, combining it with the geospatial planetary spatial temporal data, processed using proprietary AI models of given case. The system acts as a Biophysical Chemical Ecological Big Data Factory on the natural system where it is deployed providing Resource Intelligence on localised, accurate, timely and simplified to fish farmers and to water managers, establishing new nature economy.

Reduction of 50-80% use of IOT in monitoring health of water health: AquaNurch Ai reduces use of hardware IOT for water parameter monitoring using AI-virtual sensors which held in scaling up water risk assessment across emerging and low income groups. 

The AquaNurch ensemble Model® developed by R&D team of AquaNurch® System delivers to de-risk water bodies, aquatic life, people and business from risks of quality, quantity, climate induced and ecological driven hazards. Our AI model integrates different climate scenarios, ecological complexities, and weather patterns to estimate and forecast water health at varied geographical scale.

Healthy Water and water scapes results in healthy people, healthy fish production and healthy ecosystems, enabling and speeding the fight against climate change and de-risk all. 

We will be tracking and measuring following to observe the impact

1. Increase in fish production per acreage
2. Improvement in quality of fish
3. Amount of water saved
4. Improvement in water quality
5. Reduction in fish mortality due to ecological stressors ###li#< Reduction in input cost for pond management and fish production
6. Number of data points collected per Ha on ecological parameter
7. Increase in adoption-rate of technology amongst Fish Farmers, (including women)
8. Increase in income of Fish Farmers (including women)
9. Reduction in time-spent by a fish farmer in the pond management
10. Number of New Aquapreneurs created - especially women and youth
11. Reduction in tCO2 emission

Every AquaNurch installation in freshwater aquaculture systems save 3 million litres of freshwater per year and reduces pollution of 220 million litres of fresh water every year. By covering beachhead, presentably based on our target-group of fish farmers under market of Chhattisgarh and Orissa we have estimated based on the total coverage of water restoration and fish ponds to reduce aqua-inputs resource wastage of 923,654 MT. Ensuring livelihood security and enhancement for 1095 freshwater fish farmers by de-risking 3 million USD worth of fisheries while saving 630 million litres of freshwater. The increased sustainable fish-protein ensures healthy protein for 20,000+ individuals in our areas of operations.

Climate Action

Water ecosystem is highly susceptible to multiple ecological variables interact in a complex manner, which is beyond human capacity to deduce results on a real-time basis. Multi-model ensemble of RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 over 2020, 2030, and 2040 both indicated high to very-high climate variability with increasing precipitation over lesser number of days, more surface temp days, high intensity and high frequency of weather extremes. Combining climate variability along with ecological system variability fish farmers are highly vulnerable. From data AquaNurch team gathered indicates that 3 out of 5 fish farmers have suffered 100% loss of production atleast once in last three years. AquaNurch device is creating first-of-its-kind data repository from farm level to large water ecosystem level – lakes and rivers, is a hub of water ecosystem data, ecological and aquatic life data. Collected data is real-time processed through AquaNurch engine® AI-powered which handles complexities of big data, combines with climate variables and other key parameters to identify climate risks. Information shared over mobile app enables fish farmers and water managers to take corrective measures.

Zero Hunger

AquaNurch is first-of-its-kind high-frequency data repository for India with aim to scaleup to other geographies. Due to the lack of robust data and real-time information modelled with ecological and climate variables targeting functional and practical use, it is very challenging to manage water resources, especially critical ecosystems such as wetlands, coral and marine, also lack of data and modelling is a hindrance for food production units – aqua farms to achieve optimum output. AquaNurch ensures healthy water for healthy fish for ensuring food and protein security among underserved and marginalised communities.

Life Below Water

The changing climate, competitive resource users and increased pollutant load not only endanger economies and food-systems but also threatens the entire ecosystem and biodiversity of freshwater ecosystem. At systemic level the health and resilience of these freshwater-resources are foundation for a robust national economy, nutritional security for the growing population. AquaNurch data base provides exhaustive biodiversity details apart from water health which is an impact indicator and enable water managers to understand overall health of the waterscapes.

Core technologies are AI/ML, IoT, IoB, Modeling, Mobile and Web Interface, real-time data pipelines with AI-integrated models, Image processing and spatial temporal near to real timeline automated and AI-powered analysis. 

Main idea behind NatureDots is to integrate the natural systems (ecological science lens) with the main-stream water resource management in an inclusive systemic solution.  The aim is to move away from a siloed approach to a more holistic approach where the vast complexities of natural systems dynamics are tackled by the use of technology. NatureDots combined the power of DeepTech tools such as AI, ML, AI-IoT etc., to fill in the gaps on data, information and computation of water-dynamics and overlayed it with the natural climate solutions and nature-based sciences to create a real-time health visualizer and balancer for water-bodies in form of innovation ‘AquaNurch’.

15 Full-time and 5 part-time

4.5 Years

We established in August 2019, however due to COVID initial was focus on product and technology development, from late 2020 we initiated pilots and testing of technology on use cases. 

At NatureDots we are committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, LGBTQ, nationality, and individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and differently-abled persons. At NatureDots we ensure that every voice is being heard and deliberated, open to a viewpoint and ensure that we address any bias in hiring or in working. We successfully achieved diversity and inclusiveness, further, we  incorporate behavioural and structural approach for team association & participation.

35% women in Super-team, Women in leadership and key decision making position, Women in advisory committee. Diversity in terms of regional, we 20 team members represent totally different 20 diversities from India to Italy to US, from minorty representation to indigenous community members  

AquaNurch, is a B2B and B2G location agnostic product-service hybrid offering ‘DigitalTwin-as-a-service (DiTaaS) with features of Pay-as-you-go model’ for our B2B and B2G customer segments.

Primary buyer of AquaNurch systems are freshwater fish-farmers ranging from small-scale fish-farmers (less than 1ha) to commercial fish-farmers ( more than 1ha) to larger scale commercial farmers (more than 10 Ha). AquaNurch is bought by water monitoring agencies including water utilities Pune Municipal Corporation, India, and by conservation and restoration agencies in Monitoring, reporting and verification purposes of restoration work.

AquaNurch, is a B2B and B2G location agnostic product-service hybrid: Where B2B -  targeted customer, including fish-farmers, fish-farmer producer organizations/cooperatives with open- pond size min.1ha and closed-system (hatcheries, nursery, and grow- out systems), focussing commercial and small scale (as cluster) aquaculture. For B2G segment, municipal corporations, water commissions and pollution control board, impact and philanthropies focusing on water health monitoring, aquatic biodiversity and restoration.

NatureDots is adopting integrated approach mix of project financing, customer revenue and investment, to enable working capital, cash in hand and growth capital. We have raised non-dilutive capital of $350,000 which has enabled us to successfully delivered solution and initiated revenue generation. 

From 2021-22 to 2022-23 our revenue increased by 1400% with increase partnerships, strategic MOUs and LoAs across geographic creating a pipeline to scale-up.

We have well detailed plan to address all three aspect of: Project Financing and Grant for product development and pilots/implementation/diversification, Revenue for operations, and Seed Capital for growth. In 3 year’s time we will be capturing our beachhead market generating $10 million revenue from 3rd year. Towards our Dream of De-risking 15 million freshwater fish-farmers and 10 million Hectare of water bodies from ecological and climate risks using natural sciences & AI in 10 years.