How a chance encounter on a train led to India’s largest aquaculture startup

Before his "serendipitous" meeting with a shrimp farmer on a train, Rajamanohar Somasundaram thought aquaculture—the rearing and harvesting of freshwater and marine life—was mostly a cottage industry. However, the chance meeting, long conversation, and eventual visit to the farmer’s home forced him to sit up and take notice of the industry’s huge and largely untapped potential.

India is the world’s third-largest fish-producing country, accounting for 8% of the world’s aquaculture production. It contributes just over a percent of India’s gross value added (GVA) and nearly 7% of the country’s agricultural GVA, according to the government’s investment promotion agency, Invest India. India is also the world’s fourth largest exporter of fish and fisheries products. For all of this, as Somasundaram learned, the space was still largely unorganised.

Somasundaram was already tinkering with the idea of doing something "impactful" in the agricultural industry, but his chance meeting with the shrimp farmer is what led him to found Aquaconnect in 2017. The company’s patent-pending satellite sensing technology, which combines artificial intelligence and what founder-CEO Somasundaram terms "field intelligence", is aimed at improving the quality of seafood products, aquaculture efficiency, providing traceability and financially benefitting all stakeholders in India’s aquaculture value chain.