Mirova Invests in JALA, an Indonesian Start-Up Offering Solutions to Make the Shrimp Aquaculture Industry More Sustainable

• Funding will help JALA further contribute to ecological sustainability of Indonesia’s vital shrimp industry
• Co-founded by CEO Liris Maduningtyas, the platforms support more than 6,700 farms across Southeast Asia

JALA Tech PTE (JALA), the Indonesia-based start-up which uses proprietary hardware and data platforms to transform the shrimp aquaculture business into a more sustainable industry, has raised US$6 million in new investments from the Meloy Fund, a US-based fund focused on benefiting coastal ecosystems and managed by Deliberate Capital and Real Tech Fund, Japan’s leading deep-tech focused venture capital fund, and Mirova, Natixis Investment Managers’ affiliate dedicated to sustainable investing.

The company’s current investors include HATCH, based in Norway, Singapore and Hawaii and 500 Global operating in the US and Asia.

JALA develops and provides hardware and software that accurately measure the water quality of shrimp ponds and a platform to visualise and manage the acquired technical and financial data, allowing aquaculture producers to monitor pond conditions and make optimal farm management decisions. The platform is equipped with functions such as shrimp growth information, harvest prediction, financial management and disease alerts. The recommendations provided are generated through an artificial intelligence model developed by JALA.

JALA also operates a marketplace that directly connects shrimp farmers and processing companies which allow the farmers to become more competitive in the supply chain. Another advantage of the marketplace is that it allows for product traceability, which is becoming increasingly important for today’s consumers – from individuals to large retail and wholesale groups.

JALA supports the optimisation of aquaculture pond operations throughout the whole of Southeast Asia. As of 2021, the platform is being used by more than 6,700 farms, achieving improvements in productivity and feed conversion ratios, and facilitating the monthly trade of 200 tons of shrimp¹.

Indonesia is one of the top 5 shrimp producers in the world with China, Ecuador, India and Vietnam. As of today, many issues related to shrimp aquaculture remain unresolved such as pollution caused by the release of farm effluents in rivers and the ocean, disease outbreaks and mortality, inefficient value chains, low value addition for the farmers and limited product traceability. transparency. JALA aims at contributing to solving some of these issues to make the shrimp value chain a more sustainable, transparent, efficient and fair.

In the future, JALA plans to develop or collaborate on auto-feeders, oxygenators, and environmentally friendly recirculating aquaculture systems. The Company will also explore how their ecosystem can contribute to the dissemination of sustainable certification standards for shrimp aquaculture.

Liris Maduningtyas, Co-founder and CEO JALA said: “We are delighted to receive this new funding, which will be instrumental in helping us achieve our goals of developing new ways to improve the industry and its impact on our society.”

The funding was made by a fund advised by Mirova Natural Capital, an affiliate of Mirova.

Commenting on the new investment, Lisa Hubert, Investment Manager at Mirova: “We are pleased to announce this important investment to contribute to make more sustainable an industry which plays such a significant role in South East Asia. Poor practices have been common in this area and with this investment in JALA we are backing a business which can make a quantifiable difference to the farmers, the value chain players and the end consumer.”

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