Marketplace lender Investree has partnered automatic fish feeder maker eFishery to channel IDR 30bn in loans to Indonesia’s fish farmers. The funds will be available through eFishery’s financing service, eFisheryFund, and can be used to purchase eFishery’s products.
According to a press release from Investree dated October 21, this is the first time the P2P lender is collaborating with an agritech company, specifically one operating in aquaculture. “The majority of our [loan] portfolio so far has been from the creative industry,” said Investree CEO and co-founder Adrian Gunadi.
The collaboration is part of Investree’s Grow Fa5ter campaign that was launched in conjunction with its fifth anniversary this year. “Through our partnership with eFishery, we hope to empower more small and medium enterprises in the fishery and aquaculture sectors,” Gunadi said.
Investree and eFishery will provide loans in both conventional and Sharia-compliant structures. eFishery will provide data from its IoT devices and conduct field checks to verify the applicants’ creditworthiness. Investree will use the data and eFishery’s assessment to decide whether to approve a loan application.
Linking fish farmers to fintech
eFishery CEO and co-founder Gibran Huzaifah said many fish farmers find it challenging to get financing from banks and other conventional sources. “This is where eFisheryFund comes in, connecting fish farmers directly with financial institutions so they can expand their business,” he said in the press release.
Last June, Huzaifah told CompassList in an interview that many financial institutions think fish farmers do not have a definite business model, which reduces fish farmers’ avenues for loans. To bridge this information gap, services like eFisheryFund perform credit scoring using various data points gathered from its IoT devices and field checks.
To date, more than 500 fish farmers have used the eFisheryFund to finance their businesses. The cooperation with Investree is expected to help eFishery reach more users.
“We will continue to develop this collaboration so we can support up to 1,000 fish farmers by the end of 2020,” Huzaifah said. He also expressed hope that by developing inclusive technologies and helping fish farmers sell their harvest through the eFisheryFresh platform, they can help eradicate hunger in Indonesia.
Gunadi added that Investree wants to help SMEs go through these challenging times, so they can stay financially empowered during the Covid-19 pandemic and become #UKMTangguh (”tough SMEs").
"Moving forward, we will explore this collaboration deeper, so we can bring more innovations to our partners and extend help to more aquaculture SMEs."
