Aruna

Market position

Aruna describes itself, and is described in investor and press coverage, as Indonesia's largest integrated fisheries commerce platform and a leading fishery and marine platform in the country, and says it was the first Indonesian startup focused on connecting local fishermen to wider markets with technology. Its January 2022 raise was characterised by the company as the largest Series A funding for an Indonesian startup. Investors state that demand on its platform exceeds current supply by more than five times.

Aruna's stated differentiators are the removal of the multi-tier middlemen chain that delays or withholds payment to fishers, transparent and fair-trade pricing, traceability of products back to the individual fisherman and catch location, real-time seasonality data allowing supply to be shifted between islands to keep buyers steadily stocked, and a physical hub and partner network operating under common cold-chain and quality standards.

Technology

Aruna operates upstream, midstream and downstream technology. Upstream: Aruna Heroes, through which Aruna Fisher Community members sell their catch to the company, and the Aruna Fishers App, a fisher profiling application with a bonus management system. Midstream: an enterprise resource planning dashboard powered by big data that manages transaction data, fish production and commodity movement. Downstream: Seafood by Aruna, a website for retail and wholesale buyers. The company also uses data mapping of real-time seafood seasonality across Indonesia, traceability to fisherman and catch location, technology to trace and detect fish populations, and Google Cloud for its data and computing needs.

Go-to-market

Aruna recruits fishermen into community networks supported by field hubs and partner warehouses and vessels, and offers members price information, access to fishing gear, capital, insurance and training. On the demand side it sells to enterprise-scale buyers, B2B wholesalers and B2C platforms, and reaches individual consumers domestically through the Seafood by Aruna storefront launched in 2020. It also invites vessel and warehouse owners and other partners to join its ecosystem.

Domestic and international seafood buyers — individual consumers, B2B wholesalers, enterprise-scale buyers and B2C platforms — alongside the supply-side participants it serves: small-scale fishermen, coastal women's groups, and owners of vessels and warehouses.

Geography

Headquartered in Indonesia with an office in Jakarta and its first hub in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, Aruna operates hubs across the archipelago — 177 locations reported in 2022, spanning from Sumatra to Papua and covering 27 provinces, about 70% of the country, as of early 2022. Its own site cites 31 countries served; exports have been reported to eight countries across North America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and China, with the United States and China as the largest destinations.

History

Founded in 2016 by three co-founders from coastal backgrounds with technology training, Aruna opened its first Aruna Hub in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, in 2017, established a Jakarta office, made its first direct sales in three cities, completed its first export and received its first funding. In 2018 it expanded across Indonesia's major islands and began working with coastal women, winning a gold medal at the ASEAN ICT Awards. By 2019 it had 5,301 registered fishermen, more than 100 coastal women and eight export destinations, and was named the ASEAN region's Most Social Impact Startup by NUS and Alipay. In 2020, despite the pandemic, revenue rose 86-fold, the company raised USD 5.5 million and launched Seafood by Aruna for the domestic market. In 2021 it worked with more than 26,000 fishermen across 27 provinces, and in January 2022 it closed a USD 30 million Series A follow-on that brought total Series A funding to USD 65 million. By 2022 the network covered more than 40,000 fishers in 177 locations.

Risks & controversies

Reported operational constraints include inadequate infrastructure in fishing villages, with many lacking reliable electricity and internet connectivity, and a supply base that has not kept pace with buyer demand, which investors said exceeded platform supply by more than fivefold in early 2022. Sourcing depends on small-scale fisheries in a sector where coastal poverty rates were reported by the World Bank at 1.3 times those of non-coastal villages in 2018.