Oxygen is one of the most important components that makes life on Earth viable. A little less of it in the atmosphere and we wouldn’t be alive, a little more of it and... well, we won’t survive that either. This applies to all creatures of both land and sea — as above, so below. Eruvaka Technologies wants to monitor the oxygen levels below, below the surface of water that is, for aqua farmers who raise shrimp for their livelihood.
Detection of the levels of dissolved oxygen is one of the major problems of shrimp farmers. Upon noticing this in a pond near Guntur, Sreeram Raavi spoke to a few aqua farmers, who expressed interest in such an idea, and then developed Eruvaka’s floating buoys and an app to go with it. And who is Raavi? Hailing from Pedanandipadu, a village 50 kms from Vijayawada, founded Eruvaka Technologies in October 2012. He combined his knowledge of technology and electronics, which he gained while he was working for six years with Centillium Communications designing semiconductor solutions for broadband access networks, with his passion for agriculture and voila, the Eruvaka floating buoy, was ready to be deployed.
While the equipment’s circular body, made of plastic and steel with electronics inside, remains in the water at all times, the app serves as a platform which informs aqua farmers about the dissolved oxygen levels on a regular basis. “While we have manual measures that help do the same, our devices monitor the levels every second,” says the 33-year-old entrepreneur. As it is constantly submerged, it requires servicing once every six months. It comes with a guarantee period of a year, though it can function up to four years as well. The equipment is also programmed with algorithms to control the aerators when needed. All this took two to three years of research which also involved educating the aqua farmers about using the equipment, which is dust and waterproof. There are smaller versions of the buoy available as well.
When it comes to the app, it’s as user-friendly as they come. “Mobile penetration was not a problem anyway, and the app is simple and gives out information in digits rather than texts,” explains Raavi. Farmers can monitor pond data from anywhere in real-time and when the oxygen levels drop, voice alerts are sent to farmers. No wonder certain international clients approached them and now, the equipment has been deployed in the waters of South America, Africa, South East Asia, apart from Andhra and Gujarat in India. The only customisation they did for their overseas clients was the change of language for the app.
Sreeram Raavi, founder, Eruvaka Technologies
There are more than 1,500 devices floating on various water bodies as of now. So, understandably, the equipment is made at their 10,000 square feet manufacturing facility in Vijayawada and about 30 people are employed in manufacturing and operations of the device. Raavi’s present aim is to reduce human interaction as much as possible with the deployed devices. “For example, servicing. Not everyone might do it in the right way which could lead to malfunction of the equipment. We want to avoid that,” he explains, adding that this is one of their pain points as well.
As orders from across the globe are pouring in, Raavi wants to put the enormous amount of data generated from the devices to good use. “We want to put the data analytics to work and help farmers with more insights and preventive models for their forthcoming problems,” says the alumnus of KL University, Guntur. He feels that there is a lot of scope in this sector and because they have a headstart, they, “want to become the world leader iaquaculturere devices,” he concludes.
For more, click on eruvaka.com
