ARIA, a one-stop solution for Indonesia’s agriculture service, secured US$ 5 million of seed funding led by East Ventures

ARIA, a one-stop solution for Indonesia’s agriculture service, has secured US$ 5 million of seed funding led by East Ventures, who joined the pre-seed round in March 2022. This round of funding was also joined by Triputra Group, Michael Sampoerna, Arkana Ventures, GK-Plug & Play, and other strategic investors. 

“We are glad to receive this new fund, following the previous round earlier this year. This investment serves as a strong testament to our strong belief in empowering the agriculture sector through the usage of digital solutions. We believe that our solutions will unlock the biggest potential of agriculture in Indonesia and create more positive impacts to the country’s overall growth,” said William Sjaichudin, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of ARIA.

ARIA is an agritech firm with the purpose of increasing efficiency, productivity, and crop output via drones and IoT solutions, as well as providing preventive and predictive agricultural solutions for large-scale farmers and plantations. ARIA manifests this commitment and trust through the funding to keep developing and expanding the network infrastructure and quickly establish distribution points in 17 branches throughout the country to tackle ARIA’s potential agricultural farmland in Indonesia. This expansion will be accompanied by purchasing an expanded drone fleet, developing key IoT asset tracking technologies, and bringing value and impactful change to ARIA customers. 

Along with this funding, ARIA also launched its first application, ARIA TANI, as a one-stop B2C solution for integrated agriculture services. It also expanded IoT technology and connectivity to increase agricultural productivity in Indonesia in large-scale plantations. The application offers the solutions of drones as a service and other products such as fertilizer, chemicals, and other farming tools. ARIA TANI allows farmers to obtain drone service and farm products on time and in exact amounts through one integrated app.

Founded by William Sjaichudin (Co-Founder and CEO), Arden Lim (Co-Founder and CPO), and Yosa Rosario (Co-Founder and COO) in October 2021, these co-founders realized that one of the biggest problems that in Indonesia’s agriculture sector is the alarming rate of decreasing farmers. It has resulted in difficulties obtaining manpower for such activities as spraying and harvesting. Therefore, it has resulted in a reduced quality of crops and higher chances of a failed harvest which results in more losses to the farmer. 

ARIA is also developing the IoT by creating worker tracker and drone sprayer technology. This system primarily focuses on increasing the visibility and network connectivity in harsh field conditions of large-scale agriculture farming. The combination of worker tracker innovation and drone sprayer could increase working efficiency, especially in time and farm resources in spraying, fertilizing, and harvesting time. 

“With the development of IoT systems in the agricultural field, ARIA created a solution to increase the visibility in harsh field conditions with worker trackers that ensure working time efficiency, and drone sprayer technology that provides mechanic fertilizing service. As a result, farmers received accurate data analysis from their field and the exact amount of fertilizer in the covered area, as well as increased efficiency of fertilizer usage in the field,” said Arden Lim, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of ARIA.

”In 2022, we have a collaboration with the ARIA team to support precision forestry projects in the Jambi region. The ARIA team quickly adapted and achieved > 95% quantitative achievement in 3 months, which is proof of the performance of vendors who prioritize customer satisfaction. We hope that the ARIA team’s achievements can be further increased by project collaborations that are currently happening or on the projects yet to come,” said Umar Hadi Sucipto, Remote Sensing Coordinator of Sinar Mas Forestry.

ARIA will allocate the funding to continue helping the farmers to build a mechanized agricultural system within drone culture with specific targets for Indonesian farmers, ensuring the right development of product design, IoT development, and drone systems for better agriculture progress in Indonesia.

“We are excited to double down our investment in ARIA. We have experienced positive progress made by ARIA in providing better-digitalized solutions for the farmers in Indonesia. With the big potential of agriculture in Indonesia, we believe ARIA will serve as the right solution in integrating the digital and agriculture solution to empower more farmers in Indonesia,” said Melisa Irene, Partner of East Ventures.

Within months of concentrated deployment, Aria has secured exclusive drone spraying rights in the country for Bayer Agrochemicals, cementing trust from consistent quality and dedication to service leveraged and supported by ARIA’s 17 service branches across the country. ARIA has also secured a Forestry mapping contract with APP for 300,000 Hectares of QC Weeding, achieving best-in-class results amongst its peers and cementing excellence with 97% image quality and acceptance, setting a new standard for the task at hand.