Jakarta – How Arief Supports Chicken Farmers Through Pitik Digital , Arief Witjaksono, Co-founder of PT Pitik Digital Indonesia. In recent years, we can see that digital-based startups have touched the agricultural sector. Names like EdenFarm, e-Fishery, and Delos have helped farmers in agriculture, fisheries, and shrimp ponds increase production through assistance using digital applications. Not a few of these agritech startups have recorded extraordinary growth.

The latest startup to showcase rapid growth in this space is PT Pitik Digital Indonesia. In one year, this poultry startup started by Arief Witjaksono has partnered with 400 farmers with a total of 8 million chicken population. A number that far exceeds the growth of similar players that existed earlier.

Pitik has also received funding from MDI Ventures and Wavemaker Partners as angel investors totaling US$ 500 thousand. And, most recently in July 2022, it received Series A funding worth US$ 14 million (Rp 206 billion) led by Alpha JWC Ventures.

What did Arief and his friends at Pitik do to make this achievement?

As a company that focuses on broiler chickens, Pitik offers various support to chicken farmers for all production activities. That is, starting from the provision of livestock production facilities (sapronak), production technology innovation, to more transparent and competitive purchase of crops.

“We provide what we call a full-stack service. The three main points we sell to farmers are technology, Pitik experts, and payment speed. We call breeders who work with Pitik as Kawan Pitik,” Arief said when talking to SWA at his office.

The idea came about when Arief was a chicken farmer before founding Pitik. He noticed that many farmers handled their chickens too simply, not having adequate cage infrastructure, even for a thermometer. In fact, he emphasized, cage temperature greatly affects the health of chickens.

In addition, the potential in this field is wide open considering the biggest meat market in Indonesia is chicken. According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics in 2021, the broiler population was 3.1 billion chickens, and the average consumption of chicken meat in Indonesia reached 0.14 kilograms per capita per week.

Departing from this situation, Arief recruited people with experience in animal husbandry and technology. Kawan Pitik is given what he calls Pitik Smart Technology, including a mobile application equipped with Smart Climate IoT so that it can find out real time information about temperature, humidity, ammonia levels, lighting conditions, and wind speed in the cage.

“These things are very important in raising chickens so they must be maintained in a disciplined manner. A lack of fan, or a slight change in temperature can make the chickens susceptible to illness,” says the Boston University Entrepreneurship & Finance graduate.

In the provision of inputs, Pitik has collaborated with several parties, one of which is Charoen Pokphand Indonesia. Cooperation with this global company, said Arief, shows his seriousness in providing quality feed. Because, according to him, the role of feed is very significant, which takes 60% of the total cost of chicken growth.

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The company then provides Kawan Pitik with a team of experts in livestock research and development. The team helps monitor and solve problems in the coop with regular visits, telephone services, and online discussions. “We have an SOP in taking care of chickens. Our operational team visits their cages twice a week,” Arief explained.

Currently, according to him, Pitik has 15 branch offices spread across Java Island to provide these services. In addition, each office also runs marketing to attract more farmers to join.

“We usually hold a gathering once every three months. Each branch can reach up to four surrounding districts. There is also once a month in a cluster of farmers, there is a Kawan Pitik community session whose activity is a review of the last month about the disease,” he said.

In the end, in this cooperation scheme, Pitik will buy all of Kawan Pitik’s crops at competitive prices, transparency, and a guarantee of fast payment of crops, a maximum of 10 days. It then supplies it to hotels, restaurants, cafes (horeka) and digital marketplaces.

“This is what attracts us to farmers, this is our advantage over other players, let alone middlemen. After the chickens grow up, we will buy one hundred percent offtake from the farmers. Then, we sell them to the market or process them,” Arief said.

After working with Pitik for a year, according to him, the average farmer can save FCR (Feed Conversion Ratio) by 10%-15%. “In addition, according to data, chicken mortality in Indonesia reaches 5% and above, while Kawan Pitik has 5% and below,” he said.

The farmers reached by Pitik are middle-high class broiler farmers who usually have a minimum of 20,000 chickens. On the other hand, Pitik also provides cage rental for farmers who are just starting out. Arief stated that from its establishment until now, no less than 400 farmers spread across Java Island have become Kawan Pitik.

“I see that Pitik has reached its target faster than planned. We have reached all of Java. The total population is now 8 million chickens, since July 2021. So, on average, 8 million per month is divided by 15 months. Our revenue is in the range of US$ 10 million per month,” he said.

Seeing that the initial target has been achieved, Arief et al. plan to focus on building an ecosystem in the downstream area. They will increase cooperation with chicken slaughterhouses (RPA) to process the chickens, then sell them to horeka. Currently, Pitik also has its own commercial chicken brand called Hi Chick, which is sold at TransMart.

“In the initial funding, we sold more live chicken to whole sellers. Now, with this latest funding, we are building an ecosystem for the downstream, we are starting to process this live chicken in the RPA,” he said.

In addition, another target that is being pursued is exports to Singapore. Arief said that Pitik is in the process of obtaining a permit to export to this neighboring country. He sees an opportunity from the needs of Singapore, which is looking for alternatives, besides being supplied from Malaysia.

“So, we have a cage in Batam, there is Kawan Pitik. There are 30 cages. This is what is being certified. Maybe we will be the first company to send live chickens there,” he says enthusiastically.