AI, IoT can boost shrimp farm returns by over 80%, finds Icrier paper

An Icrier study finds that AIoT adoption can raise net returns from ₹5.63 lakh to ₹10.40 lakh per acre in shrimp farming, while cutting feed use, labour costs and energy consumption

A new paper has found that using cutting-edge technological interventions such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (AIoT) in shrimp farms can lead to an almost 30 per cent drop in the feed conversion ratio (FCR), a measure of feed efficiency, along with improvements in income, productivity, labour efficiency, and energy management.  

The paper was based on a pilot conducted by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (Icrier). The paper is written by eminent agriculture economist and Icrier distinguished professor Ashok Gulati along with fellow Raya Das and research associate Tanay Suntwal. 

Feed conversion ratio shows how efficiently livestock converts animal feed into desired output such as milk, meat or eggs.

 

However, the paper also highlighted challenges related to cost of IoT set up which are usually beyond what a farmer can afford, and advocated for a National AIoT Mission to help in pivoting India’s shrimp farming industry from output expansion to efficiency-led value chains.  

The estimated annual net returns increased from ₹5.63 lakh per acre under conventional shrimp farming to ₹10.40 lakh per acre in farms with AIoT integration (a rise of over 80 per cent), the study found. (see chart) 

 

The pilot was conducted in a one-acre shrimp farm in Karamsana Village of Haryana’s Sirsa district from March 2026 to October 2026 (the shrimps were harvested this month). 

The three AIoT instruments used in the pilot farm comprised a PowerMon, an automatic feeder and an aerator starter. All three were provided by Aqua Exchange, a Vijayawada-founded manufacturer of IoT devices. 

The PowerMon, an automated monitor and aerator system moderates power consumption, and sends phone alerts, with a combined cost of over ₹29,000 per cycle.  

 “The PowerMon, fitted to the farm’s power control board, corrects power factor to cut electricity use, can manage aeration for a whole farm from one unit, and alerts the farmer to power fluctuations; it rents for ₹5,085 per cycle. The automatic feeder serves one pond, spreading feed evenly and logging daily reports through a mobile app. The use of AIoT devices reduces labour cost by up to 50 per cent and improves FCR by a similar margin. It costs around ₹12,712 per cycle,” according to the study.

“An aerator starter runs aerators automatically or remotely, protects motors from power fluctuations, and sends phone alerts, with one unit managing four to six operators; unlike the other two, it costs around ₹16,949,” it added. 

The pilots point towards one thing: that AIoT works on an Indian pond. 

“The Karamsana pond used nearly half the feed an average pond would need for the same shrimp, and in the Aqua Exchange sample about 83 per cent of crops succeeded against roughly 67 per cent without the technology. What a single farm cannot do is fix the things around it,” the report said.  

A first-generation farmer in Sirsa still faces a basic IoT set-up costing around ₹1 lakh per pond, a lease no bank accepts as collateral, and buyers who want traceability records a logbook cannot supply. 

“These are problems of price, trust and paperwork, and public policy is well placed to solve them,” the report said. However, translating these gains into cluster-wide adoption requires institutional and financial innovations beyond technology deployment.

The paper proposes a time-bound National AIoT Mission, positioning Sirsa as a demonstration cluster for scaling 

AIoT adoption through a competitive, platform neutral framework. 

“Such an approach can improve farmer incomes, strengthen supply-chain reliability and facilitate India’s integration into high-value global seafood markets by leveraging opportunities under the India-UK and India-EU free trade agreements (FTAs), alongside evolving international traceability and sustainability standards,” the paper said. 

Around 90 per cent of India’s aquaculture farmers work 3-5 acre holdings, yet most IoT packages were priced and designed for a very different scale. 

One industry estimate puts a basic deployment at roughly ₹1 lakh per pond, which is beyond what a smallholder converting from wheat or cotton can spend in year one.  

“Many vendors also sell the device and stop there, without teaching farmers what to do with the readings, a gap that shows up later as low renewal rates rather than outright refusal,” the paper said. 

As the world’s second-largest shrimp exporter after Ecuador, India recorded seafood exports of $8.46 billion in 2025-26, of which frozen shrimp contributed $5.6 billion (66.2 per cent), according to  However, to sustain this export competitiveness India requires to transition its shrimp farming from a production-led expansion towards efficiency-driven, sustainable and traceable aquaculture value chains, the paper advocated.