Rymax Joehana is the Co-founder and COO of Pitik. They recently raised a $14M Series A led by Alpha JWC to build end-to-end tech solutions for chicken farmers to optimize their farms and earn more.

👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

Pitik helps poultry farmers in Indonesia improve their income by equipping their farms with IoT technologies to improve their yield and provide fair access to farm inputs and markets.

🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

Yes, our business model brings tangible social impact to smallholder farmers across Indonesia. No, we are not a non-profit startup. And yes, we can be both profit-oriented and impact-oriented at the same time.

Unfortunately, agritech is still not perceived as sexy as other tech sectors in Southeast Asia. A lot of people dismiss agritech as just another non-profit sector with little room for growth. In contrast, others are not aware of the potential for tech to disrupt this industry. Hopefully, we can be one of the players who can demonstrate that we can digitize the industry, create impact, AND generate attractive returns for investors at the same time.

Fun fact: did you know that there are 3x more chickens in the world than humans?

🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

I'm not someone who looks back at the past often, but the journey with Pitik definitely has been the most like a roller-coaster and yet the most rewarding at the same time.

We started with four employees and zero farms in June 2021, and 1 year later, we're a strong family of 100+ people working together with hundreds of farmers across Indonesia.

🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?

I used to work in the mining and energy industry for five years. Back then, we struggled to find alternative solutions for cleaner and more sustainable solutions in our operations, so it is exciting to see so many climate-tech companies popping out recently.

💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

As founders of an early-stage startup, you typically don't have many resources or time to solve every problem in your business. So, it's best to be laser-focused on what problems you want to solve now and learn to live with the other problems temporarily.

🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

Obviously, I can talk about chickens for hours. By now, I can probably talk about the quality of the chicken I just ate from the meat toughness, skin texture, where we bought them, etc.

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

I am a huge sci-fi/fantasy nerd, so things like The Witcher, Star Wars (both the movies and related TV shows), etc.

🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?

A bit boring, but give me a double scoop of dark chocolate ice cream, and I'll be happy.