PACKWORKS TRANSFORMS 200K SARI-SARI STORES INTO SARIPRENEURS
BERNARDO SAID THE APP ALSO AIMS TO REDUCE THE INTEREST COST AND HANDLE MONEY THROUGH ACCESS TO E-PAYMENT.
Brick-and-mortar retail stores are heavily impacted by the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing this segment to work harder than ever to compete against each other.
Startup company Packworks offers retail stores its business-to-business technology platform to create an immersive experience and transformed more than 200,000 retail stores (sari-sari stores) into Sari-preneurs companions.
Established in 2018, Packworks, through its The Pack: SuperStore App, store owners can process their business' inventory, bookkeeping, and data collection, and can avail of financial services and order supplies for a lower price without the hassle of coordinating and purchasing new stocks.
According to Ibba Bernardo, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Packworks, the app is easy to use with low bandwidth and a light footprint that will allow the users to process their businesses more efficiently to address the high cost of poverty, where store owners pay the highest interest rates and pay more for consumer goods.
Bernardo said the app also aims to reduce the interest cost and handle money through access to e-payments.
Starting as a motorcycle journey in bringing solar panels to isolated communities, founders Hubert Yap, Bing Tan, and Bernardo came up with the idea of helping micro-entrepreneurs by bringing scalable and accessible technology to them.
Witnessing firsthand the challenges brought by limited access to sari-sari store owners, especially in far-flung places, they promised to share their technical know-how and inspire them to shift from analog processes to using technology.
"We observed that these stores have a hard time tracking their inventories and getting supplies for their stores, especially the ones in the provinces. That's when the idea of making a one-stop app for everything pops out," Tan said.
Packworks started as a solution for multinational companies in the Philippines to connect with neighborhood stores in 2018.
By 2019, the Packworks rolled out nationwide with only 220 stores with a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $400,000.
After a year, it gathered 27,828 stores with a GMV of $30 million, and it reached 130,000 stores with a GMV of $139 million in 2021.
"We believe the idea will help millions more families that solely depend on their sari-sari store profits to meet ends every day," Tan added.
$2M seed funding
Last Wednesday, Packworkshas formally launched its mobile enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform for sari-sari store owners following a successful $2 million (P112 million) seed round.
Former Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez, a known advocate of Filipino startups, graced the said event airing his best hopes for Packworks.
Meanwhile, the seed round was led by leading end-to-end logistics group Fast Group and global private equity firm CVC Capital Partners, with participation from ADB Ventures, Arise, Techstars and IdeaSpace Foundation.
"At Fast, we constantly search for ways to improve our country's supply chain. The over 1 million sari-sari stores in the Philippines are a critical component of this chain. We believe an immense opportunity exists to build a digital layer to connect these stores with customers and suppliers.
"Layering Packworks' digital fabric to this network and leveraging its emerging data has exciting prospects for creating supply chain efficiencies, especially when combined with the experience and national scale of Fast," Brice Cu, senior managing director and country head of Philippines for CVC Capital Partners and Board Member of Fast Group said.
Packworks will use the fund to develop The Pack: SuperStore App, increase the breadth of offerings, and improve its user journey. It also plans to build a department that directly engages the sari-sari stores, provides additional services with partners, and makes an open platform for financial institutions and brands to connect directly with store owners.
"We bootstrapped our way to helping 150,000
sari-sari stores. We're helping communities all over the Philippines to grow and become more resilient. Imagine how many more we can help with all these awesome partners. Our vision is now global," according to Bernardo.
On the other hand, Tan said they had raised funds to help us expand our talent pool and boost its bandwidth to provide more to these store owners, as they believe their product offers an excellent upside.
Founded in 2018 with initial five sari-sari
store partners, Packworks worked on its way to having 500,000 networks nationwide by the end of 2023.
Packworks also aims to become a platform for other institutions that would like to help the base of the pyramid by addressing the sari-sari
store challenge by enabling the value chain and empowering all the involved parties within the
sari-sari ecosystem.
"We think of ourselves as the railway or expressway infrastructure and not as the gas station or fast food shop operator. We expand partnerships to provide these services to our stores, such as inventory financing, e-payments, and micro-insurance," Bernardo stated.