GrowSari: Digitizing corner stores in the Philippines

By Shiv Choudhury

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Biography

Shiv Choudhury is the co-founder of GrowSari, a startup helping Filipino “sari-sari” stores (independent corner stores) with fulfillment, digital tools, financing and more. 

GrowSari works with over 100,000 stores in more than 400 Filipino municipalities. 

In 2022, GrowSari raised a $77.5M Series C. 

You have unique experience in the retail sector. What problems did you encounter and wanted GrowSari to solve?

I’ve observed the retail space through three lenses: my family business, a  fast-moving-consumer-good (FMCG) multinational (P&G) and a consulting firm (BCG). 

The insights my partners and I have triangulated boil down to a simple fact: the sari-sari owners’ supreme importance to the community. A FMCG company can spend millions on marketing, but nothing replaces the store owner’s recommendation. 

Winning at this game thus requires serving as many sari-sari owners as possible and building a close relationship with them. That has been hard to do because sari-sari stores are dispersed, lack working capital and aren’t digitized… This is the market GrowSari taps into. 

Another insight is that while these stores look the same, they are actually segmented. There are large stores FMCG companies serve and small ones they don’t, because order sizes are minuscule. GrowSari is focused on these small stores. The difficulty is crafting an efficient, economically sensible supply chain serving these small stores. 

This segmentation discouraged us from building a marketplace. There is little value in connecting these small stores to suppliers. There’s a reason FMCG companies don’t bother with them in the first place. Instead, we help these stores order what they need and we deliver them fast. The value resides in the delivery efficiency. 

Doesn’t the rise of e-commerce and supermarket chains threaten these stores?