Manila, Philippines – GrowSari, a local B2B platform in the Philippines aimed at serving sari-sari stores or local mom-and-pop stores in the country, has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement with global investment firm KKR where KKR will be investing US$45m to GrowSari to support its national expansion, as well as strengthen its financial service capabilities.
At present, GrowSari is present in 220 municipalities across the regions of Luzon and offers over a hundred types of different services including making bill payments, telco reloads, and wallet top-ups, as well as procurement services for common retail goods and pharmaceutical medicines.
According to Reymund ‘ER’ Rollan, CEO and co-founder of GrowSari, as they are accelerating their presence nationally to more municipalities and cities in the Philippines, the investments will be focused towards expanding in Visayas and Mindanao this 2022. He added that this will bring them a step closer to their mission of creating a positive socio-economic impact to the lives of more MSME owners and the communities they serve.
“In addition, we are doubling down on our capabilities to improve the overall customer experience and look to expand our ability to provide sari-sari stores access to credit and basic financial services, which is a key pain point for MSMEs who have limited access. The industry, operational and financial expertise and network of KKR will be a great complement to the passion, dedication and strong culture of excellence that GrowSari has built over the year,” Rollan said.
Meanwhile, Louis Casey, growth technology lead in Southeast Asia at KKR, added, “GrowSari is aligned with one of our core technology investment themes in Southeast Asia, which is supporting MSMEs with software and financial services. Reymund and the team at GrowSari are excellent operators who have built an impressive flywheel that is powered by a number of proprietary applications. They have also built a very efficient and repeatable go-to-market motion that is underpinning their impressive growth. We look to leverage our global experience, regional connectivity and flexible capital to help GrowSari achieve its ambitious growth objectives.”
Prior to KKR’s investment, GrowSari had raised funding from global financial and strategic investors, including Temasek-affiliated Pavilion Capital, Tencent, the International Finance Corporation, the Gongkowei family-controlled JG Summit, Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc., Wavemaker Partners, Saison Capital, and the Investment & Capital Corporation of the Philippines.