GrowSari (A): Design for the Last Mile Customer

Reymund (ER) Rollan and Shivapratim (Shiv) Choudhury, founders of the digital technology platform GrowSari, were at a crossroads. The feedback from their initial product roll-out were not what they had expected, and they needed to decide how to proceed. The pair, alongside co-founders Andrzej Ogonowski and Siddhartha Kongara, had started GrowSari after they had each spent significant time working at the intersection of technology and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG). They were trying to bring data and technology to inform how multinational consumer goods companies sold their products through small, informal retailers known as “sari-sari” stores in the Philippines. These stores, whose name means “variety” or “everything” in Filipino, were a typical convenience store or bodega, selling consumer products from sachets of shampoo to cans of baked beans and potato chips and soda.