Packworks

Packworks is a Philippine retail-technology company founded in 2018 by Bing Tan, Hubert Yap, and Ibba Bernardo, who built the business after road trips and conversations with sari-sari (neighborhood convenience store) owners around the country. The company builds a mobile ERP-style platform that helps sari-sari store owners manage inventory, bookkeeping, and purchasing, while giving consumer brands data and advertising tools to reach that retail network.

Packworks operates in a similar space to GrowSari but is a separate, independently founded company with its own leadership team and funding history; it raised a reported $2 million round (per Philippine Daily Inquirer coverage) to expand its inventory-tracking and bookkeeping tools, and was profiled by TechCrunch in 2022 for making back-office operations easier for sari-sari retailers.

As of the mid-2020s, Packworks remains active, reporting a network of more than 300,000 sari-sari store owners and continuing to publish data on sari-sari sector growth, including regional retail trend coverage picked up by BusinessMirror and reporting on AI-driven sales gains for partner stores.

The Philippines' millions of small sari-sari stores traditionally ran on paper-based inventory and bookkeeping, making it hard for owners to track stock or manage cash flow, and hard for consumer brands to get sales data or reach these stores with targeted promotions.

Filipino sari-sari (neighborhood convenience) store owners, plus consumer packaged goods brands seeking retail data and in-store advertising reach into that network.

Built specifically around the operational needs of small and large sari-sari retailers with a mobile ERP-style app for inventory, bookkeeping, and purchasing, rather than a pure e-commerce or fintech play, and layers a data/advertising product for brands on top of that retail network.