PH social commerce startup SariSuki scores $10.7m in funding

SariSuki, a fast growing social commerce startup based in the Philippines is expanding into quick commerce with a vision to build an end-to-end eGrocery platform in the country.

With the launch of this new service, SariSuki is now able to create greater value for producers at source as well as hyper-convenience for consumers. This expansion follows significant fundraising that counts Openspace, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Global Founders Capital (GFC), Saison Capital, JG Digital Equity Ventures, and Foxmont Capital Partners amongst those who participated.

The latest US$7.1M round took total funding for the company to US$10.7M in 2021.

SariSuki is now entering quick commerce on the back of 36x growth in the past 9 months. The business has served >60,000 consumers and grown the team to over 100 employees. Importantly, SariSuki has the unique advantage of having built a strong and robust supply chain at speed, which will serve a network of dark stores for its quick commerce service.

The startup’s quick commerce app commits to delivering high-quality produce in under 15 minutes within its coverage areas.

“We are a set of founders that grew up in the Philippines and have an understanding of our market. This, combined with our background in scaling up large tech companies in the region, made us realize that we can do more with the supply chain infrastructure we have built. Quick commerce is a way for us to expand into serving the segment of our market that seeks hyper-convenience for a hyper-local product mix for their daily needs” said Brian Cu, Co-Founder of SariSuki.

Cu was a co-founder of Zalora Philippines and Grab Philippines, where he assumed the role of Country Head and drove the super-app’s exponential growth over the past 7 years.

Global and regional investors have taken notice of the size and potential of the e-commerce retail market as well as the social impact the company can have through its unique model. The Philippines’ e-commerce market size is estimated to reach USD$15 billion by 2025 (Statista) but despite this huge market size, the adoption of e-commerce into the grocery sector remains low, with only 3% of businesses operating online.

With the pandemic further exposing this issue, SariSuki started in 2021 with a mission to empower communities with more options to shop for high quality groceries online – which it achieves by buying fresh produce in bulk from local farmers and offering them to the local community at a discounted price.