KKR Leads Series C Round in Philippine B2B Platform GrowSari with US$45 Million Investment

MANILA, Philippines–(Organization WIRE)–KKR, a main worldwide financial investment firm, and GrowSari (the “Company”), a B2B e-commerce system serving micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (“MSMEs”) in the Philippines, today announced the signing of definitive agreements under which KKR will make investments US$45 million to direct GrowSari’s Sequence C funding round. KKR’s financial investment in GrowSari will help the Company’s growth into more locations throughout the Philippines and strengthen its monetary services capabilities.

Founded in 2016, GrowSari is a primary tech-enabled B2B platform that helps the Philippines’ smaller actual physical retail shops, together with neighborhood retail outlets (sari-sari retailers), roadside and market place retailers (carinderia), and pharmacies, boost their service ranges and entry a wider range of goods and benefit-introducing products and services. This will allow the outlets to provide neighborhood communities with a lot more comprehensive offerings, together with digital services.

Right now, GrowSari is current in 220 municipalities throughout the locations of Luzon and delivers over a hundred varieties of distinctive products and services including earning bill payments, telco reloads, and wallet major-ups, as well as procurement expert services for frequent retail items and pharmaceutical medicines. Powerful tailwinds close to digital adoption, proximity browsing, and financial advancement in the Philippines have also contributed to a 6.5x raise in gross goods benefit for GrowSari due to the fact 2019 and a 2.5x maximize in revenue more than the exact interval. In 2021, the Singapore Venture Capital & Private Fairness Association named GrowSari as ‘Venture Funds Offer of the 12 months.’

Ashish Shastry, Co-Head of Asia Pacific Private Fairness and Head of Southeast Asia at KKR, stated, “We are happy to make investments in GrowSari, an impressive enterprise with tremendous opportunity to digitally transform the operations of Filipino MSMEs, who are vital contributors to the country’s financial system and a pillar of the business local community. We are fired up to assistance the GrowSari staff to accomplish their growth ambitions.”

Talking on the most current financial investment, Reymund ‘ER’ Rollan, CEO and Co-Founder of GrowSari, explained, “We will be accelerating our presence nationally to extra municipalities and towns in the Philippines. Our investments will be focused towards increasing in Visayas and Mindanao this 2022. This will convey us a move closer to our mission of creating a good socio-financial effect to the life of much more MSME proprietors and the communities they provide. In addition, we are doubling down on our abilities to increase the in general purchaser expertise and search to increase our means to give sari-sari stores accessibility to credit rating and essential money services, which is a critical agony issue for MSMEs who have limited entry. The market, operational and fiscal know-how and network of KKR will be a great complement to the enthusiasm, commitment and strong tradition of excellence that GrowSari has developed about the several years.”

Louis Casey, KKR’s growth technological innovation lead in Southeast Asia, added, “GrowSari is aligned with one of our main technologies expenditure themes in Southeast Asia, which is supporting MSMEs with software program and monetary companies. Reymund and the staff at GrowSari are exceptional operators who have crafted an remarkable flywheel that is driven by a amount of proprietary applications. They have also built a very effective and repeatable go-to-market place motion that is underpinning their impressive expansion. We search to leverage our global encounter, regional connectivity and adaptable capital to aid GrowSari accomplish its ambitious growth targets.”

Prior to KKR’s investment, GrowSari experienced lifted funding from world-wide money and strategic traders, which include Temasek-affiliated Pavilion Capital, Tencent, the Intercontinental Finance Company, the Gongkowei spouse and children-controlled JG Summit, Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc., Wavemaker Associates, Saison Capital, and the Financial investment & Capital Corporation of the Philippines.

The ongoing Collection C spherical is significantly oversubscribed, obtaining drawn eager curiosity from new and present buyers. The round’s closing composition is currently remaining finalized.

KKR is earning its expenditure in GrowSari from its Asia following generation technology strategy. GrowSari is KKR’s hottest investment into businesses that increase the electronic transformation of MSMEs by means of software package and money technological innovation. KKR’s world wide investments in the sector consist of KiotViet, a merchant system for MSMEs in Vietnam, Yayoi, a computer software developer, distributor, and guidance assistance company for small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”) in Japan, MYOB, a primary Australian on line business enterprise administration enterprise, NetStars, the operator of Japan’s greatest QR code payment gateway, Qonto, a main European company finance solution for freelances and SMEs in France, Cegid, just one of the premier European providers of organization application headquartered in France, and Actual Program, a company of organization and accounting software program in the Netherlands. Extra details of the transaction are not disclosed.

About KKR

KKR is a foremost world wide investment decision company that presents alternate asset management and funds marketplaces and coverage options. KKR aims to deliver desirable financial commitment returns by next a affected person and disciplined financial commitment solution, utilizing planet-course folks, and supporting development in its portfolio businesses and communities. KKR sponsors financial investment resources that devote in personal fairness, credit score and authentic assets and has strategic companions that manage hedge funds. KKR’s coverage subsidiaries provide retirement, everyday living, and reinsurance merchandise under the administration of The Global Atlantic Financial Team. References to KKR’s investments may well contain the things to do of its sponsored cash and insurance coverage subsidiaries. For further info about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), be sure to take a look at KKR’s internet site at www.kkr.com and on Twitter @KKR_Co.

About GrowSari

GrowSari begun in 2016 as an ordering platform servicing roughly sari-sari outlets in a few metropolitan areas. Nowadays, GrowSari powers the management, advancement, and analytics infrastructure across 220 municipalities and is now additional growing. In addition to supplying credit score and very affordable, on-desire inventory, GrowSari’s system also generates very important facts & insights into the operations of these suppliers for suppliers and distributors to build their methods and strategies upon. GrowSari has also built-in numerous-microservices these types of as telco load, expenses fork out, e-commerce, Wi-Fi and other eservices, allowing retailer-owners to increase their funds in just one wallet and easily expand their business enterprise.

GrowSari is accredited as a Terrific Place To Get the job done® in the Philippines. The GrowSari leadership group is composed of youthful and dynamic industry leaders who created their skills from functioning with worldwide corporations and consultancies such as P&G, Unilever, J&J, and Boston Consulting Team as very well as Uber, World Telecom, and GCash.