Don’t Sell a Solution, Understand the Problem: On Using Technology to Aid Micro Entrepreneurs according to Ibba Bernardo, Bing Tan, and Hubert Yap of Packworks

By providing business solutions for sari-sari store owners, Packworks created a platform that is empowering Filipino micro entrepreneurs all over the country.

Packworks is on a mission. The tech startup, founded in 2019, has been celebrated in startup competitions and the media alike for their platform which empowers micro entrepreneurs–in Packworks’ case, sari-sari store owners specifically–all over the Philippines. Speaking to the company’s co-founders, Bing Tan, Hubert Yap and Ibba Bernardo, it quickly becomes clear that Packworks is not about the disruptive business idea behind it. It’s not about the robust tech that powers it, their vision for the most remote parts of the country, nor their route to financing either. Time and again, the co-founders return to one thing: the sari-sari store owners. And it is this mission to serve the “nanays [mothers]” who run these micro businesses that drives everything they do.