Think of it as a personal virtual supermarket

Pushkart.ph is an online grocery that intends to help Filipinos by simplifying their shopping process. Unlike other grocery platforms, Pushkart does not discriminate their customer’s location and limit them only to the items and products to the stores near to their location.

Founders Josh Aragon and Bryan Reyes were really good friends back in college. Both of them took up Manufacturing Engineering Management in DLSU. During their adulting conversations back in 2015, they realized how much time they were allotting to several chores.

“Pushkart started as an Idea back in mid 2015 from those weekly after work sessions that we were having. What started as a conversation on adulting and how much time we were already allotting to several chores like groceries, slowly turned into a brainstorming session on how we could do the same activities without sacrificing too much of our time. It did not take long for us to recognize this dilemma as a business opportunity wherein we could use technology as the main platform,” Bryan shared.

“What played a big role on us actually pursuing the idea is Josh’s close ties and years of knowledge on how to run supermarkets since Ever Supermarket is one of Josh’s family businesses. We coupled this with my deep understanding and experience with goods movement and data management and realized we already had the base of what we needed to work on the concept further and eventually build the company,” he added.

In late 2015, Josh and Bryan eventually left their respective day jobs to focus on what they saw as a promising venture.

“Things got really serious, we started meeting several people who could develop our vision from a technology perspective. Then we met Mike Lim who runs his own development firm. We got him on board the team and started to develop the website,” Josh said.

It was in September of 2016, with the website near completion and a Supermarket Partner (Fishermall & Ever Supermarket) already on board with the idea of an online grocery, Pushkart made its first delivery to Bryan’s household. In December of 2016, they launched exclusively in Quezon City and to corporate clients to deliver Christmas groceries.

In April 2017, Pushkart was formally launched in Metro Manila.

All about convenience

The online platform is user friendly. Users can download the mobile application or visit their website, http://www.pushkart.ph. Customers just need to create an account and they can already browse through the different categories. They can also schedule when they want the goods to be delivered.

In terms of pricing, “Pushkart displays all the products available in all our partner locations on a single platform, thus making products available for purchase where ever our customer is in Metro Manila. Pushkart will also provide our customers with a single price that is averaged all throughout our partner supermarkets ensuring our customers pay for the proper market value,” Bryan emphasized.

They also encourage shoppers to build lasting relationships with our clients for a more tailored service. “Not only does our goal include taking care of the grocery shopping chore. We also aim to be more personal in terms of providing each and every customer a hassle free online grocery shopping experience,” Josh added.

Rapid Growth

Since its launch in 2016, the start-up has grown in terms of users, orders and employees. To be able to cater to the 35,000 active monthly users, which incidentally, was a huge jump from its 1,000 active monthly users a year ago, Pushkart hired more shopper and riders. They also launched new services such as a subscription model wherein a user can choose a set of products to be delivered repeatedly over a certain period of time.

In addition to this, they partnered with manufacturers to provide exclusive deals on their products and from a corporate stand point, they are working closely with brands to do A/B testing on their products and gain direct market knowledge from their online customers by providing them the platform and consumer data.

Bright future

Because of their initial success in Metro Manila, they are looking to expand in other major cities in the Philippines within the year. Next year they are also looking at expanding to neighboring countries and plan to offer a wider selection of products by allowing small brands to sell their products in the online platform.

In terms of smarter shopping, Bryan elaborated, “we’re currently developing an algorithm that recognizes our customers shopping patterns and pushes relevant products that the customer might be interested in. It aims to automate and predict not only the type, brand and variant of the product, it will also predict and calculate the quantity of the product based on the customer’s usage or how much the customer orders.”

As for corporate social responsibility, Pushkart aims to give back by talking to several organizations to employ people with disabilities and get them back to becoming contributors to the Philippine economy. They are also setting aside a disaster assistance page wherein people can purchase goods to donate in calamity situations. Josh says in these cases, Pushkart will take care of the shopping and delivery to the concerned individuals and organizations.