Snapcart finds home in PH

Snapcart cofounder Mayeth Condicion —JOHN PAUL AUTOR

A mobile-first nation with a penchant for good shopping deals—it’s a winning formula for the company behind Snapcart, the grocery “cashback” app which found its second home here in the Philippines almost a year ago and has since been performing “so much better than what [was] expected.”

“Since we launched almost seven months ago, we’ve had about 50,000 downloads and around 20,000 active users, which is around half of where we want to be,” says Snapcart co-founder Mayeth Condicion.

Snapcart users—millennials, mostly, says Condicion—get a rebate of around P15-P30 for every P1,000 worth of groceries by simply taking a photo of their receipt using the app. In the beginning, one had to buy particular products to get rebates, but Condicion says they have since scrapped that requirement to simplify the use of the app.

“So just snap any grocery or pharmacy receipt, and you get back [an amount] that’s good enough for [cellphone] load, using something that you usually just throw away,” she says.

“Initially, [the lack of internet access] was a problem, but we created a way for [consumers] to store the pictures first so they can upload when they have a connection,” Condicion adds. “So it’s not a problem anymore. Of course, it’s always a little easier in places like Manila where Wi-Fi is everywhere as compared to Visayas and Mindanao, so that’s still something that we’re working on.”

Snapcart was launched in 2015 in Indonesia by Condicion and her cofounders Reynazran Royono and Laith Abu Rakty primarily to address what they saw as a gap between consumer data available in brick-and-mortar establishments and online technology. When they started Snapcart, all three founders brought with them their extensive experiences in retail, fast-moving consumer goods, and online commerce,—industries where they grew their corporate careers.

It’s that side of their business—tracking consumer data based on the information on the receipts snapped—that Snapcart is raring to further grow.

Condicion says the data they’ve gathered so far have become relevant enough to huge multinationals in the consumer goods industry that many big brands here in the Philippines are now subscribing to Snapcart’s data science services—and that more are in the pipeline.

“I think it’s just because this is such a big thing, in this time of big data—[for] e-commerce to understand shoppers in a real-time manner,” says Condicion. “The whole offline commerce is still lacking so much, being in survey mode, and we’re leveraging the digitization.”

Condicion adds that the fact that most retailers here in the country do not share consumer information with brands is what gives Snapcart huge potential for further growth.

[The clients] are so excited—and I’m not exaggerating. It’s the first time that they can see the demand from shoppers, and see a much more granular view of the market and their shoppers,” she says. “So it’s just a wealth of information available to our clients.”