Qarabao will do the heavy lifting for MSMEs
Millennial-led startup called Qarabao launches first monthly subscription at ₱490 for optimizing inventory, invoicing, payment, shipping services for micro businesses. More innovations to be released within 2019.
Manila, Philippines, July 2, 2019 — There are 1.39M registered Filipino businesses in the Philippines and 99.6% are Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises. Many proprietors struggle to keep their businesses alive and have even more trouble scaling it up efficiently and effectively. Whether they have disorganized inventory systems, inefficient processing methods and simply don’t have enough time in their workday to take care of orders, many small business owners believe that only large enterprises can afford to have digital and productivity tools that would help their businesses thrive. Recognizing that all these needs have to be addressed, 3 young marketing, technology, and product experts banded together to create Qarabao (www.qarabao.com), a web application that would help do the heavy lifting for small businesses, with the mobile app version coming soon.
After many months of talking to Filipino business owners from different industries about their concerns and needs, the Qarabao founders and their specialized team of programmers, customer service managers, content creators, UI/UX designers, developed an online ecosystem to uncomplicate the lives of these entrepreneurs by optimizing key business processes in three easy steps: Presenting accurate and organized inventory 24/7; Helping create and track orders and manage customer details; and Providing the setup for streamlined systems for ordering and receiving payments.
“We found that many Filipinos are intimidated by the idea of even starting a business. We want to change this and empower every Filipino to follow their business dreams. We built Qarabao so that more Filipino entrepreneurs would have access to innovative tools that would help build their businesses which in turn would be a boon to our country’s economy,” said Mike Tiongson, CEO of Qarabao.
Qarabao currently supports multiple payment channels: credit or debit card, online payments, bank deposit or transfer, over-the-counter payments — through partners such as PayPal, PayMaya, and Coins.ph and with cash on delivery soon to follow. Fully integrated shipping options will soon include Lalamove, Shippo, Fleet.ph. Further down the line, Zoom Courier, Xpost will also be integrated onto the platform.
After a little more than a year in development which included 3 months of beta testing and detailed customer feedback, Qarabao officially launched last June 27, with the founders secure in their goal of being able to simplify the processes that come with managing businesses everyday. Roy Nepumuceno, CTO says “It was important that we built a system that would be easy for Filipinos with no tech background to learn to use and trust. From the get-go, we aimed to challenge the idea that learning to optimize your business would include a steep learning curve — so when you experience Qarabao, you’ll see that it’s tidy, timely, and convenient for the business owners to use and so reliable that their customers will keep coming back.”
Qarabao is launching its Standard Plan for ₱490/month which includes Inventory Tracking, Order Management, Multiple Payment Channels, Shipping Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Reports and Analytics. Cookie Enriquez, Product Manager shares that “It only costs ₱16 a day to use Qarabao. We also have Zero Transaction fees, which means that we do not take from the sales earnings of the business owner.” She adds, “In the coming months, we will release new plans that include Campaign Management, eCommerce Chatbot and Website services. Many customers have been asking for a Point of Sale (POS) system, so that’s in Qarabao’s development pipeline as well.”