From farm to tablet: Building a new business to solve an old challenge
Case study | October 2023
McKinsey partnered with one of Southeast Asia’s largest B2B and B2C retailers, CP AXTRA Public Company Limited, the operator of Makro, to create a new B2B online platform—and provide crucial supply chain resilience for small businesses amid the pandemic.
Uncovering pain points
In 2020, McKinsey and the Makro PRO team interviewed dozens of customers to understand their pain points and get a thorough sense of market complexities. They found that a fragmented market, inconsistent delivery times, a lack of transparency on pricing among sellers, and general disruption from COVID-19 posed significant challenges.
Building a minimum viable product from scratch
Makro PRO launched a pilot in April of 2021. Within three months, participating restaurants and cafes were ordering their complete weekly stock and receiving it the next day. That July, the application was launched to 50 customers with systems ready to deliver an assortment of more than 4,000 products and the ability to process payments, warehouse, logistics and fulfillment capabilities in place.
The team
Noppamas Sivakriskul
Senior Partner and Managing PartnerBangkok
Leads our digital business-building work in Southeast Asia and advises B2B and B2C companies across the continent
Simon Wintels
PartnerAmsterdam
Helps consumer-goods and retail clients capture growth through excellence in strategy, digital and advanced analytics, marketing...
Related
Case Study
Keeping companies safer by matching them with the right cybersecurity providers
-
Bosch worked with McKinsey to develop and launch CyberCompare—a cybersecurity purchasing platform to help businesses and public sector entities compare quotations and match with cybersecurity vendors and service providers.
Survey
How CEOs are turning corporate venture building into outsize growth
-
Companies are creating meaningful growth by developing new ventures. Those with the most mature capabilities are growing quickly and can show the way for companies that are just beginning.
Interview - Learn to Leap
How to find opportunity in a crisis: Launching a spin-off business
-
CEO and cofounder of Drop discusses spinning off an adjacent business under a new brand during the COVID-19 pandemic while still scaling the initial start-up.
Article
Inside the engine room: Debunking the myths of scaling a new business
-
Demystifying the narrative around five fundamental elements will help start-ups and scale-ups grow efficiently and continuously.
Creating value beyond the hype
Let’s deliver on the promise of technology from strategy to scale.