‘Happy Grocers’ project from Thammasat University won the first place and 50,000 -baht cash prize and trophy at the Startup Thailand League 2020.
Happy Grocers is online a zero-waste grocery store for organic products that customers can trace back to the farm. The members of the team are Suthasinee Sudprasert, and Pattamaporn Dumnui, the second-generation students in the School of Global Studies, Thammasat University.
Happy Grocers is established based on the idea that, nowadays, almost everything has evacuated to the online marketplace. People can shop from the comfort of their living room, including grocery shopping for meat, and fresh produce like pork, chicken, fruits, and vegetable. However, Happy Grocers wanted to be more than an online store they are the future of grocery shopping. They wanted to sell the products that customers know where their fruits and vegetables are coming from, how they are grown. So, they can be sure that it is safe for their health.
Besides taking care of our customer, Happy Grocers also taking it a step further, and take care of the environment. They reduce the use of unnecessary single-use plastic and use paper bags or reusable containers instead. Not to mention that they also help small farms by buying their produce.
Happy Grocers is the grocery shopping of the 21st century, offering its service in Sukhumvit, Sathorn, Aree, Bangkok with a plan to expand the service area in the future. They are currently selling fresh produce, meat, eggs, and bakery from the local farms and their peers. They are delivering in a truck full of seasonal crops from Phayao, Suphanburi, and Nakhonpathom. These are up for grab in front of your house.
Happy Grocers also educate the farmers convincing them to grow organic crops, which is not an easy task. To grow organically, the farmers need to register and pay for the certificate, and the farmers are also worried that the demand for this type of product is not high enough. That’s where the Happy Grocers comes in, working on a marketing plan, expanding the customer base, and help the farmers on the farm as well. They also create a new stream of income for the farmer by using a farm as a tourist destination to create a sustainable way of living for the people.
National Innovation Agency (NIA) hosted the Startup Thailand League 2020, the new challenge for pitching startups by university students. There were over 400 teams from universities around the country participated in the event, via ZOOM due to the spreading of COVID-19.
Pariwat Wongsamran. Director of Entrepreneur and Enterprise, Director of Startup Thailand at NIA, presided over the opening ceremony. He said that Startup Thailand originated in 2016 as the government initiated the country’s economic structure reform, pushing the startup to be the warrior and the driving force behind the country’s economic.
Responding to the policy, the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI) took the responsibility for developing startups to foster and support the cooperation between public sectors, private organization, and institution which will lead to a new curriculum that supports business awareness, entrepreneurship, and international market expansion.
NIA, under the management of MHESI, has introduced the enterprise ecosystem to the universities and Institutes of Vocational Studies. There are 39 public and private universities, and over 1,000 Institutes of Vocational Studies in the program and over 1,500 students that participate by coming up with ideas, business plan, and startup via this project.