The Dezpax team
While working in the packaging and printing industry, Tum Patompong and two of his friends saw the pains of SME restaurants and cafes in sourcing food packaging solutions in low quantities at affordable prices.
They decided to help these small outlets in Thailand and ease their pains.
“We started Dezpax to build a food packaging solutions startup to solve all the pain points in the supply chain. Our online B2B platform enables cafes and restaurants to find affordable, eco-friendly packaging solutions,” Patompong tells e27.
The startup was founded by Patompong (CEO), Pick Passara (COO), and Feem Settapat (CMO).
Dezpax is an e-commerce platform for food packaging solutions for F&B businesses.
“SME restaurants and cafes need packaging solutions, such as food boxes, cups and bags with their logo printed on the items to promote their brands. Usually, they need to order a minimum quantity or pay a minimum of US$1,000 for every order,” he explains.
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Since each category comes from different factories, cafes and restaurants are often forced to contact multiple factories to fulfil their orders. This means they have to shell out thousands of dollars for inventory that lasts just six months.
“This is where Dezpax comes into play,” Patompong shares. “We have brought over a hundred packaging and printing factories into a single platform. We help businesses to customise the packaging with 10x lower minimum order.”
Over 100 factories are listed on the Dezpax platform. Different kinds of materials — fibre-based, bio-mat and petroleum-based — are available on it.
“All the packages are recyclable,” he claims. “Some products are 100 per cent biodegradable. We continuously collaborate with factories to develop products that are good for the environment.”
The startup currently caters only to B2B businesses. It has over 7,000 clients nationwide, such as restaurants, cafes, food delivery outlets, hotels, hospitals, and corporates.
Its clients include McDelivery (McDonald’s), MINOR Food, TAROTO, ibis, Holiday Inn, Amwy Cafe, Ben’s Cookie, Mercado, Thammachart Seafood, TRUE, and Luk KaiThong.
Talking about the market opportunity, he said Thailand has over 600,000 food services, and the market size for food service packaging is about US$1 billion. It also plans to foray into other markets in Southeast Asia in the future.
The Bangkok-based startup has secured two investments since its inception in 2018. These include a US$1.2 million, led by SCG Packaging, in 2020 and a US$2 million Series A round from ORZON Ventures, Next Ventures, and iSeed SEA in 2022.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a challenging period, admits Patompong. “The market was down from the peak demand during the pandemic. However, it is now back on track, and the market has grown slightly. We need to diversify our customer portfolio to other segments, such as food chains, franchises, and cafes. That’s our next goal.”
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