Sirsak at Tech in Asia 2025: Showcasing Digital Solutions for Packaging Waste Traceability

Sirsak attended the Tech in Asia 2025 conference on 22-23 October 2025 to present our solutions to the crowd. As a member of the 8th batch of the Grab Velocity Ventures program, five selected start-ups were invited to open a booth and pitch their business on the Unfiltered Stage.

Grab Velocity Ventures: Driving a Sustainable Future

The Grab Velocity Ventures kicked off in August 2025 with the theme: "Driving a Sustainable Future: Helping MSMEs Adopt Greener Operations" - a perfect fit for the goal we strive towards sustainable waste management. Along with four other winning startups, Sirsak received mentorship and training from various renowned industry practitioners, as well as investment and partnership opportunities to advance sustainable businesses in the green sector.

The Packaging Waste Crisis in Indonesia

Of all the waste produced in Indonesia each year, around 40.6% is not properly managed and often ends up in landfills or burned. At the moment in Indonesia, no collection, traceability or waste management systems are available for low values in Indonesia, meanwhile high value materials such as PET have infrastructure and handling services way ahead of the game. However, we cannot afford to overlook low values - this would mean risking leakage of more than 21 million of packaging waste (mostly MLP/low values) to the environment every year.

We see that there is potential to establish waste management systems that integrate technology at every point within the waste value chain to further enhance and scale the traceability of packaging waste.

Digitalization and Traceability

As we run our operations at more than 300+ collection points, majority being waste banks, a large pain point faced by waste bank workers is the manual data entry of transactions. At the moment, most community waste banks still heavily rely on hand-written notes to record waste transactions. Many waste workers are still not well-equipped or trained properly to run digital tools such as excel to implement their operations. This can lead to inaccurate data entry and data loss, causing less transparency on the volume of waste entering every day and preventing proper waste management.

Waste workers are in need of a system that can help lighten the data work through automation. For this purpose, Sirsak is striving to develop and establish a digital system that can ensure that no transaction gets left behind and to go even further beyond - building a system that enables all stakeholders to be connected through a centralized digital system that can collect and distribute real-time data to any user at any point within the waste and recycling value chain.

By creating a digital system that tracks packaging waste from pick up point to recycling, we can:

1. Generate real-time data and insight on waste flow

2. Raise connectivity to ensure all MLPs are being delivered from one part of the chain to another

3. Hold all waste management stakeholders accountable

S-POP and Digital Dashboard: Solution to Bridge All Stakeholders

At Sirsak, we combine community empowerment, packaging recovery efforts and technology integration to enhance the growth and traceability of packaging waste across Indonesia to tackle the packaging waste management crisis.

To streamline data entry and ensure all data is being collected at Waste Banks, we are developing our own solutions which were demonstrated live at the Tech in Asia Conference 2025:

S-POP: Sirsak Point of Purchase

S-POP is a software being used by waste workers with visual-friendly and easy-to-use UI that helps users record the volume of waste entering waste banks based with a few clicks. Tablets installed with S-POP can automatically enter the weight of waste when connected to our digital weighing scale.

Digital Dashboard

A centralized dashboard presenting real-time insights based on transaction data collected from the S-POP which can be used for EPR and sustainability reporting for producers funding our packaging recovery program.

Showcasing our Solutions

At Tech in Asia, start-up owners, investors and fellow tech entrepreneurs came by our GVV booth to try out the S-POP and Digital Dashboards. We had the pleasure of demonstrating our solution to 30+ representatives visiting our booth, including those from the business sector such as Sampoerna, Denso, and Jetro, and even academia such as NUS and Monash. They were able to see how our digital solutions help guarantee incentives for anyone depositing waste at waste banks and provide real-time, accurate EPR compliance reports for producers.

Angeline Callista, our CEO and Co-Founder, pitched Sirsak on the Unfiltered Stage and shared with the audience how we plan to scale our operations across the region. To enable the recovery of 100,000 tons of packaging waste by 2030, we aim to scale our impact by growing the number of collaborations with major FMCGs and retails for long-term and sustained packaging recovery demand, expanding the establishment of collection points at critical locations that generate high volumes of consumer packaging waste and enhancing waste traceability through digitalization on the entirety of our waste value chain network.

Moving towards traceability for all packaging waste

Full traceability of packaging waste cannot happen without the involvement of every stakeholder within the waste value chain - from producers, consumers, collection points, aggregators and recyclers. Technology alone, without an interconnected network of users who can benefit from it, cannot transform the packaging waste management system. We need all players of packaging waste in Indonesia to come together and support our initiative in closing the loop for packaging waste once and for all.

Join Sirsak's movement in empowering waste banks and tackling the packaging waste crisis in Indonesia.