IdeaSpace Foundation, Inc. recently announced the winning teams in the national search for the Philippine’s top tech business ideas.
The ten winners were chosen from 700 entries in the competition that opened in August 2012 and concluded last April 3.
Judging criteria include: market need, market potential, the ability of the team to execute its vision into reality, use of unique and innovative technology and synergy, that is, the potential of the business to cut across various industries and sectors such as telecommunications, power, infrastructure, media, health care, agriculture, manufacturing, mining, ICT, and others.
Ideaspace is an Philippine-based incubator organization that is supported by leading companies, including First Pacific, First Pacific Leadership Academy, Metro Pacific Investments Corporation (MPIC), Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation (MPTC), MPIC hospital group, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), Meralco, Smart Communications, Inc (Smart), Digitel, Sun Cellular, SPI Global, ePLDT, Indofood, Philex Mining, Maynilad, MediaQuest, and TV5.
Ideaspace’s battlecry is: “Filipinos are great in technology. But more than just being consumers, let’s be creators of technology.”
The winners are:
Armtech (Angeles City) – affordable water purification machine for households
DateCola (Davao) – natural date enriched beverages, a healthy alternative to soft drinks
Mirand/AsianFit (Metro Manila) – low-cost and high-quality total joint implants for the Asian market
PGRS (Metro Manila) – produces electricity via rumble strips installed on high traffic roads
PinoyTravel (Metro Manila) – provincial bus seat reservation system using mobile technologies
PortfolioMNL (Metro Manila) – online marketplace for creative professionals
Prodigo (Manila) – a solution for highly targeted promotions for merchants using Big Data analytics
Tech4Health (Metro Manila) – solution for health monitoring of chronic conditions, including diabetes
TimeFree (Zamboanga) – SMS-based automated queuing system
WeGen (Sorsogon) – new design of wind turbine that is more efficient than current technology
Each of the winning teams will undergo a six-month incubation assistance from Ideaspace and its supporters, including a funding of P500,000, mentoring and support services.
In addition, they will receive grants worth P2 million from IdeaSpace partners Amazon, Asian Institute of Management, Freelancher.com, Ionics, IPO Philippines, Microsoft Philipines, Adamson University, and the University of the Philippines Open Universiity.
The winners can get additional investments of up to P5 million. They will also be linked with potential investors in and out of the country.
”Our job is to make them investable businesses at par with global standards,” Ideaspace president Earl Martin Valencia says.
The technopreneurs would be helped every step of the way so that they would flourish and create jobs, according to Ideaspace Executive Director Diane Eustaquio.