The Philippines is participating in CommunicAsia2016 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo from today until June 3. The country pavilion at Hall B (K2-07) will be represented by a number of Philippine startups selected by the Philippine Department of Science and Technology – Information and Communications Technology Office (DOST-ICTO).
The line-up includes Advanced World Solutions, Inc., GiftIt, Good Meal Hunting, InnoVantage, Launch Garage, MEDIFI, Orchestrack, ProudCloud and TicketBase which will showcase creative and innovative solutions in online food marketplace for home-based cooks, TV and radio advertising monitoring and analytics, web development, social gifting, and remote doctor-patient consultation, among others.
“We are excited to again take the lead in the Philippine participation in CommunicAsia2016. We look at CommunicAsia as an excellent venue for highlighting Philippine digital innovations. This year, we are featuring several Filipino digital startups who we believe will eventually become big players in the region,” said DOST-ICTO Deputy Executive Director Monchito Ibrahim.
In recent years, the Philippines has become a leading source of tech startups and talent. Aside from the operations and labor cost savings, it has a young, tech-savvy and highly-educated English-speaking workforce.
Philippine universities produce thousands of graduates specializing in engineering and technology annually. Most of them are skilled in app design and programming languages, ensuring a thoroughly capable workforce.
In 2015, the DOST-ICTO launched the Philippine Roadmap for Digital Startups, a collaborative effort between private and public stakeholders. It is aimed at addressing gaps in the startup ecosystem, inspiring techno-preneurship among the locals, and attracting more venture capitalists or angel investors.
The roadmap is the foundation of the Startup Business bill filed in 2014 by Philippine Senator Bam Aquino which targets to encourage more startup enterprises in the country by providing tax breaks and improve doing business for the sector.
For the past two years, the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has been staging Slingshot, a conference that brings together startup and innovation thought leaders from APEC economies. The April 2016 edition focused on the shared roles of government and stakeholders in developing an innovation economy.
The country continues to improve its global innovation index as shown in the 2015 assessment of the World Intellectual Property Organization wherein it climbed 17 notches and now ranks 83rd from its 100th ranking. Its strong compliance to the intellectual property rights protection also poses a viable qualification to be the next innovation hub in Asia. On a regional scale, the country ranked 2nd for both patent protection and IPR protection in 2014.
“We hope to go beyond introducing our market-ready startups. We are here to initiate relationships with influencers and decision-makers and share the role of these startups in enabling digital transformation of businesses,” added Ibrahim.
CommunicAsia attracts global leaders as well as emergent players providing technology and innovations. This year’s show features major tech trends that are the pillars of today and tomorrow’s smart cities and smart enterprises such as Internet of Things, smart technologies, cybersecurity, big data analytics, mobility, TV Everywhere and many more.
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