Fourteen start-ups from all over the Philippines pitched their “ideas for the future” in IdeaSpace’s annual demo day on Thursday, Jan. 20.
Held virtually again due to Covid-19, Ideaspace’s Demo Day is the opportunity for the tech accelerator’s latest cohort of promising entrepreneurs to impress investors, appear to media, and forge connections for their businesses.
“I just want to recap again how proud we are of this cohort and their achievements. Just in this last six months, our start-ups have raised over P45 million and close to a million dollars in investments. They’ve generated over P10 million in revenue and created close to 90 jobs,” said Katrina Chan, executive director of IdeaSpace.
The latest batch of start-ups aims to make a mark a wide range of industries like healthcare, fintech, clean tech, legal technology, human resources, events management, education, real estate, logistics, e-commerce, fitness, and laundry.
These startups are:
- XalMeds — A pharmacy solution where maintenance and even Covid-19 medication is made affordable and accessible through a subscription plan as low as P99 per month.
- Peddlr — Targeted towards micro and small business, Peddlr is a free, user-friendly POS app that helps business owners record sales, log expenses, and manage inventory.
- Trash Panda — Nothing goes to waste. This company recovers value from waste by collecting properly cleaned and sorted waste and selling them to recycling facilities.
- Twala – Understanding the delays caused by missing signatures, this document management and eSignature platform aims to streamline the signing process with Smart Contracts secured by blockchain technology.
- Betterteem — An all-in-one employee experience and wellness app that offers pulse surveys of employee well-being, on-demand mental health, as well as recognition and perks.
- XPERTO — A Web-based platform where students and professionals can host virtual events. It also provides crucial services including registration, payment, collection, and certification.
- Pic-A-Talk — Created for those with complex communication needs, this app helps those with speech or learning disabilities identify words through images. Additionally, it outputs speech when words are selected or sentences produced.
- MAD Courses — The way people learn is changing. MAD’s latest offering connects students and professionals to social entrepreneurs and communities through interactive, gamified video courses.
- Instahomes — In an industry dominated by large corporations, this platform gives small-to-medium real estate developers the exposure to thrive online.
- OMG! Oh My Genie! — Speed is essential when making sales. This same-day delivery app finds the merchant nearest to the consumer to make deliveries as quickly as possible.
- Pieza — An e-commerce platform that offers auto parts, motor parts and other automotive-related products. It also assists merchants with end-to-end online selling services.
- Splore — For the convenience-driven consumer, this website is an online marketplace where they can easily find classes and experiences to improve their fitness, health, and wellness.
- Fitscovery — An online platform that helps non-techy fitness trainers set-up their own website hassle free.
- Dirtbag — By simply swiping on this app, end-users can have their laundry picked up, washed by the company’s partner laundry shops, and returned effortlessly the next day.
The wide range of industries and their business models, though, are not the only unique features of this cohort. This year, Ideaspace’s cohort stood out for its diversity.
Case in point, half of the start-ups this year had a female founder. Ideaspace also took advantage of their virtual setting to open their accelerator program to driven founders in the Visayas and Mindanao regions.
For the first time, businesses based in these regions had the chance to compete for the mentoring and resources offered by Ideaspace’s acceleration program. Xalmeds, Peddlr, Pic-A-Talk, MAD Courses, OMG! Oh My Genie!, and Dirtbag are the six businesses outside Metro Manila who earned a spot in this cohort.
The event’s keynote speaker, Carlo Delantar, a founding partner of Gobi Core Philippine fund, advised these diverse start-ups to leverage the Philippines business environment for their continued success.
Delantar noted that “the Philippines is really a hospitable space for startups” as the percentage of GDP utilized for consumption is higher that the Asean regional average.
“Over the past four years, we’ve seen an increase of investments. Now that we’re going to 2022, we have exceeded the past two years of investments just by 2021 alone,” he added. “We see there are investments coming in and there is a good market for consumers that are really riding the technology adoption for the Philippines.”
