File photo: Philippine flag. — Philippine startups continue to demonstrate their ability to bring innovation to people’s lives — and their hard work has not gone unnoticed. Two Philippine companies were named the region’s best innovators in their respective categories at the Asian Technology Entrepreneurship Conference (ATEC) startup competition held in Hong Kong in December this year. | INQUIRER.net Stock Image
Filipino startups continue to demonstrate their ability to bring innovation to people’s lives — and their hard work has not gone unnoticed.
Two Filipino companies were named the region’s best innovators in their respective categories at the Asian Technology Entrepreneurship Conference (ATEC) startup competition held in Hong Kong this month.
InvestEd, a financing platform that provides loans to students who need tuition assistance, won in the Artificial Intelligence and Digital Solutions category. The company uses a proprietary credit scoring algorithm to provide loans to students without bank accounts, making financing easy. It targets students in socioeconomic classes C, D, and E.
Meanwhile, e-commerce enabler Packworks emerged as the winner in the Smart Commerce and Logistics category.
Packworks provides digital solutions to more than 300,000 grocery stores, helping them to operate more efficiently. Its product suite includes pricing, inventory management, and sales tracking tools.
ATEC is Asia’s largest alumni-led technology conference. This annual startup competition recognizes outstanding companies developing new, cutting-edge products.
For this year’s competition, a 40-member selection committee screened 106 applications and selected 32 semi-finalists.
Startups can enter the competition if they are nominated by ATEC alumni organizations.
In this case, both InvestEd and Packworks are supported by the Global Harvard Club of the Philippines.
Last year, local startup Mayani won the Emerging Market Solutions Impact Award. The startup is a social enterprise that connects more than 139,000 smallholder farmers to retail and commercial consumers, helping many local farmers in Zambales.
According to a study by local market research firm Uniquecorn Strategies, most (75%) Philippine startups are keen to achieve profitability rather than growth in order to reduce their reliance on investor funding.
More than half (55%) of the founders surveyed expect to be profitable within the next one to two years.