Pitching contest for start-ups set

IDEASPACE Philippines, a foundation of MVP Group of Companies, is holding a national pitching competition this month that will scale up young entrepreneurs' innovative ideas into a useful tool for the development of many industries through new technologies.

Earl Valencia, head of the IdeaSpace, said they are able to extend support to start-ups through the holding of a National IdeaSpace Start-Up competition where they will select 10 best start-ups a year to receive varied benefits from funding to mentoring both to fine-tune and materialize their ideas.

"Ideaspace should be the conduit for technopreneurs for them to really create and achieve their dream. The best 10-start-ups will be chosen a year for five years and more because of the merit of their idea," Valencia said.

Valencia, in a phone interview, said there's no final date yet as to when will be the business competition, but said it will BE staged most likely during the last week of August this year.

He said MVP Group of Companies earmarked some P500 million for the program, which is good for five years, for the incubation of ideas of the best start-up companies each year. In return, IdeaSpace will keep at least 20 percent stake of the equity of the company.

Valencia said the foundation has committed to shell out some P100 million every year, which will be allocated for both office space and IT facilities, for the 10 selected start-up companies for the next five years.

The share in revenues generated will be returned to the foundation to support more projects in this program. He said investors in the country would rather not squander any single amount investing on mere ideas.

"That stage of investment is very hard to get by because people don’t really take the risk on idea, but we will do that for the ten teams," he said.

To promote this month’s national competition, IdeaSpace team is going around across the Philippines, reaching even southern part of the country, to reach more aspiring successful technopreneurs.

A Technopreneur Bootcamp was staged at the University of Southeastern Philippines (Usep) last July 29, where close to 200 start-ups participated in the one-day activity.

IdeaSpace also spearheaded a localized business pitching competition, with total of 25 start-up teams who joined and pitched their respective ideas before the panel of judges. Participants were given four hours to brainstorm their business proposals.

"A lot of them made their proposals here. It’s amazing in a span of the three to four hours, people came up with their ideas," Valencia said.
The team of Mypawn.ph bagged the championship and followed by 2nd placer SGDC team with idea Smart Banana Detector. Genre team placed 3rd with its idea the collaborative story website.

Valencia said the holding of Technoprenuer Bootcamp in the city was first outside of Manila and now the team is heading to Cebu City, Baguio City, and Angeles City in Pampanga for another set of a one-day bootcamp.