PH can learn from Malaysia on startups support
THE Information and Communication Technology (ICT)–Davao, Inc. called on the Philippine government to apply the same approach of Malaysian government in supporting startup companies through the International Sourcing Program (INSP) on Infotech and Internet-of-Things (IOT).
Lawyer Samuel Matunog, president of ICT-Davao, Inc. said that the Philippines should do the same thing here in promoting local companies to potential partner companies from other countries.
INSP is an initiative of Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade), the event which was slated last April 20 to 21 in Malaysia invited “a delegation of foreign buyers consisting of importers, distributors and service providers to source for Malaysian ICT solutions at this year's International Sourcing Programme (INSP) for ICT that will feature one-to-one business meeting session with Malaysian ICT companies.”
“It was such a good program on business matching and harnessing potential business partners, wherein they invited ICT companies from other countries (including Philippines), we just hope that our government will do the same such as this,” he said.
Matunog added that there are a total of nine ICT companies who represented as delegates in the international event. Of the figure, four are from Davao City including Accelerate Desk Business Solutions, Ingenuity, Durion, Inc. and Segworks.
The companies invited in INSP are firms offering solutions from verticals such as Banking, Finance, Education, IoT, Cloud Computing, Smart Applications, Security, Healthcare and Hospitality sector.
The two-day event is tagged as “an ideal opportunity to meet with international buyers and identify strategic partners on a local platform. The countries invited are the United States, France, Japan, China, Russia, Korea, Turkey and South Africa, among others.
Meanwhile, ICT Davao will introducing the first alternative equity crowdfunding platform to counterpart companies and government agencies within the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asean Growth Area (Bimp-Eaga) region as it chairs this year’s ICT CEO Forum set on May 11 in Brunei Darussalam.
It will discuss various projects in uplifting the ICT industry in the region including the launching of “CrowdPlus.asia,” a Malaysian-registered equity crowd funding platform.
“This is very significant because ICT-Davao is leading the thrust. It is an improvement of our profile within the region. It can help promote the industry at the same time opportunities for our entrepreneurs to access capital for their ventures,” he said.
Crowdfunding is the industry’s strategy of collecting the efforts of individuals to work together in pooling the funds through an online platform. While Equity crowd funding pertains to the quantity of people or “crowd” investing relatively small amount of money in an unlisted/private company in exchange for equity of that company.
The other proposals that will be pushed during the forum include business startups in BIMP-Eaga, Internet of Things and E-commerce: ICT Rural Outreach Project - Phase II, BIMP-Eaga Electronic Commerce, Open Data or Big Data for Business Opportunities and innovation of BIMP-Eaga.