InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
MANILA, Philippines — Entrepreneurs with the next big start-up idea stand a chance to get their business concepts funded with up to P5 million in capital if chosen to become part of IdeaSpace, the accelerator and incubation hub of the MVP Group of Companies.
This was revealed to the press by IdeaSpace President Earl Martin Valencia during the opening of the Foundation’s office in Makati on Friday, a day before the beginning of the hub’s national competition for technology entrepreneurship.
IdeaSpace is an initiative launched in March by the MVP Group of Companies that seeks to find early-stage startups that offer solutions for industries such as telecommunications, water and power utilities, toll roads, and media, among many others.
Beginning Saturday, aspiring technopreneurs with a unique business idea can submit their proposals through an application form available at the IdeaSpace website until January 7 next year.
Each start-up team is required to have a maximum of three members, one of which should be knowledgeable enough to tackle the technical aspects of the business idea, IdeaSpace executives said.
These ideas will then go through a rigorous four-stage screening process, with executives and experts from in and out of the conglomerate’s companies distilling the list before coming up with a Top 20 selection by around February next year.
In March, the IdeaSpace foundation will then hold a pitching event where the chosen twenty start-up companies can pitch their ideas to Manuel V. Pangilinan himself, before the competition ends with just ten technopreneurs entering the six-month incubation period with IdeaSpace.
Each chosen start-up will receive P500,000 seed money entering into the incubation period, with the option to receive up to P5 million in additional capital at the end of incubation, depending on the company’s financial needs and viability.
“We budgeted P5 million per start-up, but then that’ll still be a discussion at that point in time after incubation. It’s another round of investment,” Valencia explained.
They will also be provided with their own space at the IdeaSpace office in Makati, as well as living quarters near the area, aside from mentoring from top Filipino technopreneurs and executives from the MVP Group of Companies.
In the past several months, the group has been going around various schools and universities in Metro Manila, Davao, and other provinces holding technopreneurship bootcamps to get students thinking about what kinds of business ideas they can propose to solve various industry problems.
But Valencia clarified that they will be accepting idea proposals from people of all ages from all walks of life, in every geographical location possible so long as the people behind the idea are Filipinos.
“The program goes beyond angel investing and provides incubation and acceleration with access to a wide group of companies to share and learn experiences, fast access to be defined market runway and opportunities to be connected to potential investors” clarified Marthyn Cuan, vice president of IdeaSpace and chief information officer at Meralco.
In his recent speech at the 6th Summit of the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP), Pangilinan posed the challenge: “why can’t the next Instagram or Google be Filipino. This innovation void defined precisely the rationale behind IdeaSpace.”
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