YOUNG DABAWENYO’S BILLION-DOLLAR BIZ
Dabawenyo entrepreneur Josh Supan’s Xpanse is now on its way to become a Unicorn tech company valued at US$ 1 billion.
Named after Josiah, the man from the Bible who became king when he was still 8 years old, Josh Supan grew up with high hopes and big dreams in life.
Born and raised while being homeschooled in Manila, he studied business at Ateneo de Davao University. Early on, Josh knew what he wanted to be in life. His young mind was fixed on becoming a good entrepreneur. Growing up, he would read economics and business books which eventually made him wellversed in the business.
After college, Josh worked in a corporate company which exposed him to retail and which allowed him to work with different international and national brands. That was when the shipping and logistics problems in the Philippines dawned on him especially that the country is an archipelago. He kept wondering how difficult it was to reach the far-flung areas. When he was looking for available start-up enablers, it’s either they are web developers or a logistics company. They are never both.
That was why when he left his job, he immediately set off to Manila to start Xpanse in 2017.
Xpanse is an e-commerce business marrying together web development and shipping. No one has ever done that in the Philippines yet as well as in the United States, the latter because they do not have much of logistics problem because they are not an archipelago, in the first place.
“Traditional e-commerce is you have a website, people order but still you need to download the orders at the end of the day and then you need to send them to a courier. What Xpanse does is we build your website, yes, but it’s already connected to an automated shipping platform called Noah,” Josh explained in an interview with SunStar Davao.
“Noah gets the order data automatically from the website. It pulls data information and sends it to the courier automatically. So if you are a vendor, a client of ours, you don’t have to worry about courier or anything related to the shipping company of the product. It becomes an automatic process,” he added.
Josh started the company in 2017 with his friends David Marquez, a top Full Stack Developer, and Jeremiah Abalos who did the front-end interface and services.
Some of the people he met in Manila would doubt how his business idea would work since it’s a new thing and no one has really done it and became successful in the country. But Josh has so much trust in their product that he knew they would make it. He found a huge dilemma in the retail business and provided a solution. That’s where the success stems out.
They started operations in 2018 and they target to provide services to 200 .ph sites by 2020. Most of their clients are fashion brands that people know of. They have started working with GAP, Banana Republic, and Payless to name a few.
Josh was also proud to share that their average return to seller rate is only pegged at 3.9%, a significantly low amount compared to the standard market RTS at 15%. He said this only shows how people welcome and embrace Xpanse as an e-commerce.
More significantly, they are already on their seed funding round and on its way to becoming a Unicorn tech company.
“We are already on our seed funding round. We already got multiple commitments from other BC’s that they’re going to invest a certain amount that will make us valued at US$ 1 billion. Unicorn is defined as a company worth US$ 1 billion,” he shared.
Knowing that the tech start-up community in Davao City, or even in the Philippines, is still young, he urged everyone who is interested in tech start-up to think big and to go for solutions for big problems.
“If you’re the leader, lead properly. Lead in a modern way. The modern way of leading is you trust people more. Gone are the days that’s it’s a hierarchical pyramid. It’s supposed to be flat. You hear your people more,” said Josh.
But it’s not all work for Josh as he also enjoys watching series and playing video games during his free time, just like a regular young adult that he is. Now based in Manila, the things that Josh misses the most about Davao is how accessible the beaches can be. His favorite beach getaways are usually in Mati and in Samal.