MVP sees Voyager turnaround by 2020
DIGITAL solutions provider Voyager Innovations Inc. should start reaping the benefits of its huge cash burns as early as next year as the company continues to build upscale on all fronts, assuming more aggressive fronts in growing its different business verticals.
Manuel V. Pangilinan, who chairs PLDT Inc., said his group expects to see a turnaround from years of losses—birth pains common for most start-ups in the region—in 2020, thanks to fresh resources from foreign partners that will allow the company to further expand its reach and volume moving forward.
“We need to build up to scale first before you could see the prospects have turnaround. The view that everybody’s taken is that let’s push it as hard as we can and then determine, say in 2020 or latest 2021, is there light at the end of the tunnel?” he said in a chance interview.
PLDT has been burning cash for
in the last few years. In 2018 alone, losses of Voyager amounted to P3 billion, more than double the P1.2billion loss it incurred the year prior.
Pangilinan said the new investors—Tencent Holdings Inc., the operator of Chinese super app WeChat, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), International Finance Corp. and IFC Emerging Asia Fund—have given the company some form of milestones to meet.
“There are certain metrics that have been agreed upon with them—in terms of the number of subscribers, number of subscriber ads, active monthly users, the value throughput,” he said, noting the final budget numbers will be reviewed this week.
The company, he said, has been given “enough time and resources” to further develop and grow its different businesses in the next few years.
Voyager, known for its tech platforms such as PayMaya, Smart Padala, Lendr, and freenet, is now using the additional resources to ramp up its efforts to promote digital financial services in the Philippines. In particular, the company is currently focused on further expanding digital payments adoption among customers, enterprises and communities with PayMaya.