Program focuses on technical skills of startups
THE partnership between Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Plug and Play and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) wants to onboard 40 startups per year onto an acceleration program that aims to help them build technical skills.
Plug and Play Co-founder Jojo Flores told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of the National Innovation Platform and Plug and Play Philippines that the accelerator program “is essentially to bring together industries, migrant workers, the BPO and electronics industry” to build solutions.
“Because they know that they want it, but they don’t have the technical skills to identify the best solutions or to build solutions.”
Through Plug and Play, Flores will gather “opportunity statements or problem statements [from industries], then I will now market it to the rest of the world and ask them ‘These are the problems we have in the Philippines. What solutions do you have that can solve these problems?’”
He said the role of the acceleration program is to serve as a platform where startups will work with the industry to build products for the industry.
“Our idea is that these startups will now also attract foreign direct investments from venture capitalists,” he said. “It will attract other companies that also want to look at their solutions and then build those solutions.”
With this, Flores said it is important to build solutions within the Philippines instead of sourcing them from other countries.
“So these solutions will be built anywhere in the world. Why should we wait then buy the solutions that are made outside of the Philippines when we can build them here?” he said, adding that the idea for building solutions in the Philippines is connected with owning an intellectual property.
“Once we build the solutions, we will now deploy them to our industry so we protect the industry para hindi mamatay and then these same products we will now resell to the global market.”
As to the funding for the startup accelerator program, Flores said he has access to at least $10 billion worth of funding from Plug and Play’s network globally.
“So now when I go to these VCS, I can tell them, you know we have the best service startups in the world. Because there’s nobody else doing it…only the Philippines will be doing it. That’s why it’s a key project for the Philippine govern- ment,” he added.
For his part, Trade Secretary Alfredo E. Pascual said in his speech during the launch that Plug and Play would enable the country’s “Regional Innovation Ecosystems” to advance the country’s “inclusive innovation and entrepreneurship agenda.”
He said it will “serve as a bridge between startups and large corporations, facilitating collaborations and partnerships and providing access to funding opportunities.”