The Philippines emerged as the featured country of the “Labs to Public Dialogue: Create! Innovation Forum” held on 28 May 2015 at the Factory Berlin.  In its second edition, the Labs to Public initiative included a special workshop “startupPH: The Philippine Emerging Startup Ecosystem”, which was organized by the Philippine Embassy in partnership with Gateway63.  Citing the strong support from the Philippine Embassy, the Berlin Senate invited Ambassador Thomeczek as the lone diplomat to deliver welcome remarks at the event’s kick-off session.

In her remarks, Ambassador Thomeczek highlighted that: “Cities are the engines of economic dynamism, growth, and development. However, the dense concentration of people in a limited space also presents its attendant challenges such as dealing with traffic, pollution, natural hazards like flooding, and access to basic social services like water and sanitation.  This is particularly acute in mega city like Metro Manila. Technology has a great potential to ameliorate these conditions. However, technology can only be deployed when the on the ground conditions are known. For this reason, the real value added today is that we are bringing together technology experts and people with diverse backgrounds and on the ground experience who can complement one another, forge tangible partnerships and be real change makers.”

The Philippine presence was strongly felt as a diverse group of leaders in technology, innovation and social change flew in to Berlin to share their expertise.  Three leading lights of the Philippine tech scene were present to share their insights: Benjie Fernandez, the Chief Operating Officer of Voyager Innovations, Earl Valencia, President of Ideaspace Foundation, and Jay Fajardo, CEO of Proudcloud and Program Director of the Launchgarage.  They were joined by: Danilo Songco, President and CEO of PinoyME Foundation, Mon Ibrahim, Deputy Executive Director of DOST-Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO), and Christine Roque, senior campaigner of Change.org in the Philippines.

During the workshop, Gateway 63’s Klaus Preschle helped to facilitate a good exchange of views on the Philippines’ strategic opportunities and startup landscape.  Earl Valencia focused on the private sector’s role in helping foster the Philippine innovation ecosystem.  He highlighted that Ideaspace Foundation, like similar incubators and accelerators in the country, had emerged to fill in the financing and knowledge gap in the country.  Ideaspace Foundation, which hosts more than 90 events per year, was capitalized by an initial injection of USD 11 million to incubate and invest in early stage startups that are geared towards solving emerging market challenges.  To date, it has funded 28 companies, including Salt, an emergency light and mobile charger powered by salt and water, and TimeFree Innovations, a virtual queuing system for small businesses.

Benjie Fernandez provided his perspective on how large telecommunications companies are helping to support innovation in the Philippines.  He noted that under the PLDT Group, Voyager was created to focus on the digital economy.  Voyager is pursuing an aggressive strategy by undertaking in-house product development as well as by making strategic investments and in pursuing partnerships and joint ventures.  The audience was particularly interested to hear about PLDT’s relationship with Berlin-based Rocket Internet, which has the largest global e-platform in the emerging world.  In addition to its 333 million Euro investment in Rocket, both sides are working on mobile commerce solutions for emerging markets through PayMaya.  PLDT is also working to make the Philippines the shared services hub for the Asia Pacific Internet Group, a joint venture between Rocket Internet and Ooredoo.Following the workshop, Jan von Meppen, CEO of Lundic, a Berlin-based digital media and e-learning startup, remarked that he was surprised to learn about both the market opportunities in the Philippines as well as the level of talent in the country.

Jay Fajardo and Mon Ibrahim, for their part, provided their key insights on the Philippines as part of the “Connective Cities” initiative.  They noted that the Philippines is trying to support an ecosystem that both facilitates and accommodates innovation.  For example, the Philippines was the first country to develop regulations to legalize app-based transport services.  In addition, Mr. Ibrahim highlighted that the government is seeking to enhance digital inclusion by providing free Wifi access points throughout the country.  Danilo Songo, for his part, provided a snapshot of how technology and incubation methods were helping small-scale farmers group together to aggregate their production, cut out the middle-men and find end-buyers.

Ambassador Thomeczek emphasized that the Embassy would seek to further support innovation exchanges between the Philippines and Germany, particularly in leveraging German technologies to help the Philippines find solutions to support financial inclusion, social entrepreneurship, as well as environmental monitoring, energy efficiency, and off-grid energy solutions.