Emerging Markets VC & Startups: The Philippines Continuing Support for Local Startups

Zeb Hastings
3 min readMar 30, 2021

Last week, the Philippines government, specifically the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), announced a new USD 5M fund to support local startup establishment and expansion. The news is part of a continuing initiative that started with the country’s Innovative Startup Act. Although the guidelines are not yet final, the venture fund aims to provide equity financing to qualified, innovative startups with high-growth potential and supports product R&D, manufacturing, and sales & marketing initiatives.

The Senate introduced the Innovative Startup Act (RA1137) in 2017, but President Rodrigo Dueterte didn’t officially sign it into law until 2019. The bill aims to strengthen, promote, and develop an innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem and culture in the Philippines. Three government agencies lead the program:

  • The Department of Science and Technology (DOST)
  • The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT)
  • The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), which serves as the inaugural chair of the steering committee

The three groups have worked together by aligning their respective programs for startups and implementing initiatives to pursue the law’s objectives.

A primary component of the bill was creating the Philippine Startup Development Program (PSDP), composed of various programs, benefits, and incentives for startups and startup enablers. This program provides incentives for “any person or registered entity in the Philippines that aims to develop an innovative product, process, or business model.” Along with these incentives, the bill provides access to capital funding, subsidized business registration, subsidies for training and R&D, startup visas, and specific tax breaks. More details on what the bill provides are here.

The new Startup Venture Fund was part of the original bill to support venture funding and access to capital alongside a startup grant fund that provides grants-in-aid for R&D, training, and expansion plans for entrepreneurs. The fund is a partnership between the DTI and the National Development Company (NDC) and will provide between USD 100K — 500K for each qualifying startup. Although modest compared to other venture funds in the country, such as the USD 180M ACTIVE Fund, the government initiatives show broad support for its entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Beyond this news, the DTI is also currently working to establish the Startup Business One-Stop Shop, an initiative to facilitate end-to-end registration of startups and serve as a portal for maintaining startup-related information. The DTI is also working on an ecosystem mapping project to provide a complete overview of the Philippine startup ecosystem that generates insights to help the government craft effective policies and programs. The World Bank recently released Covid-19 recovery projections for the region, predicting the Philippines output to remain below pre-pandemic levels until 2022. With initiatives such as this one and the recent “ Make it Happen in the Philippines” campaign, the country can help its startup ecosystem and potentially speed up its recovery process.

Regional News

Africa

  • Nigeria’s Kuda secures $25m Series A round to fund aggressive growth strategy — Link
  • Nigerian fintech startup Bankly secures $2m seed funding round — Link
  • South African Firm Moshe Capital Launches USD 23.5 Mn Investment Fund — Link

Asia-Pacific

  • Investible aims to raise US$38M fund targeting early-stage startups in SEA — Link
  • Eximius Ventures announces first close of its targeted $10m fund for Indian startups — Link
  • Singapore-based M Capital Management closes $30.85M debut fund to invest in Southeast Asian startups — Link

Europe

  • Polish startup Tylko raises €22 million to expand its ‘digital-first,’ personalized & sustainable furniture beyond Europe — Link
  • Fraud prevention platform Seon raises a $12M Series A round led by Creandum — Link
  • Polish cleantech startup Airly raises €2.7 million to address the air quality health crisis — Link

Latin America

  • Brazil-based Signal Capital targets USD400m secondaries fund — Link
  • Argentina’s Digital House raises over $50M to help solve LatAm’s tech talent shortage — Link
  • Kredi, a mortgage credit platform, raises $2M for Mexico expansion — Link

Middle East

  • Dubai’s iKcon raises $20 million Series A to expand its ‘cloud-kitchen-as-a-service’ platform to Saudi — Link
  • Abwaab raises $5.1 million in Seed funding for expansion — Link
  • Weelo raises six-figure Seed round — Link

Originally published at https://vagabondvc.substack.com.

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Zeb Hastings

I travel the world and write about venture capital and startups. Follow along at my website: https://vagabond.vc