You may not be familiar yet with South-East Asia, so here’s a big picture to give an understanding on why it matters when it comes to startups:
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- A market of 600 million people, a (big) third of which in one country alone: Indonesia and its 17 000 islands. The Philippines just got their 100 million Filipino.
- A fast-growing middle-class, with 24% of the Philippines population in this category as of 2013 (Business Mirror)
- The social media capital of the world. Top smartphone penetration? Singapore is 4th worldwide, with more than 70%. Top Instagramed place? Paragon Siam mall in Bangkok, Thailand. Top Twitter country with 15% of the world tweets? Indonesia. And the selfie capital of the world is in the Philippines as well according to the Times.
The best? You’re not alone to find it difficult to position these countries on a map, as they are still quite unexplored. The opportunity to launch a business in the region is huge.
As we attended Geeks on a Beach, the top tech conference in the Philippines, we curated for you 5 good reasons to startup there.
1. It’s more fun in the Philippines
This sentence is actually the official campaign of the tourism board of the Philippines. Is it more fun there? Well, quite a lot.
As a speaker of the conference summarizes it in one sentence: “We party like Latins, do business like Americans, and have the entrepreneurial spirit of Asians!”.
The Philippines is an amazing melting-pot of an Asian-Pacific set of islands, which has been conquered by the Spanish, freed from the Japanese later on by the Americans, and with a huge diaspora across the world.
The result is a very social and friendly culture, where karaoke, laughter and time for friends is omnipresent. As innovation often comes from diversity, you could not dream of a country with more different faces and cultures
2. It’s growing fast in the Philippines
With the second best performing economy of Asia behind China, the Philippines is doing well. Their GDP recorded 6.5% growth in the fourth quarter of 2013, compared to 7.7% for China (IBT).y
The exports of the country are also amazing, with the top chunk held by Electronic products, far beyond the bananas people think too often of.
The stockmarket also increased its main index by 61% over the last two years.
3. It’s historically entrepreneurial in the Philippines
If the history of the Silicon Valley or Israel is better known than the one of the Philippines, you can still find a lot of examples testifying their entrepreneurial spirit:
- They opened Asia’s first University back in 1611. The University of Santo Tomas was set up by the Catholic, and it is still boasting some 42 000 students as of 2013.
- They carved the first rice terraces some 2 000 years ago with an advanced irrigation system to drive water from the rainforests.
- They resisted the Spanish invasion, with Lapu-Lapu, the omni-present soldier statue you can see in Cebu island, being then recognized as “the first Filipino”, back in the 16th century.
- They survive wars and typhoons and rebuild the country after each catastrophe.
- They are preparing a Startup Bill which many compares to a move as bold as the one made by Chile a few years ago (with Startup Chile being now a world famous program for foreign entrepreneurs).
4. It’s innovative in the Philippines
At Geeks on a Beach, I must say I was impressed by the absence of the usual copycats you can find in so many emerging markets. I didn’t even heard about Rocket Internet!
The local startup scene in the Philippines is recognized to be leading innovation in two important fields:
Bitcoin and crypto-currencies, as the regulations are light when it comes to these new virtual currencies, and as their huge diaspora need a better way to send money back home than with the 9% fees of Western Union. At the conference, a few American startupers came intently to know how the Philippines bitcoin community was faring.
Social enterprise, as 62% of the population live with less than three dollar per day. This population, called “the bottom of the pyramid”, is often referred to as a market as people there still have ways to consume goods and services. A social enterprise such as Rags to Riches in Manila, offers an e-commerce platform for craft made by remote populations.
These two fields are key innovation drivers where the Philippines can lead the way.
5. The startup ecosystem is healthy in the Philippines
This 2nd edition of Geeks on a Beach gathered about 500 people from all industries and countries. All speakers agreed than two years ago, “there was nothing here”.
Now, the Philippines have their own main tech event, they have a lot of international hackathon and competition such as Seedstars World or AngelHack, training and mentoring centers such as the Founder Institute, as well as a myriad of tech communities such as Startup Grind.
It’s definitely vivifying to visit the tech scenes of the Philippines, both in Cebu, an island better known for its nature spots, and Manila, the sprawling capital city of the archipelago.
With a unique positioning between Asia, the Pacific, and the United States, this is a big 100 million people country not to forget about.
Image via Philippines Tourism.
