IdeaSpace Seed Fund Launched for Philippine Technopreneurs

First Pacific Company Limited (First Pacific) managing director and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan has announced the launch of a new seed fund for technopreneurs in the Philippines. Dubbed IdeaSpace, the fund is a multi-million dollar program that aims to help Filipino entrepreneurs develop groundbreaking technologies and turn these into actual commercial products.

Manuel V. Pangilinan, Jr. is shown in this file photo giving a talk at the First Pacific Leadership Academy. The First Pacific Group is launching a seed fund for Philippine "technopreneurs." (Photo credit: MMLDC)

Aside from providing seed fund to technology entrepreneurs IdeaSpace will also establish partnerships with established and global IT companies. The fund investment will likewise be augmented with parallel activities for mentorship and support from established entrepreneurs.

Pangilinan is confident that the program will help establish an entrepreneurial environment in the country. “We want to help jumpstart the creation of a Silicon Valley-like ecosystem in the Philippines. This program will support innovative Filipino ‘technopreneurs’ with great ideas that promises the potential of global and national commercial potential,” he said.

Pangilinan added that the fund will not only support commercial products, but also solutions for social development and poverty alleviation. The program will be managed by the IdeaSpace Foundation, Inc., which is a nonprofit foundation to be established for the sole purpose of implementing the program.

IdeaLab will soon launch a competition for the first batch of startups, which will involve immersion into an incubator program, and access to office space and IT facilities in Makati City and the First Pacific Group’s Leadership Academy in Antipolo City.

Target startups include those that can scale in the energy, water, power utilities, transportation, telecommunications, healthcare, mining, media and food industries. Pangilinan says the program does not only involve angel investing. In addition to funding, the program will provide incubation and acceleration, through a structured program hosted by the Leadership Academy in order to establish the startups’ capability in running a sustainable and scalable business.